Honor Auchinleck, Corryong Courier

Artist Simon White’s mural ‘The Men and their Mounts’ in Corryong tells the story of the bush horses or brumbies and the stockmen who mustered and brought them down from the High Country and the bush-covered hills surrounding the Upper Murray before the First World War.

The breeders of the Remounts and Walers often turned the young horses out into the bush to toughen them up and then brought them back in as four-year-olds for sale to buyers for the British Army in India.

These horses were known as ‘Walers’ because they came from New South Wales. Prior to 1850, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria were all one colony – New South Wales. The term ‘Walers’ distinguished these horses from those exported from other countries such as South Africa.

The buyers were looking for fast, agile horses for the cavalry regiments and stouter horses for towing artillery, ammunition, supply and ambulance wagons. There was also demand for horses for equestrian sports and recreational activities. The brumbies were often the bush horses that evaded muster to remain in the bush.

The remount trade (horses bought for military purposes), began in the early decades of white settlement, surging in Victoria’s north east after the rail link was established in 1873 between Melbourne and Wodonga. This link had two extensions, the first in 1887 between Wodonga and the hamlet of Huon and then the second in 1891 when the work on the Mitta Mitta viaduct was completed and the railway was extended to Tallangatta.

In May 1900 during the Boer War, 1436 horses were sold in Wodonga. According to Dr Lang writing for the Weekly Times in August 1912 ‘The number of suitable army horses bred in this country at present is diminishing at an alarming rate’. Dr Lang goes on to argue ‘If in the event of an outbreak of hostilities and a protracted war we require 1,000,000 horses.’ ¹ 

Dr Lang was not to know that only two years later, Australia had to rise to the demand when World War 1 broke out on 4 August, 1914.

It was said that the horses ‘grew to perfection in the high country of the Upper Murray in pastures of surpassing beauty on stations like Khancoban and Bringenbrong’.² Men from the Upper Murray enlisted and if they could spare horses, local farmers and station owners sent them. With the focus on the carnage on the Western Front and on Gallipoli, it is unsurprising that this aspect of our heritage has long been overlooked.

Corryong’s mural (behind the RSL Hall in Donaldson Street) is about the stockmen who enlisted to serve as mounted infantry in the Boer or South African War. After Federation the mounted infantry became Australian Army Light Horse regiments.

More bush horses became the Walers and Remounts. Who could tell the difference between unbroken station-bred horses that had been running wild in the bush and the mountain bred bush horses? They were mustered from the hills surrounding the Upper Murray.

The early scenes in the mural resemble the narrative in Banjo Paterson’s poem ‘The Man From Snowy River’:- 

He was right among the horses as they climbed the further hill, 
And the watchers on the mountain standing mute,
Saw him ply the stockwhip fiercely, he was right among them still, 
As he raced across the clearing in pursuit.
Then they lost him for a moment, where two mountain gullies met in the ranges, 
But a final glimpse reveals on a dim and distant hillside the wild horses racing yet, 
With the man from Snowy River at their heels.

While it was far more romantic for the poem ‘The Man from Snowy River’ being about ‘the colt from Old Regret had got away and had joined the wild bush horses,’ the scene that played itself out more often in the Upper Murray was the mustering of the Walers which were renowned for their speed and staying power.

They were also popular with the racing industry as racehorses and often received more attention than our warhorses. Nonetheless the musters were one of the features of Upper Murray life. Many of those who raced their horses at local race meetings also enlisted and during World War 1 racing was a popular recreational activity, particularly in Egypt and Palestine.

No matter whether Paterson was describing the hunt for the ‘colt from Old Regret’ or the mustering of the Walers, Angus and Robertson’s pocket-sized anthologies of Paterson’s The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses were popular in the AIF serving on both the Western Front and in the Middle East.

Meanwhile 51-year-old poet Andrew Barton Paterson, disappointed in his attempts to secure a role as war correspondent and unfulfilled in his job as an ambulance driver in France in 1914, was commissioned into the 2nd Remount Unit (Queensland and New South Wales) on 18 October, 1915.

When Paterson was sent to command the 2nd Remount Unit at Moascar in Egypt his poetry followed him, some finding a place in Kia-ora Coo-ee, the official magazine of the Australian and New Zealand forces in Egypt, Palestine, Salonica and Mesopotamia.

Meanwhile at the Remount Depot in Moascar in Egypt, Paterson and those under his command, including my great-uncle Allan Chauvel, put what Paterson called ‘Barcoo Polish’ on the Remounts so they were fit for Light Horsemen to ride them in action.

‘Down the hillside at a racing pace he went, 
And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound, 
At the bottom of that terrible descent.’ 
(From The Men and their Mounts mural, Corryong) 

The fact that Paterson’s poetry was read and recited by Light Horsemen is symbolised on the mural in the suggestion that the Light Horsemen left the words of ‘The Man from Snowy River’ written in the sand in Egypt, Sinai and across Palestine.

