Jamie Seccombe
Jamie grew up on his family’s 60,000 acre sheep and cattle property in the Muttaburra district, Queensland. One of four children that attended Distance Education, he was always a farm boy and enjoyed working with the animals.
Jamie’s Mum, Pam, was the person who introduced Jamie to competition horse sports and she accompanied him when he competed in the local Pony Club, shows, hacking and dressage events. As a teenager, Jamie became a keen polocrosse player and at age 19, he represented Queensland.
After attending Toowoomba Grammar for secondary school, he headed home for a year helping with the general stock work before attending Longreach College in 2006, completing his Diploma in Agriculture and enrolled himself in a Horse Education Course under John Arnold.
After college he spent a year with Michael Wilson in Gunnedah, breaking and training horses for Campdrafting and Challenges. This experience was invaluable as Michael introduced him to a different perspective to his horsemanship.
In 2009, he headed to Canada and USA, where he worked with Al Dunning. On his return home to improve his cattle handling skills, he spent a season contract mustering with Ben Hall – an experience he says was perfect to help hone his ability to read cattle.
He then spent four years working for cutting trainer Todd Graham. Todd recommended Jamie get his own horse to compete and he purchased ‘One Stylish Turpentine’. Together they won the $5,000 Novice Title and finaled in the NCHA Classic before he sold him to concentrate on younger horses. His big break came at the 2015 NCHA Futurity when he catch rode ‘Melodys Cat’ for Todd. He won the 1st Round and finaled at his first Futurity.
September 2016 saw Jamie take the invaluable information and knowledge Todd had imparted to him and he made the break and started training on his own. He started with 10 horses and it all just grew from there. He now trains out of James Speed’s property, “Goodliffe”, at Springsure Queensland, where he has in excess of 30 horses in work. He and his wife Ella, believe in hard work with early morning starts being the focus of the day. 3.45am sees them feeding up and working horses by 5am. A break in the heat of the day in summer sees them finish up after 7pm.
The long-term goals in the industry are of course to win a Futurity, but more importantly, Jamie strives to be successful and earn the respect of his peers. Longer term plans include owning his own cattle property and to keep training really good horses.