Historical Cavalry Re-enactment in New Zealand

The Order of the Boar was formed by Callum Forbes in the early 1990's and it started doing mounted skill-at-arms displays as part of the Upper Hutt Summer Carnival.

In 1998 we performed our first jousting display at the Carnival. In 1999, we hosted Rod Walker from Australia at our first international jousting tournament which also featured Callum and fellow New Zealand jouster Phillip Pedersen. Rod won the tournament which was the beginning of a very successful jousting career for him.

From 1999 we also started jousting at other public events. By 2003 we were big enough to organise and host our own event at Harcourt Park in Upper Hutt. This event featured 6 jousters - 2 each from Australia, England and New Zealand. Rod won this inaugural event with Callum as runner up.

From 2003 to 2015 we hosted 8 International Tournaments at Harcourt Park each of which attracted 8 to 12 jousters from around the world. We quickly built up the event into an internationally well known one which also brought weekend crowds of 8,000 to 10,000 people to each one.

From 1999 onward, Order of the Boar jousters have also competed internationally at many similar events in Australia, Canada, USA and Europe.

In New Zealand we have appeared at many other major events. We have perfomed at the opening game for the Canterbury Crusaders rugby team at the old Jade Stadium, the Omaka Airshow in Blenheim and at the Auckland 3-Day Event as well as many other high profile events around the country.

After 2015 things slowed down a bit for us as many of our horses were getting older and we had to either reduce their workload or retire them. Giving our horses the great retirement that they deserved was the major priority for us at the time, and prevented us from bringing on new horses to train. Covid-19 also had a huge impact on public displays so we remained inactive (apart from regular training at home with our remaining horses) until 2022 when we appeared at Baldrick's Big Day Out in Stratford which had been revitalised with the help of Order of the Boar jouster Emily Perrin. 

From 2022 we have slowly been able to rebuild our team with some new horses. Many of our team members also moved away or retired from jousting but we have also been able to recruit new people to replace some of them.

Now in early 2025 we are back up and running again albeit with a smaller number of horses and riders then we had in our Harcourt Part era which was the golden era for jousting in New Zealand. However, we are working hard to create a new Golden Era!