Burilda Park's Alexandria Cragg honoured to receive ALIBI award

What started as a means to pay her way through university has grown into a successful multi-faceted business for Alexandria Cragg and her husband Leigh.

With Ms Cragg doing a lot of work behind the scenes of the business, receiving an Australian Ladies in Business Initiative (ALIBI) award was extremely encouraging.

Being nominated in four categories, Ms Cragg was named the winner of the regional business of the year award.

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"It was really nice to be recognised for the role that I play, I do a lot of behind the scenes stuff, Leigh is the front man," she said.

"To be recognised for the marketing and the PR side of things and the events that I do was really cool, and to be in a room of women and seeing what role all of those women played in their businesses.

"A lot of them didn't have partners as well. So I'm one half of our business, but a lot of them were just doing everything by themselves which was really cool as well."

While studying at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, Ms Cragg began retraining retired race horses and giving them a new avenue to embark on.

Over time the business grew, and with the help of Mr Cragg they began taking on more horses and delving into other breeds, including quarter horses.

The couple eventually bought a property near Oberon and that was the official start of Burilda Park Equine.

But Ms Cragg soon realised the property had a lot more potential than just being an equine farm, and began to investigate further into other business ideas.

The Burilda Park name now encompasses Airbnb services as well as weddings and events, in addition to the equine side of the business.

It is the work that Ms Cragg has done to get all aspects of the business off the ground that she was awarded for at the ALIBI gala night. An honour she doesn't take lightly.

"It's given me a push to create more events at our place and see how many more opportunities there are to generate more interest from the community that we've already got, in regards to AirBnB stays, hens weekends, weddings," Ms Cragg said.

"And I've got a few other ideas that I'm toying with to see how much we can actually get out of our property so that the most people can enjoy it.

"We are working toward an open day for our weddings and the events side of the business.

"We've got a little bit more construction to go on and then we'll be fully fledged and ready to go forward for lots of different events in the barn."

With the ALIBI awards night bringing business women from across the country together, Ms Cragg said she enjoyed listening to everyone's different success stories and networking with like-minded people.

One thing she noticed was that a lot of regional businesses had been named finalists, which she thought was terrific to see.

"The judging panel must have been able to see how much more effort you have to go to, to get a business off the ground when you don't live in a CBD," she said.

Ms Cragg spends a lot of time communicating with the Burilda Park community via the business's social media platforms; burildapark_equine and burildapark_events, and she said they are a great way to keep up to date with future projects, events and availabilities.

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