The Light Horse reached its zenith during the First World War in Sinai and Palestine in the scenes depicted along the fence behind the Corryong RSL Hall. Meanwhile artist Simon White reveals the increasing mechanisation of warfare in his portrayal of a car from the 1st Light Car Patrol, the tanks that were used for the first time in Palestine in the Second Battle of Gaza in 1917 and the fledgling 1st Squadron Australian Air Corps planes that were used increasingly throughout the Palestine Campaign.

Nonetheless, horses were still used right up to the beginning of World War 2. Nobody knew then how much mechanisation would change the world. For all that, in some countries horses are still used in contemporary conflicts when all else fails. And why wouldn’t you? In conflict a horse could be the difference between life and death.

In his book Corryong and the “Man from Snowy River” District (1981) Tom Mitchell claimed ‘Probably the most dramatic of all saddle horse work in the Upper Murray was the mustering of the Walers for the Indian Army’.

‘The sight that greeted the Indian officers on Bringenbrong Station was unique. Every inch of the sprawling, weathered stockyards was full of wild-eyed horses screaming and fighting. For weeks the twenty or so Bringenbrong stockmen had been combing the dense bush between the Swampy Plains River and the Indi River, and many were the unrecorded acts of brilliant horsemanship that took place out there before a tempestuous herd of long-maned, long-hooved horses, most of whom, although fully mature, had never before seen a human being, was mustered onto the Indi Station flats before being driven down through scrub and lagoon to the Bringenbrong Station yards.

‘The fun started when the yard gates were opened to begin the long drive to the railhead at Tallangatta. The twenty or so well-mounted and capable Bringenbrong stockmen, plus Skerry (the Aboriginal stockman), and a few Chinese, did their very best to steady this raging torrent of horse flesh, but it was to little avail. As Charlie Bingham put it, “It was one hell of a job. We’d have them in the yards and when we were all set, someone would open the gate and I guarantee that there was never such a sight like it in the whole of Australia. Out they’d come kickin’ and squealin’ and buckin’ and fightin’ and off hell for leather in one mad blooming gallop first to the left and then to the right, and then back to the left and then over to the right again, with us racing our horses to keep them headed down the flat towards the ford, and Mr Walter would be out in front doing his level damndest to steady the lead and he’d more than have his work cut out though he knew more about handling horses than most blokes know today.

‘Of course the mob would hit the river full tilt at the old ford down below where the Bringenbrong bridge is now, and there’d be one hell of a splash with water going feet high all over the bloody place, and a great mix-up of horses under the willows and wattles, but after a while we’d get them sorted out with a lot of cussin’ and swearin’, and we’d all have wet backsides and sometimes more than that if we weren’t lucky, but after they’d get across the river they’d kind of settle down like, and go along fairly steady, unless anything frightened them that is, and we’d camp the night at Wabba pub. There was always rice and rabbit to eat there in those days, and a crowd of blokes would come up from nowhere just as soon as you landed there and follow you into the bar hoping that you’d shout and next day we’d get to Tallangatta and hand them over…’ 

‘An institution known as Kirk’s Bazaar handled these sales and made all the arrangements for the Bringenbrong bush horses, about 100 similar but quieter horses from Tintaldra Station, together with small mobs from other Upper Murray properties such as the McIlraiths at Biggara; John Mitchell at Khancoban; the Findlays at Towong; John Pierce at Greg Greg and Tom Paton at Welaregang. Some of the selectors, battling it out against near starvation, were saved because they had one or two suitable mares and sold a few ‘Walers’ now and then.’ 

Born in 1906 and almost eight years old when World War 1 broke out, my father Tom, better known as T.W. Mitchell, might have remembered the scenes of the musters and the tales the men told. Having just forded the Murray River, the unruly herds from Khancoban and Bringenbrong would have passed Towong Hill at the beginning of their wild fifty-mile journey via Cudgewa Station to Wabba and the railhead at Tallangatta. Those who rode with the horses died long ago. Some of them might lie in our cemeteries but none can tell us about how they rode with the horses.

Between the Upper Murray and Tallangatta, we have a special stretch of the Border Trail. Six years after Tom Mitchell published his 1981 book Corryong and the ‘Man from Snowy River’ District, in 1987 his wife Elyne wrote evocatively and imaginatively about the arrival of the Walers at Tallangatta in her novelisation of the film, The Lighthorsemen:- 

‘When they reached the railhead, there were six or eight trucks to be loaded, and almost a hundred horses. After every horse was safely led into a truck – horses that had already been broken in leading the nervous, unbroken animals – several Light Horsemen unrolled a long banner, and walked over to fix it on to one truck, scrambling up the railed sides in their khaki breeches. They had it fastened into place just before the guard blew his whistle and the train was ready to pull out. They jumped off the truck, and the engine gave a few toots as the wheels began to turn.

