Hold onto your Stetsons, cowboys. Australia’s newest breakaway roping champion isn’t from the Down Under at all. She’s a Wyoming cowgirl from Rozet who not only rode off with the 2024 breakaway roping title, but did so in a blazing fast 1.69 seconds.
Blink and you might miss it, but that’s a new record for the Tamworth, Australian, arena, and that makes it one for the history books.
Shawn Robin Chape is the cowgirl, and she is originally from Rozet, Wyoming, near Gillette. She told Cowboy State Daily her win and the new record are the culmination of her rodeo career so far, one that came after a lifetime of striving for excellence on the back of a horse.
She credits a lot of people for helping her along the way, but most especially her deep Wyoming roots and an upbringing that put her in the saddle for almost as long as she can remember.
“My uncle Quentin and my dad and Shawn Marsh — and Shawn is actually my namesake, he’s who I was named after,” Chape said. “They all played a really big hand in helping me to develop my roping skills. There’s so many people who have helped me with my roping that I would be silly to try to start naming them all off, because I would forget someone who did something really great for me.”
Her grandfather Clark Reynolds, meanwhile, is still a well-known horse trainer in the Gillette area. That was yet another Wyoming experience that played a huge role in cultivating her talent.
“I was lucky — and probably as a young kid, I didn’t take in as much as I could have or should have or wish that I did — but I was definitely fortunate enough to just grow up in that environment,” she said. “And you learn a lot by just being there, riding on a day-to-day basis. Even when you think you’re not really learning anything, you really do still learn so much.”
Australian Rodeo Is Smaller, But Still Mighty
Chape’s win in the Australian Bushmen's Campdraft and Rodeo Association’s (ABCRA) national finals was all the sweeter because her mom had flown out for the finals to watch her daughter perform.
She was there in the stands, no doubt cheering the longest and loudest, as her daughter broke the arena record and rode her way to the top of breakaway ropers in Australia.
It was no easy feat, Chape said. While the Australia rodeo circuit is smaller, it’s mighty. Many of Chape’s competitors are, just like her, working cowgirls. They spend their time in the saddle, day-in, day-out. They are all experts in horsemanship and roping, and there aren’t many cowgirls in the world who could beat them.
“The top of each event is very competitive, and it’s really hard to win,” Chape said. “The girls here are really tough — and would be incredibly tough (in America) as well. Maybe there aren’t as many really good ones — but the top here is still quite competitive.”
Rodeo in Australia isn’t a lot different than in the United States, Chape said.
Australians even have some of the same bloodlines, thanks to importing semen for rodeo stock from the United States. But the rodeo circuit in Australia is more tightly knit and becomes like a second family, an aspect Chape particularly enjoys.
“It will run mostly on Saturdays and sometimes Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but everyone will compete on all of those days,” she said. “Where rodeo in America is very much a business. Rodeos will run for a week or two weeks, or however long. You might be up on a Tuesday, your friend might be up on a Wednesday, and your cousin will be up on a Friday, so no one ever sees each other. You’re passing each other on the interstate.”
Australia also has rodeo events practically every weekend of the year.
“We went to 32 rodeos last year, and the girl who won the all-around title, she went to 47,” Chape said. “So, when you think there’s 52 weeks in a year, 47 is quite a lot.”
Where Rodeos And Crocodiles Mix
After each rodeo, the family usually takes a little time to do something fun, like diving at the Great Barrier Reef or taking in a safari in crocodile country.
The crocodiles all live in the Northern Territory and are incredibly vicious, Chape said.
“There’s a crocodile farm, zoo-type thing where they’ll drive you around in a boat,” she said. “They have like chicken, you know chunks of dead chicken or whatever, hanging on these poles that they stick out into the lagoon.”
Crocodiles will jump up out of the water and bite down on the chunks with a loud crack that feels a bit like lightning on your heart.
“You can just hear their jaws snap,” Chape said. “And it just like echoes. It’s bone chilling really. You think, ‘I would not want to get grabbed ahold of by one of those things.”
Among her favorite rodeos are the series over Christmas break, which are all along the coast. That means days spent on the beaches between rodeos, relaxing in the sun, hearing the sound of waves chuffing and feeling sand between the toes.
