Brenda’s in the saddle for her community

Saturday, 25 July 2026

Brenda Barrowcliffe has loved horses ever since she was a little girl, now she runs horse treks to fundraise for her community. Pictured with her horse Mela.

Brenda Barrowcliffe may not have had a pony as a kid, but that didn’t stop her from developing a life-long passion that she now uses to fundraise for her community.

Barrowcliffe has organised horse treks for the past three years to share her passion and to fundraise for the local Mairoa Hall near Piopio. She says the hall is at the heart of the rural community..

“We want a new roof on it and obviously the insurance and all of that is expensive … We’re just trying to keep it going for the community, you know, you get smaller and smaller in these areas when all the kids leave and you get workers without them.”

Brenda Barrowcliffe with her horse Mela, who she bred herself.

The hall is frequently used for birthday celebrations as well as the community tennis matches and line dancing each Monday. Barrowcliffe started running her horse treks three years ago to put some money back into it, and built her numbers to 50 people in her last trek when she raised $11,000.

Her love for horses stretches back much further, though, to when she was a kid living in Auckland.

Brenda Barrowcliffe has been fundraising to help maintain the community Mairoa Hall.

“As a kid, I always loved animals and my parents never really supported me in that. I was the black sheep of the family, so I pursued it anyway. I remember walking for an hour and a half with a saddle and bridle just to ride a friend’s horse.

“There were some girls with their horses up the road and I’d go sit and watch them ride. I was that little girl always asking to brush their horses.”

She was gifted her first horse, Blue, in her early twenties, who came with only one eye making him a sight to see around Auckland.

“I remember in my younger days, I’d be having a few drinks and I’d be riding Blue down to the beach in Long Bay. We’d be cantering along with sparks flying off the horses feet, we were young and dumb but it was a lot of fun.”

When he got a bit older, she donated him to the RDA and later started leasing horses to go on treks. After going on an eight day trek, she decided “this is going to be my one and only thing and I’m going to save my butt off to get it”. It was on one of these treks that she met her daughter’s father and ended up down in Piopio.

Brenda Barrowcliffe grew up in Auckland but always thought she’d end up in the country.

“It’s funny, when I was like ten, I told my mum that I wanted children, I didn’t want their fathers and I wanted to live in the country, and that’s exactly what happened.”

She met her husband Mark after moving down to the area. Between the two of them, they have seven children, making for a hectic few years when they were school-aged. The couple also run M J Barrowcliffe Shearing together as well as have a 500 acre property that they run drystock on.

Brenda Barrowcliffe spends most of her summer weekends away in her horsefloat on treks.

The couple are up at about 4:30am in the busy shearing season. Barrowcliffe manages all the wages, and often takes a Starlink dish and her laptop on treks, and she is also the chef, making the gang lunches and morning tea.

They usually have up to 40 staff in peak season and drop down to about 13 on off-seasons. She was pleased to see wool prices coming up and thought it was a healthy outlook for the sector after years of forestry conversions.

Barrowcliffe didn’t ride much while the kids were in primary school, but once they caught Mark’s motorbike fever, Barrowcliffe decided it was time to get back to her own hobby. She now has four horses - although her oldest one Mischief lives a pampered life in the paddock at just over 30 years old.

With several friends also keen on riding, she started a riding group called Giddy Up Let’s Go, which quickly developed into organising her trek across their farm and neighbouring properties.

The trek is $260 for the weekend and is fully catered with evenings spent listening to local bands and stepping out in your best fancy dress. She said getting donations from community businesses was getting hard over the last couple of years, but they still had good support from community individuals and PGG Wrightson.

“When you’ve been trekking for as long as I have, you know lots of people and that’s what I like about it. It’s not just about the horses, it’s about meeting people.”

These days, she’s away on treks almost every weekend over the summer, living out of her float that has its own shower area.