Author Description

The first horse set foot in Australia on 30 January 1788, one of seven aboard the First Fleet's Lady Penrhyn, which also carried a cargo of female convicts. The horses were breeding stock, not work horses, and in the early, struggling days, the people of the colony of New South Wales went on foot: settlers, soldiers, explorers - even bushrangers. Then, as horse stocks built up and improved, came the great change. Horses carried explorers, outriders of a civilisation which would dispossess the original inhabitants of the continent. Horses carried some explorers to their doom and some explorers ate their horses in a desperate attempt to survive. Horses carried Aboriginal mounted police, trained as ruthless killers of their own people. Horses, often fine stolen animals, carried bushrangers who ruled the roads and bailed up townships: 'gentleman' Matthew Brady, 'brave' Ben Hall and the towering, controversial Ned Kelly. Horses carried men to war. Some 120,000 horses were sent to World War I battlefields: only one was brought home. Horses helped build the nation, marshalling the great flocks and herds, helping to create its myths. With the era of the warhorse over and the role of the stock horse diminished, horses carry people at play and help the disabled and autistic. As they have since the early days of the colony, they carry our bets and, like the mighty Phar Lap in the Depression days, they have the power to lift our spirits.