President Charles Kiehne, who has been in the local pony club since before he could walk, rates the club as "one of the greatest youth movements."

After a series of long distance rides with the club's large group of young riders through the morning, the club held a celebratory lunch. Both events, on Sunday June 30, were held on the grounds of three waters high country holidays near Bullock mountain.

At an event filled with somewhat scurrilous nostalgia, Kiehne told the Examiner his best yarn.

The club held an overnight event at the showgrounds, segregating their teenage students by gender, with the boys in the old pavilion and the girls in the new.

"Obviously, (being) 16-17 year olds (they said) sneak out and we'll met up! I can remember waking up and all these beds are empty and they've gone across to the girls dorm and they're gone," he said.

The adults, including his dad, then club president, set out on a full search with torches by foot and in cars.

"Dad used to take things very seriously," Charles laughed.

"I'm not saying I was one of them; I wouldn't like to comment on that."

No luck. The students were invisible.

"They were all up the trees!

"Here are these adults that should be (canny) and they didn't even look up.

"How someone didn't fall out of a tree in the pitch dark..."

Pony club builds lifetime relationships, he said. Some of the mates he possibly made at that encounter are still his friends, and he still runs into them at club meets even now.

He said one of their past zone chief instructors put it best.

"He rated it as one of the greatest youth movements; he even rated it higher than scouts and girl guides and I think he's right

"Because it teaches child not just about yourself, but you've got an animal to consider, you've got the comradeship and competitiveness but a lot of stuff happens off the horses.

"It's a movement that was galvanised back in the day when we didn't have x-box, we didn't have TV, we didn't have computer games - even indoor cricked and basketball didn't exist.

"I know myself, when I was growing up, all our stockwork was done with the horse; we didn't have bikes, we didn't have quads."

In the days of being slave to the horse, pony club was a necessity as well as a pastime.

"We can go within 100ks of Glen Innes and we can find top notch, if they're not instructors they're people that are so good at what they do that we don't have to pay instructors.

"We can get every discipline in the curriculum so to speak covered by brilliant people

Emmaville pony club also attended the Glen Innes birthday celebrations. The club was founded in 1954. Australia's national pony club association was founded in 1939.