The New Ringer by Roland Breckwoldt

Author:Roland Breckwoldt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

We were without curiosity as to what transpired in the heads of the horses we rode. We could not tell what was going on in the minds of our colleagues and they were the same species as us, so how on earth would it be possible to know what transpired in the mind of your horse? It was the same way we judged each other: at face value. We considered our horse’s heads about as much as we peered into each other’s heads, but we all got along fine except for the odd argument or two. And that was no different with our horses.

At the same time, any sign of cruelty was sanctioned and a ringer being hard on his horse would see him cautioned. One of those hardnesses might be jerking the horse’s mouth if it made a wrong turn or did not appear capable of making a sharp turn. Another frowned upon habit was using a stick to make your horse go if it was exhausted—‘knocked up’, as we described it. Using a slap of the reins was acceptable, but anything more than that elevated it to comment level. There were never clear criteria established as to what level of encouragement entered the ‘hard on a horse’ category, but you were expected to know it and feel it when a horse could give no more.

A bit of history followed every working horse from the time it was freshly broken in. Words of caution might be offered based on the past behaviour of a horse, but this was always just a warning rather than the description of an unmalleable trait. The horse might behave in a diverse way either because you did something differently or because it was one year older now and behaved differently. One of the ringers who had been on the station long enough to observe the horse just allocated to your team might say, ‘Watch out when you’re saddling Flight, that bastard will cow kick you while you’re doing up the girth.’

It was not long after Ken became head stockman that we camped at the Fourteen Mile Camp in the Bullock Paddock to get the second lot of 1200 bullocks ready for the drover Logan Booth. It had taken us three days to gather up the required number of bullocks, and it was going to take us another three days to quieten them down sufficiently to hand over to Logan and his team of two.

The bullocks were being tailed out, feeding about a kilometre from the camp, and I went back in for lunch and to change horses. After a lunch of cold corned beef and pickles on warm damper and a pannikin of black tea, I walked over to the yards; Strawberry had been held for me there along with the other dinner horses. My riding had improved, but I was frustrated that I was never able to move Strawberry beyond a slow walk to a trot at best. I reckoned a pair of spurs might induce a more sprightly attitude from him.

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