THE HONOURABLE MAHLA PEARLMAN AO - PATRON
Mahla Pearlman is the former chief judge of the Land and Environment Court of NSW.  Prior to her elevation to the bench, she was a solicitor, in partnership with Sly and Weigall, a major firm in the city of Sydney.

She has had, however, a life outside the law.   In the early 70’s, she started dressage training at the Tibor Equestrian Centre at Kellyville.   Anne Honner was then in the “baby riders” class, too, and they became firm friends.  Mahla was, by force of geography, somewhat peripatetic.   She lived in Paddington, kept her horse in Turramurra, and trained at Kellyville.
Anne was always available to make this arrangement a little easier.  When Mahla had days off from her desk, she would bundle her horse into the float, and move into Anne’s house and stables.  They spent many an hour together riding all over the empty paddocks of Kellyville (alas, not empty any more) and training together on Anne’s arena.

When Karl Mikolka, at Anne’s invitation, arrived from the USA to give dressage clinics at Tibor, Anne mobilised her forces.  Mahla was yet again residing in Anne’s house.  She was required to take the earliest roster of the day, so that she could drive Mikolka, who was also staying with Anne, over to Tibor for the day’s lessons, and thus allow Anne the time to carry out some domestic chores and get the children off to school.  This was not always easy – a convivial dinner with Anne’s family the night before was not conducive to a really early start the next morning!

Reluctantly, Mahla put the law first, and ultimately retired from dressage competition. She now has a cattle property in the Hunter, and confines her half passes and extended trots to rounding up recalcitrant steers.  But she and Anne remained friends, and she was a proud admirer of Anne’s successes in the discipline of dressage riding.

CAROLYN LIEUTENANT – PATRON
In 1969 Carolyn had not long arrived from New Zealand to take up the position of working pupil at the newly opened Tibor Equestrian Centre near Kellyville.
 With its newly built outdoor arena and not long after an indoor as well, word had spread and many visitors came to view the facilities and inquire about lessons.
 One sunny morning a very pregnant lady arrived at the door where Carolyn was looking in the appointment book and without any preamble said "Book me in for a lesson in three weeks!" Carolyn was more than a little surprised, first with the advanced pregnancy and then with the abruptness of the request. After all, she had just come from NZ and was rather naive.
After she managed pick her jaw off the ground this lady introduced herself as Anne Honner and explained that she was on her way to hospital to have her baby and wanted to start lessons as soon as possible!
That was the beginning of Carolyn’s friendship with Anne, and with many other riders all connected by the love of horses and their desire to become dressage riders.
Some years later Anne had two horses at Grand Prix Level and asked Carolyn to ride one as she was too busy to do justice to two horses. The tables had now turned and Carolyn became Anne's pupil as she was trying to learn which buttons to press on Kings Creighton who was not an easy ride in his early days and Anne had some less than orthodox aids to master!  He had been known to buck Anne off in Medium canter on the diagonal in a test and the monkey strap was must, however Carolyn never managed to find the darn thing at the right time yet managed to survive several tests before they changed that movement.
“Even to this day some of Anne's favourite and forthright words of instruction ring in my ears!” Carolyn remembers.