‘Slowly the train started its journey through the Victorian countryside. Horses peered out between the bars of the trucks, some with their ears laid back, some with ears pricked curiously. The banner flapped a little, but was there for all to see:- 

THESE HORSES ARE DOING THEIR BIT FOR AUSTRALIA.
WHAT ABOUT YOU? 

‘On and on the train went, its mournful whistle sounding across the paddocks and into the homesteads, the sound calling up a feeling of distance and of far-away places. Smoke from the engine rose into the empty sky. It moved slowly through little towns, and people looked at the banner, old people thinking of the young men who had already ridden away, and young ones stirred, wondering…On and on, for hour upon hour – horses going to the future that awaited them.’ 

Born on 30 December, 1913 in Melbourne and then living in England with her mother and elder siblings during World War 1, Elyne would have had no memory of the Upper Murray Remounts and yet she wrote beautifully about the muster of the remounts in the Upper Murray for the First World War – the scene is there for all to see in the opening footage of the 1987 film The Lighthorsemen.

As General Sir Harry Chauvel’s elder daughter Elyne grew up on the stories of the Light Horse and learned to ride on the Remounts from the stables behind Victoria Barracks in Melbourne.

The horses that came by train from Tallangatta and Wodonga were taken to the Army Remount Depot at Maribyrnong 10km from Melbourne where they were broken in, branded, numbered, shod, fed and received any necessary veterinary treatment.

Elyne Mitchell provides further context in her book for young adult readers Light Horse to Damascus (1971) p 14 -15:- 

‘1914, and all over Australia horses was moving towards the trains that would take them to the camps, where they would be branded with the arrow to mark them as horses of the Australian Light Horse, where the boys would be dressed in khaki tunics, khaki shirts and riding breeches, boots and leggings, given the slouch hat to which the Queenslanders of the Fifth, and eventually all the Light Horse, would fix the emu plumes. In these camps they would be trained, and from there they would go to the ships that would take them over the sea.’ 

They were not the first horses to serve overseas. Horses had been sent from Australia to overseas destinations since about the 1840s. Horses from Australia had been used in the First Afghan War between 1839 and 1842. General Bridges’ horse Sandy returned in October 1917.

Except for Sandy from the Tallangatta Valley, none of those horses ever returned to the Upper Murray.

If any horses had returned from the Boer War, they might have been able to tell the Remounts that had been mustered to serve in the First World War what was in store for them. It is not surprising that poet and war correspondent, turned Light Horseman, Banjo Paterson, understood what warfare was like for the horses:- 

The Last Parade 
Starving and tired and thirsty, we limped on the blazing plain; 
And after a long night’s picket you saddled us up again.
We froze on the wind-swept kopjes when the frost lay snowy-white, 
Never a halt in daytime, never a rest at night! 
Steel! We were steel to stand it, we that have lasted through, 
We that are old campaigners pitiful, poor, and few.
Over the sea you brought us, over the leagues of foam; 
Now we have served you fairly will you not take us home? 

Light Horsemen who didn’t return are recorded on the war memorials in Corryong and Tallangatta. Sculptor Mon (Brett) Garling’s ‘Sandy’ at Tallangatta has a special significance being the only horse to return. Sandy’s empty saddle carries our memories of Major General Bridges who commanded the Australian Imperial Force until his death on 18 May, 1915 resulting from his wounds on Gallipoli. Significantly it also symbolises our mountain men and their mounts who served their country and never came home.

Many Light Horsemen returned to family farms where instead of reciting ‘The Man from Snowy River’ with their mates, they recited verses as they rode around their cattle. Other men returned to the sadness of changed family circumstances. Home life had moved on without them. One Upper Murray man returned to find that his family had got rid of his saddle and bridle, clearly thinking he wasn’t going to return.

During the long years of World War 1, families had struggled to keep the farms going through the drought in 1914-15. Few understood what their menfolk had endured and equally the men didn’t really understand that the families had also had their own hardships.

References: 
Elyne Mitchell, Light Horse to Damascus (Melbourne: Hutchinson of Australia, 1971) 
Elyne Mitchell, The Lighthorsemen: The story of the men and horses who attempted the impossible and rode into legend (Penguin Books, 1987) 
Tom Mitchell, Corryong and the “Man from Snowy River” District (Albury: Wilkinson Printers, 1981) 
A. T. Yarwood, Walers: Australian Horses Abroad (Burwood, Victoria, Brown Prior Anderson Pty Ltd, 1989) 

Footnotes: 
1 Dr Lang, Weekly Times, (Sat 3 Aug 1912), p49.
2 A T Yarwood, Walers: Australian Horses Abroad (Burwood, Vic., Brown Prior Anderson Pty Ltd, 1989) p16.

Next week [Corryong Courier]:
Ride follows early horse route.

This article appeared in the Corryong Courier, 5 December 2024.