Kenzie Ross guides her pony Kenda Park Lionel the Cob round a drum in an Under-11 barrel race during the final rodeo of the Western Australian season at Brunswick, where she and Lionel placed third.
Photos / Trish Muir Photography
Kenzie Ross guides her pony Kenda Park Lionel the Cob round a drum in an Under-11 barrel race during the final rodeo of the Western Australian season at Brunswick, where she and Lionel placed third.
Photos / Trish Muir Photography
Tairāwhiti rodeo prowess is on show in Western Australia as a brother and sister turn heads with their exploits in the arena.
Hunter Ross, 13, and sister Kenzie, 8, are riding high in their specialist events heading into national competition.
Hunter is top of the Australian Bushmen’s Campdraft and Rodeo Association (ABCRA) standings in a 43-strong field for the junior steer ride for those in the 11-to-under-14 age group.
Hunter Ross gets a rough – but winning – ride from a steer at the final rodeo of the Western Australian season at Brunswick.
He has 90.5 points and the rider in second place has 90.33 – well ahead of the third-placed rider on 74.5pts.
Hunter already holds the Western Australian state title for the junior steer ride.
Need for speed . . . Hunter Ross gives his new Australian stockhorse Two Socks free rein in a barrel race at a rodeo in Brunswick, Western Australia.
Kenzie is fourth in the national U11 junior barrel race standings in a field of 50, and is second in the Western Australian standings.
The barrel race requires horse and rider to run a cloverleaf pattern around three preset barrels as fast as they can. Kenzie has been doing the run in 21 or 22 seconds.
She is also – under the full version of her name, Mackenzie – the Western Australian Rodeo Mini Princess for 2025. It is a role she filled for Western Australian Rodeo in 2023. She makes the first appearance of her new term at the Mogumber New Year’s Eve Rodeo.
The Rodeo Royalty Quest is held annually for the positions of queen, princess and mini princess. The rodeo royalty team’s responsibility is to represent rodeo with grace and be ambassadors for the sport. They feature in the “grand entry” that opens every rodeo, where mounted riders, many carrying flags, circle the arena and then lead the singing of the national anthem.
Candidates for the rodeo royalty team are judged on horsemanship, personality, appearance, knowledge and community spirit/fundraising.
Kenzie and Hunter will contest their rodeo events in the national finals series, which will be run at the Australian Equine and Livestock Events Centre in Tamworth, New South Wales, in late January as a feature of the famous Tamworth Country Music Festival.
For Hunter and Kenzie, this is their first season as full financial members of ABCRA.
Their sponsors – Hangaroa Landcruisers, producers of stationbred sporthorses – have a Tairāwhiti feel, and the siblings’ progress is closely followed by relatives on this side of the Tasman.
Hunter and Kenzie’s parents, Jake and Aria Ross (nee Taiapa), moved to Australia from Gisborne eight years ago. Jake oversees the stock operation of a mixed farm near Boddington, 120km southeast of Perth. Aria helps out on the farm and works in equine advertising, selling horses in Gisborne.
The land also provides a livelihood for Jake’s father, Gavin Ross, who farms just north of Tikitiki.
And in the rodeo arena, last-minute advice comes from an experienced rodeo campaigner, Rakai Barry, who hails from Ōpōtiki.
“He’s in the chutes with the steer riders,” Aria said.
“Rakai mentors the riders and shares a lot of knowledge. He’s ridden a lot of bulls.
