HORSES

I quite like horses but I don’t love horses as many people do. My one and only attendance at a horse race only came about one day as I set out to go to the football at Windy Hill. As I went, I met a friend from work while waiting for a tram at the end of Puckle St, Moonee Ponds, and he was going to Moonee Valley to the races, so I went with him. Now this would hardly be the case if I loved horses.
I was surprised to learn that the Red Indians only had horses in the later days after the Mexicans left some there after one of their wars; I was under the impression that they had horses in the days of antiquity.

As I’ve been “mining the memories” it took me somewhat by surprise that my experience was about opposite to the Red Indians. Horses were an integral part of my first 15 years and practically no part at all since.
Living on a Mallee wheat and sheep farm, horses were a vital part of many operations. We had two teams of heavy draught horses along with the necessary hacks for riding and others for buggies, gigs and trailers.
We had state of the art pioneer stables, long and large hollow logs, split in half, lengthways for feed troughs.
The horses pulled anything that needed pulling, and on a wheat farm, lots of things had to be pulled, ploughs, seeders, harrows, binders, wagons, scoops, dead trees for fire wood, as well as gigs and such.

My mother was an Ellis, and it was said that the Ellis’s always had smart rigs and horses.
Great Grandfather Ellis never caught the gold fever but earned a modest but more reliable living as a teamster.
Even in my early visits to Melbourne there seemed to be almost as many horse drawn vehicles as motorized transport.

We went to school in a horse and buggy, the roof of the buggy had been torn off by a low branch in earlier days by my older brothers so we felt the sun and the rain, we would even take turns run behind to get warmed up on the frosty mornings.
I’ve been tipped out of buggies in runaways, swept off the horses by branches, bitten, trodden on ,knocked down, urinated on ,defecated on by horses. The latter happened when the droughts broke and the green grass sprang up; behind a horse in a small gig was not a good place in such times.
I’ve also had packed lunches stolen and eaten by horses more than once or twice.
Did I mention that I do quite like horses?
I will never forget the traumatic day when my father was knocked over by a heat crazed runaway Clysdale, knocked over is not quite the term, he did two or three circles in the air before hitting the ground. He had a lot of trouble making the haystacks that year using just one arm on the pitchfork. We could get the hay up to him but lacked the expertise needed to make the stack.
We also used a bag loader for the wheat bags to get them up on the wagon, a three bushel bag of wheat ways about 180 pounds, earlier than that the bags were 4 bushels. This bag loader was pulled up by a horse, my job was to lead the horse forwards, thus raising the bag up in an arc to my dad on the wagon, reaching him at about chest height, and then I would have to back the horse back to the starting position for the next bag.
This happened over 100 times each load, and being a young person with little stick ability or attention to detail, the bag would sometimes be delivered with a bit of a jolt; of course this could result in my dad being almost knocked over backwards by the force of the heavy bag. Who would work with kids?

During the early years of the Second World War all our heavy horses were sold at the Dandenong market.
I think my dad was a little bit sad, and my brother Murray even sadder. I can’t recall losing any sleep over it myself. The horses probably ended up in tins.
I sometimes feel that I have lived in two different worlds in one life time


Photos

PetaSue and the Blue Bando
Nugget,our "School" horse
Sunshine Ranch Queensland
Horses and machinery, harvesting.
Horses and buggy at Quambatook before my time
Horses and wagon
Harvesting at Quambatook c1920