I wolf down the last of my Weetabix (“Have YOU Had YOUR Weetabix?”) then go to my room to pull on some Levi’s and the old black motorcycle boots I’ve brought for riding. I hadn’t tried on the combination before I’d left home, so it’s only now I realize how difficult it is to get the boots on over thick hiking socks and the pegged Levis. As I struggle to dress myself I hear Charlie and Peter and Marlee walk past my door and go outside.
“All set, Dave?” Peter calls out.
“Coming!” I reply, gathering my gloves, my hat, and my second boot, which for the moment has the upper hand in our struggle. I expect to dump everything in the back of the Toyota and sort it out on the brief drive down to the corral, but as I step outside Charlie calls for me to collect my day’s saddle from the feed room, where eight Western-style saddles hang from the wall. One sits propped against the door frame. I hoist the bulky leather item awkwardly.
With one foot in stockings I head towards the Toyota, dropping articles along the way. I am, yet again, acutely aware of how amateurish I must appear.
“First thing Dave, put your hat on your head.” Peter is walking from the vehicle to help me. “Put your gloves, if you think you need ‘em, in your pocket. And carry the saddle like this…”
Peter lifts the saddle so it rests on his shoulder and outstretched arm. I’d been carrying it like a big sister might tote her brother, hugging it against my belly, my back arched and shoulders hunched to keep from stepping on the dangling straps.
“Don’t come to breakfast until you’re ready to go out,” Charlie adds.
I kick myself for having to be told such elementary things, realizing what I’ll need at Bullo even more than these folks advice is their sensibility.
I join Danielle and Peter in the back of the pickup, standing among the five saddles. Danielle’s dog Kelly, Peter’s Spike, and old Banjo have followed us outside and are longingly waiting for an invitation to join the expedition. Peter whistles and the little fox terrier springs into the bed of the truck. Kelly eagerly follows, but when Banjo leaps he doesn’t get a good jump. His front paws barely hook onto the edge of the tailgate and for a moment he reminds me of myself clinging onto that same tailgate the day before. Banjo falls back to the ground and watches as we drive off.
A brief ride brings us to the corral. It’s a more complicated construction than I’d have imagined. The main pen opens to the laneway funneling in from the adjoining pasture. Opposite the laneway gate, a six foot high gate opens into a small round pen. This pen has four other gates which open onto smaller pens, each half the size of the main yard, large enough for perhaps several dozen stock animals. Various other gates, now closed, allow for movement between these sub-yards.
The entire structure is designed such that one animal at a time moves from the main yard, into the tiny round yard, and from there into an appropriate pen. The process of sorting a large group of animals into smaller groups is called drafting, and is a foundational component of station work. The tiny round corral – properly, the drafting yard — is built of solid wooden posts eight to ten feet apart, six feet tall, the distance between spanned by hand-hewn horizontal rails. The grayed wood is dry and lifeless, all vitality chased out by years in the driving sun. Inside the yards, the hardtack outback ground has become soft and sandy, having been powdered by tens of thousands of brute feet over the years. The overall impression is one of both age and purpose, a hand-wrought and well-worn functionality.
Danielle’s small mob of horses is milling in the main pen when we arrive. The rising sun is emitting the first light of dawn, a trickle over the levy soon to burst open with a deluge of sunshine. Even at this early hour the light has a palpable clarity to it, scattering greyscale shadows all about the rustic scene. The horses huff and frisk in their enclosure, reminding us of an independence beyond their role in our day’s drama.
I’ve at last managed to pull my second boot on, then draw my pants leg tightly over the tall leather. The four of us hop out of the truck, grab our saddles, and set them on the top rail of the main yard. Peter carries Danielle’s alongside his own, the large load stretched out like a goliath football player’s shoulder pads along his arms, an apocalyptic figure in the muddled morning light.
We shimmy between the two lowest rails of the yard then circle slowly behind the milling horses. Danielle has opened or closed the various gates in such a way that as we slowly press forward the horses move in from pen to pen until they stand crowded in a single small pen.
“Dave, this is your saddle.” Danielle points out several characteristics of one particular saddle using technical terminology unfamiliar to me. I notice it has an oilier sheen than the others. I tell myself I’ll recognize it by that quality.
