Meet The 'Woman From Snowy River'

This mum has an extraordinary gift for taming our beloved brumbies

Iky Foustok is a busy single mum of four. She’s also a horse whisperer, who has devoted her life to saving retired racehorses and wild brumbies who would otherwise be facing a bleak future.

“I was horse-mad as a baby and starting riding trackwork when I was 13 years old,” explains Iky, who came to Australia from the UK after falling in love with an Aussie.

Her love affair with horses began after her parents fled war-torn Lebanon in 1975. She moved to the UK and they started a stud at Newmarket. Iky gained her amateur jockey licence at 16, and her training licence at 22.

When she moved to Australia, she and her then-husband settled in Gloucester. They started farming and raising their four children, Ryan, 16, Sienna, 13, and eight-year-old twins Ava and Mason, but it wasn’t long before Iky began to yearn for her fourfooted friends. “I was having withdrawals from horses, so I started rescuing racehorses,” she says.

It didn’t take long for Iky, 44, to be hooked on her new mission. She describes the sheer joy of seeing a thoroughbred who has spent much of its racing life in a small stable or paddock taste freedom for the first time.