There’s no snow in December. Rather there are summer temperatures. That’s been hard for Chape to get used to, she said. But maybe that little bit of beach time helps make up for that.
There’s another particularly interesting rodeo in the Central Coast area, where the arena is near an inlet to the ocean. That’s a spot where tourists can watch bull sharks feasting on fresh fish from the river. It’s quite an unusual sight, and possible only at those rare places where ocean meets up with fresh water.
“If you want to be a tourist, there’s lots of really cool things to look at here,” Chape said. “But I think that’s like America, too. If you want to be a tourist, there’s always lots of really cool things to look at there as well.”
Driving to and from rodeos, Australia has plenty of friendly kangaroos along the way, as well as emus, which are plentiful like deer, but are more like an ostrich — only smaller.
“There’s a lot of birds,” Chape added. “Lots of parrot-like cockatoos, and there’s like white and black cockatoos and little gray and pink ones they call Galahs. They’re really pretty and you see them in the trees all around.”
Shawn Chape competes in breakaway roping. (Courtesy Photo) 
Shawn Chape with her husband Glen and son Kyle. (Courtesy Photo) 
Shawn Chape and her husband Glen show off their medals after the 2024 nationals in Australia. Shawn Chape with her son Kyle ready to ride. (Courtesy Photo) 
Clark Reynolds with Kyle Chape out at the KC Ranch in Campbell County, Wyoming. (Courtesy Photo)
Where Cats Chase Deadly Brown Snakes
Chape met her husband Glen when she was attending school in Texas, where they were both on the rodeo circuit. Glen returned home to Australia to heal up after a rodeo wreck busted up his shoulder, and Chape followed him in 2013. They now live on a ranch in Coonabarabran, with what she describes as 400 cats and a critter known as Kyle, their 3-year-old son.
“It’s actually just five cats,” she says with grin. “But it feels like 400 sometimes because they’re everywhere.”
There’s also a Jack Russell terrier and seven working dogs, 25 head of horses, and one pony — plenty of pets to keep everyone busy.
Cats in Australia are pretty tough. That’s because they’re not just after mice. They’re also after big, brown, deadly poisonous snakes.
“The snakes here are super deadly,” Chape said. “There’s brown snakes and black snakes. I’ve never actually seen a live black snake, but their bellies are red and they’re super poisonous.”
Chape finds the brown snakes the more concerning of the two, because the ranch seems to have quite a lot of them lurking about, and this is why she has so many cats.
“The cats keep the mice away, so the snakes don’t really come around because there’s nothing for them to eat,” Chape said. “But I have seen the cats kill the snakes, too. And so that’s why we have the cats that we do, to keep the snakes at bay. Because we have a little boy who’s into everything, and we need to keep the snakes as far away as possible.”
Chape Is Already Riding For 2025
Chape’s not resting on her achievements. She’s already ridden in three rodeos for the 2025 season, in between day-in, day-out ranch work, where she trains horses — just like her grandfather and father before her.
“My grandfather was a really, really great horse trainer,” Chape said. “And the snaffle bit horses that he trained, people would come and buy them for rodeo horses because they were so well broke that they could just go to other disciplines.”
Snaffle bits are typically the softest of the soft, Chape said, and her grandfather was so good at training horses he has received national recognition from the National Reined Cow Horse Association.
“I’m not as good as they are, but I know what I’m looking for when I’m training on my horses,” she said. “I know the feel of things that I’m wanting them to do, and that’s a credit to my dad and my grandpa.”
She’s training eight horses right now and rides all eight every day. Some are rope horses and some barrel horses.
Once she feels a horse is trained and ready, she’ll then advertise it for sale. There’s always a new, young horse out in the pasture, ready to take its place.
“That’s sort of our second bit of income,” Chape said.
But it’s also helping her rodeo performance.
“I get to ride young horses and do some roping and all sorts of stuff,” she said, grinning behind dark shades that reflected a breezy hot summer day during her Facetime interview with Cowboy State Daily. “Just general horsemanship, which helps me be a better rider. It definitely does help having your butt in the saddle all the time.”
Chape doesn’t really mind at all that horses are both the hobby and the job. It’s what she signed up for when she moved to the Land Down Under with her husband, Glen, where she’s making all of her Wyoming cowgirl dreams come true.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