“When you approach your horse, hold your bridal like this.” She drapes the strappy mouth guide over and under her fingers, ending up with a leather and metal Cat’s Cradle swirling around both her strong hands.
“Okaaaay,” I say, studying Danielle’s example. With a few patient instructions from the capable lass I prep the bridal correctly.
“Come at your horse from the front. Silibark is a good stock horse, but no horse likes quick movements. Reach out slowly and circle his neck with the reins. Watch how we do it. Move the bit up to his mouth then reach behind and grab this second halter strap. Then buckle the neck strap.”
“Does it need to be real tight?”
“Oh, not too tight. You should be able to slip two fingers easily under it.”
My Horsemanship 101 tutorial concluded, I advance with the others to the forcing pen.
Charlie catches my eye and gestures. “Dave, you take this gate. Open it when I tell you.” He’s referring to one of the gates leading from the round yard into the main receiving yard.
Danielle, Marlee, and Peter, stand behind various rails, looking into the round yard. Charlie opens the gate between the round yard and the forcing pen. As he does so the horses push against each other at the opposite end of the small enclosure.
The light has increased to a pale blue, casting our efforts into an eerie monochrome aura, the surreal diffuse world of the scuba diver. Half the horses remain dark silhouettes to my eyes, but the nearer beasts glow with a ghostly whiteness. They’re large, larger than I remember horses being, and move with a masculine authority as they retreat from Charlie’s approach.
Suddenly, a large gray with a black mane and dark eyes breaks from the rest and, head down and legs pumping, surges into the tiny round yard. Charlie quickly steps to block the rest of the animals and sharply swings the gate closed.
The big gray draws up abruptly when he sees that the opposite gate—the one at which I’m stationed—is closed. Head held high, nostrils flaring, ears alert, it stomps vigorously around the small enclosure.
“Rocket!” Marlee addresses the considerable beast. She then slips between two rails and joins the horse in the tiny yard.
“Rocket,” She repeats, this time more gently. The big horse cocks an ear her way and casts its ebony eyes upon her, but keeps high-stepping forcefully in a circle. Marlee steps directly in front of the horse. It halts its motions with a whinny and a shiver. Marlee stares directly into its face, cooing “Here, big boy…attaboy…easy now, big fella…”
The horse pauses, then shifts its attention away from the young woman, who immediately steps back into its line of sight. I watch in the dim light as Marlee gently extends her hand to the animal, loops her reigns around its neck, and slips the bit into its mouth.
“David, open up!” comes the hushed command. I swing my gate wide. Marlee walks the impressive animal past me to where the saddles sit. As she passes, I’m frozen by her horse’s wide black eyes and powerful musculature and hope my mount is, in some significant measure, very, very, different.
“Close the bloody gate!” The authority of the voice immediately moves my nervous musings to the back of my mind. With a start I swing the gate closed.
The second animal to break past Charlie is much smaller. It has a light brown color and a more subdued demeanor.
“David!” I’m happy to hear this relatively docile being is to be mine. I gather my bridle and stoop to enter the round yard.
“No, drongo, open the gate! That mongrel’s not a stock horse!”
Danielle is laughing as she pictures me riding this misshapen nag on the muster. I swing the gate open and my dream mount scampers through.
The next animal out is a beautiful chestnut horse, slender with an elegant bearing.
“That’s Fleetfoot, eh?” Peter asks. When Danielle indicates this is indeed Peter’s horse my lithe friend enters the round yard and approaches his horse with a loose-jointed assurance.
“All right, you mongrel. Stand up now, will ya…” Peter coos. He uses the same broad smile and easy charm I’d grown so quickly familiar with on this dignified horse, and within a minute he has the bridle secured around its head and is leading it past me. He winks as he passes.
“No worries, mate,” he assures me. “You’ve just gotta show it who’s the boss.” I wonder whether pretending to be the boss will suffice.
Charlie’s horse follows, another large gray named Spartan, larger if more docile than Rocket. Danielle applies the bridle, then hands the reins to Charlie, who joins Peter and Marlee.
