Mulawa Arabian Stud is our premier sponsor for 2025, and we are honoured to share their history of their fifty-plus years breeding programme through TheArabianMagazine.Com.
In celebration of the incomparable contribution the Farrell family has made to the advancement of the Arabian breed over the course of half a century, both closer to home in Australasia as well as worldwide, we continue our journey back across the decades and discover the success of the modern Mulawa Arabian through the lens of each of the transformative chief sires whose invaluable genotypic and phenotypic contributions helped to create the instantly recognisable and universally admired ‘Mulawa type’ and ‘Mulawa style’ the global community so respects and appreciates today.
The Mulawa story continues with Arrival, the first of the Mulawa-bred stallions to stand as chief sire.
Pure Polish broodmatron supreme Euni (Bandos x Eunice) was the most celebrated mare at Mulawa in the 1980s, not only because she was incredibly beautiful and classically ‘old world’ in style, but most importantly because she had produced two chief sires for the fledgling programme, the result of which makes her the second most prevalent ancestress in the prestigious pedigrees of the modern Mulawa Arabians. While her in-utero bonus gift Vision left more progeny of consequence behind, her second son Arrival proved to be her most enduring within the Mulawa breeding population.
Elevated to chief sire status at three years of age after the tragic premature loss of his sire Ambition (Bask x Bint Ambara), Arrival was used selectively across the broad range of Mulawa dam lines for just 36 lifetime foals. Of all the enduringly influential sires meticulously incorporated into the essential genetics of the breeding programme, Arrival proved to be the invaluable bridge from the earliest years of ambitious pursuits to the bolder years of bloodline experimentation in the decades ahead. Arrival’s tenure as chief sire coincided with that of his maternal brother Vision (by Jamil), the result of which was a super concentration of Euni attributes in the Mulawa Arabian phenotype of this era. As the trailblazer for Mulawa-bred sires within the programme, his influence is still profoundly felt throughout the programme, and more recently, increasingly around the world.
While Ambition unfortunately did not live long enough to be mated to Karmaa (Kaborr x AN Marieta), Arrival proved to be a superlative replacement. Whereas Karmaa’s first foal and filly was sired by elder brother Vision, the future ‘Queen of Mulawa’ produced one of her most consequential foals, and her second filly, the following season with Arrival: Mulawa Aria. Undeniably ‘old Polish’ in type, colour and style, with a distinctly maternal silhouette, strong solid structure, a heavily fleabitten coat and an impulsively powerful trot, Aria who would bless the programme with five invaluable daughters by another sparingly used sire, Parkview Audacious (TS al Malik x Aliha Bint Nizr), whose progeny in turn would revolutionise the breed both at home and abroad.
The second of Aria’s daughters, Audacia, named in honour of her sire Parkview Audacious who was tragically lost at just five years of age, is now celebrated as one of the most prolific matrons ever to call Mulawa home. An Elite Aristocrat Dam of nine champion progeny, Audacia blessed the breed with eight sensational daughters, including Australian National Champion and Reserve Champion Mares MI Aphrodite (by Guiliano) and Amber MI (by WH Justice), respectively, as well as Australian National Silver Junior Champion Euforia MI (by Emerald J), now proudly on lease to Dubai Stud. Her universal acclaim, however, has been most justifiably earned as a result of her very first foal – international sire of significance Allegiance MI (by Magnum Forty Four). With a lifetime total of just over 100 foals at seventeen years of age, Allegiance MI has been unchallenged as the leading sire of national and international champions in Australia for most of the past decade. As Mulawa’s resident premier homebred chief sire, Allegiance, and his ever-expanding sphere of global influence, are a poignant bookend to the still evolving Mulawa story, the great-grandson of the original Mulawa-bred sire who initiated the positive trajectory more than four decades earlier.
A mainstay of the Mulawa open days during the heyday on the industry in the 1980s and 1990s, Arrival would often perform under saddle with Rodney Brown. Always cool, calm, and collected, and incredibly comfortable in his own skin, Arrival would amaze the attendees with his inherent athletic ability as well as with his consummate composure, abiding every single improbable antic Rodney would dream up, including cracking the stock-whip while standing in the saddle – a perpetual crowd-pleaser.
Most notably, the cross of Ambition with Euni combined the incomparable genetic contribution of full siblings Bask and Bandola (Witraż x Balalajka), unquestionably two of the most profoundly consequential horses ever to be bred in Poland, endowing Arrival with a unique concentration of linebred excellence. This intensely linebred heritage to both Witraż (Ofir x Makata) and Amurath Sahib (35 Amurath II x Sahiba) was further magnified with two essential crosses to breed pillar Comet (Abu Afas x Iwonka III), the other Polish super sire most closely identified with the foundation Mulawa type, all of which made Arrival a reliably prepotent sire of the classic Polish style so admired by the Farrell family.
Like Ambition, Arrival is celebrated as a reliable source of correct conformation, substance and strength, abundant athleticism and kind, engagingly intelligent and trainable dispositions, in combination with the aristocratic elegance, smooth harmonious design, classic desert dryness, and extra length of rein and desirable shape through the throatlatch of his exemplary dam Euni.