About eight horses remain in the forcing pen. With some accurate gate-keeping Danielle and I reduce that number to two — one in the forcing pen, and one in the round yard. Both are large and, again, gray.
“This is Blue Bob,” says Danielle, gesturing to the horse trotting around the round yard. “That’s Silibark in there,” indicating with a nod the animal standing quietly at the far end of the forcing pen.
“I’ll put my bridle on, then give you a hand with Silly.”
With that soft manner I’d seen flashes of she approaches her horse and quickly has it bridled. She loops her reigns loosely around a rail and together we enter the forcing pen.
“Hey Silly, hey sweetheart,” she continues in a softly reassuring tone, “you’re going to have a new rider today. Yes you are. He’s going to be real nice to you too, yes.” She puts her hand on the strong animal’s neck and addresses me without looking away from the horse.
“Okay, come forward. Steady now. Hold the bridle like I showed you.” I reach out and stroke the animal’s meaty neck. Its skin tightens and shivers, accompanied by a strong exhalation from its rubbery nostrils.
“See, he’s okay,” she says to me — nope, to the horse — then, to me, “now loop the reins around his neck. Keep your hands close to his neck! Okay, give him his bit.”
I touch the metal device against the horses teeth. With coal black eyes upon me he parts his jaws; I reach high above his mane, seize the top halter strap and draw the bridle on fully. The metal clanks against his teeth as he adjusts the intruder with his tongue.
“Doesn’t that bother him?” I ask.
“No, not really. Horses have a gap in their teeth towards the back of their mouths. That’s where the bit sits.” She draws back the horse’s gums and I see the space between the front and rear teeth in which the bit rests.
“The bridle fits correctly when you see these two wrinkles in his gums,” she says, referring to the loose skin around Silibark’s jowls.
“Let’s go!” Charlie’s noticed our digression from the matter at hand, however brief. Danielle and I join as Charlie begins to lay out the morning’s game plan.
“We’ll start along the River Paddock fence, chase all the horses out of that corner and across the gully. You two get settled quickly,” the big man indicates Dan and I, “Go along Camp Paddock to clear the scrub, then wait on the bush fence where you can stop anything running from us from continuing on into that stuff. Dave, you do exactly what Danielle says; don’t go running off on your own.”
“Okay Charlie, I won’t — if I have anything to say about it.” The laughter does little to ease my tension. These guys are so comfortable, so professional upon their spirited horses. Do they have any idea how little experience I have?
As I saddle my horse with Danielle’s help I’m coming to terms with just how substantial this animal is. His great belly raises and lowers in easy rhythm as I fasten the girth strap (after inspecting it for burrs or other potential irritants). I move warily among its limbs, thick and menacing in their potential. I have for years ridden street-racing motorcycles back home, machines ballyhooed for their awesome horsepower, but none of that triple-digit horsepower has ever seemed as fearsome or potentially dangerous as the enigmatic one-horse critter now towering over me, cool and imperious, as I fasten the trifling human accouterments around its girth.
Finally, with a heave and a swing, I sit atop a genuine Australian stock horse, and I begin moving across the landscape with these trusting people.
I feel reasonably solid at the start. Danielle and I saunter away from the yard, across a small field littered with industrial junk, into a stand of slender trees thick with brittle branches. I sense the creature’s living will beneath me. It’s a disconcerting sensation being astride a conveyance with a mind of its own, and the insecurity adds another layer of excitement to the archetypal moment. With my Acubra hat jammed on my head and my boots lodged in the stirrups, a recognition seizes me—an identification with the Western hardies I’ve seen my entire life from the passive side of the movie screen. Now I’m inside the drama, and it feels both just right and entirely alien.
Though the sun is still not yet up I find myself squinting like the Marlboro Man, as if some inner mechanism has taken over to complete the picture. I imagine the same phenomena may take place if I was to climb into the crow’s nest on a sailing ship; that I’d shade my eyes with one hand while pointing with the other to some object in the distance. I’d likely be as close then to a “Land ho!” as I was now to a “Yee-haw!”. I feel comfortable, iconic, maybe just a bit heroic.
Silibark rolls as he moves; I roll along with his cadence.
“Keep your toes forward,” Danielle instructs, “and hang on with your calves and thighs, not your hands. Keep the reins just loose enough so they don’t tug as he moves his head, but if they’re too slack you won’t have any control. When you turn, lay the opposite rein against his neck and give a little kick with your opposite foot. Silly is responsive; keep your heels away from his flanks unless you really want to go. All right?”
I nod.
“Let’s go!” she says.
Danielle and I trot into the woody scrub, where immediately my thin veneer of competence disintegrates. The trees have grown tall and skinny in their competition for sunlight. None are more than five inches wide at the base yet shoot several yards above our heads. Their bushy crowns intercept almost all the sun’s rays, leaving little sustenance for undergrowth. All the lower branches—twigs really—have grown only briefly before dying. In their dried state they comprise a brittle network of spiky growth.
Cattle and horses have over time broken off most of these branches as they meander in the shade, leaving the ground strewn with deadwood, but everything above the height of a horse’s head remains. It is this jumble of tinder I’m battling as I move through the scrub.
Most of the spiny limbs break off as I press against them, carried forward by my relatively unhindered steed. Particularly stout specimens don’t snap immediately, pushing me back in my saddle as they scrape along my chest, face, or shoulders. Each time I’m pushed back I inadvertently tighten Silibark’s reins and he turns one way or the other. So while I aspire to pick my way carefully, seeking a path of least resistance, constant unintended turns take me invariably into another ugly knot of dead wood.
I quickly discover a second hazard of that bewitched forest. The dead limbs are home to communities of spiders, dark and long-legged, denizens whose ideal condo spinning location, it would seem, coincides with the altitude of my face. Several times in the first few minutes I’m bent backwards, only to rebound face-first into a village of eight-legged insectivores.
So my introduction to station work becomes that of a bewildered tree surgeon, wandering pointlessly among exploding bark and twigs while wearing a silvery shroud of spider web. I’ve seen no stray horses—the rounding up of whom is supposed to be the point of my presence, and I’ve managed to lose sight of Danielle. I call out her name. A moment after her response I spy her, ducking and weaving, apparently in a state similar to my own. Spider webs cover her hat, with bits of bark and wood sticking to the webs, her skin, and her clothes.
“Now you see why they put us on this detail,” she says in an oppressed tone. At nineteen Danielle was, before my arrival, low man on a well-established totem pole. Though my presence changed the specifics, the basic dynamics remain and in the following months she and I would do our share of unpleasant jobs together.
The sun is fully above the horizon now, finding us in fits and starts as we make our way through the clingy maze. Before long I’m hot and uncomfortable in my tight clothing. We reorient ourselves to the fence line, then followed a parallel path about seventy yards from the simple wire structure. The sticks and twigs continue unabated, but by ducking down to the level of Silly’s head I find I’m able to avoid many of them.
The undergrowth proves helpful to our mission in one way, actually; the noise we’re making passing through scares any livestock away from us and out into the open.
After about ten minutes of following the fence line, a clearing appears ahead of us. This turns out to be the barbed wire fence bordering Bull Rush on the south. The fence line has been bulldozed clear along its entire length, and along this narrow clearing stand three small dark brown horses. Danielle sends me back into the scrub to ride parallel to her as she pushes the three back up the fence line a quarter mile to the broad open meadow that comprises most of Bull Rush paddock.
My job is to cut the horses off should they bolt into the scrub; I seriously doubt my ability to navigate quickly enough through the internecine vegetation to do so but, as Danielle foresees, my presence inside the tree line is enough to keep the young mares from leaving the fence.
Just before we emerge onto the plain I see a great black bull off to my left. He’s eyeing me and swishing his tail in a menacing fashion. It occurs to me that I’m lucky I don’t have to milk him.
Upon reaching open ground our three charges scamper away, and as my eyes rise to follow them a picture postcard landscape reveals itself to me. In the near distance covering perhaps three acres stands a shallow swamp, nurturing a lime-green grass lighter and more vivid than the grass extending from there to the horizon. As the horses splash through the water a flock of long-legged brolga cranes—the state bird of Queensland—extend their impressive gray wings and fly a short distance.
Far off to the left a line of short trees marks a creek bed. The only things riding upon the intervening ocean of grass are several independent foals, and a white dirt road snaking towards some low hills off to the right.
As my eyes became adjusted to the scale, I spy a large metal object reflecting the warm morning light. It is at least two miles away. I have no way of knowing it then, but I was getting my first look at a water tank to which I was to spend many hours running a water line in the coming months.
Suddenly my awareness shifts to a commotion just to the left of this object. A mass of animals moves along a line perpendicular to Danielle and me, kicking up a cloud of dust as they bustle along.
“Look!” I call to Danielle, “what’s that?”
“That’s what we’re here to intercept. All those horses have been rounded up by Charlie and Peter and Marlee.”
“Are they still chasing them?” I wonder.
“No, these crazy mongrels–as soon as a few start running they all take off along the fence. That fence they’re on now stops at this one here,” she says, motioning to the barbed wire gate several dozen yards off to our right, “so they’ll turn when they hit it and run towards us. Our job is to be seen by them so they don’t all go straight into the scrub we’ve just cleared. We’ll peel them off the fence, then all of us will surround them in the flat.”
Ok; that sounds simple enough.
Things became considerably less simple as the herd thunders closer. At the lead a large black gelding charges, its mane flowing with the rhythm of its stride. Behind him a great pied mob stretches out along the fence, perhaps one hundred in all, advancing towards us with all the impetus of a torpedo. As they near, Danielle moves stealthily towards them along the fence line. I stay back about thirty yards off the fence line in the short grass. Silibark’s ears are up and rotated towards his oncoming brothers and sisters. He seems agitated, restless, a boy passing the local ball field on his way to church.
And sure enough as the juggernaut catches sight of us they veer away from the fence into the open grass. They thunder by, a hundred feet in front of me, a mighty cavalcade of brute power and beauty that transfixes me with their fearsome determination and surging equine grace. The thought of containing this force of nature seems, in the moment, beyond possibility.
I’m jolted from my bedazzlement by Danielle, who speeds past, yelling, “Let’s go! They’re heading for the scrub!”
The leaders of the pack are indeed making for that intractable tangle of real estate we’d just recently cleared. Danielle cuts an angle to head them off; I rein hard to the left to follow her. In my excitement I kick Silibark more vigorously than prudent, for, primed as he is, he takes off with a powerful lurch.
Now, my excursions on the urban ponies of Griffith Park had introduced me to the concept of posting—that method of rising in the saddle which evens out the bouncy gate of a trotting horse. I didn’t realize as I hurried to cut off the mob that I’d already accelerated well past a trot into a fast canter, however. I raise and lower myself with the best intent, only to have the horse meet my rear end on each cycle with an indelicate whack. Through some original amalgam of break dancing and bronc busting I manage to avoid being ejected.
Scared and out of control I rein in Silibark; he’s eager to run and speeds up again as soon as I relax my pull. Hoping to catch up with Danielle I allow Silibark to run, trying to feel the animal’s natural motion and accommodate myself to it. After several bumpy moments I discover if I sit well back in the saddle and leaned forwards I can ride the waves of its cadence. What an exhilarating moment it is, speeding along faster than I’d ever been on a horse, through the wide-open outback, pursuing a fulminating phalanx of half wild brumbies!
Danielle reaches the edge of the scrub before the speeding leaders and they again turn away from her towards the open field. The formation takes a giant U-turn and heads back the direction from which they’d come. As I bounce along I see Charlie, Marlee, and Peter in position to head off the mob and, I assume, slow them up so we can encircle them. Instead the three riders bolt in tight formation towards the lead group, coming upon it from the right and turning it towards the left. By doing so the horses are channeled into a laneway which funnels into the drafting yard where we’d begun our day.
The leaders troop into the laneway ahead of their malleable compatriots, followed in the rear by us five riders, Danielle and I having joined the other three. I’m exhilarated, both by the complete success of the mission and by my dash alongside the thundering herd. Danielle and the others are smiling too. The morning has been an easily gained and unqualified success.
Barking in Nutwood 