Crabbet Arabian Stallion, "Raaees" owned by Leanne Haywood, Western Australia (ideal type for producing Walers)
Ideal Australian Cavalry Remount, 1902.
"You can get chestnuts from chestnuts, but you can't get reindeer from Yaks!" saying by old horseman.
"They were quite well-known racehorses like Darani, Stralis, Tango and Comrade which turned up in the Officers' horse lines at Broadmeadows camp. More than that the officers brought their jockeys as batmen. So you'd think they did pretty well at the race meetings which the Light Horse held at every possible opportunity" The Track - Mike Hayes
"They looked light and wiry alongside the English horses but the authorities here pronounce them the finest lot horses yet landed. These, it should be explained, are mostly police horses, and no better advertisement for the Australian horse could possibly have been made. They are the sort that are known as Walers in India, and are first-class Walers at that. Banjo Patterson on the subject of Walers.
"A degree of stoutness and capacity for work quite unknown in England began to manifest itself in the colonial-bred horses, and the English emigrant was surprised to find that the horse he had bred in the early days was remarkable for his vigorous health and freedom from sickness, and (for an ability to) endure fatigue and perform journeys on grass feed alone, which would have over taxed the parent stock in England on the best stabled keep." E.M Curr, Pure Saddle-horses and How to Breed them.
A paragraph from "Army Remount, India. Instructions for the selection of remounts, 1880 - "There is no difficulty in distinguishing the well from the under-bred horse. Young horses fresh from grass, even when well-bred, are often long in the coat, and look coarse and under-bred in consequence; but the shape of the head never changes. The signs of under-breeding are large coarse head, thick throat, short and thick neck, large body and joints, and thick legs, short pasterns, curly hair in the mane and tail. Such horses are more adapted for draught, for in the saddle they are unwieldy, difficult to bend and turn, rough to ride; and they cannot gallop. On the the hand, a well-bred colt has a small lean head, flat and broad forehead, ample and fine nostrils, throat fine, neck thin, legs fine, pasterns long: and the hair of the mane and tail is straight and fine. Source - Walers, A T Yarwood 1989
| Another authority of the 1800s, W.H.L. Ranken, described the typical Australian horse as a light and hardy animal. He also said that it had a wonderful constitution, good feet, good endurance and a good temperament. The endurance and constitution of the bush horse may have come from the Arab, Ranken said. |
These items were discovered near Castlemaine. Kind permission was given to take photographs and display them. The poem was written and illustrated by a lighthorseman on his way home on the ship. If you would like clear text of the poem, please email me.
Entertainment was not the only purpose for which bloodhorses were required. The expanding civilization called for horses of endurance to conquer the big distances. It became the practice to use blood stallions to breed stock and troop horses. It is striking evidence of the improvement in our breed that, within thirty years of the arrival of the First Fleet, horses were being exported from Australia back to India. This export trade was to grow to important dimensions later in the century, when the 'waler' became the most sought after remount for the cavalry in India and other countries. Taking his name form the parent state, the Waler, typical of the Australian stockhorse, was mainly of Thoroughbred origin. So the colonial-bred 'bloodhorse' carried the explorer, the trooper, the bushranger, the stockman incredible distances, accomplishing feats of endurance that are hard to believe today.
"Walers have held a very successful place on the turf in India and China;most of the horses sent from here have held the first places on the turf at Madras,Calcutta, and Hong Kong" These remarks applied more directly to our racehorse exports. The ordinary Waler found wide acceptance as an army remunt, and his exceptional strength and endurance was shortly to be proved to the world in the first World War.
Among the Thoroughbred stallions of this period renowned for speed, endurance, and staying power who transmitted these qualities, either directly or through their children, to the Australian light horse are included such names as Stockwell, Touchstone, Fisherman, Whalebone, Ace of Clubs, Snowden, Panic, King Alfred, Lochiel, Musket, Chester, Malua and The Barb. They represented some of the finest pedigreed blood available. The use of Thoroughbred stallions as sires of station stock is still practised. The horse-stock on many of our large outback properties are still of the well-bred Thoroughbred type. Country buyers are always in attendance at bloodstock sales looking for retired racehorses that may be suitable for 'station sires'. These station sires are not always turf 'failures', some of them having been good performers. Douglas Barrie - The Australian bloodhorse 1956
Tribute to the Australian Light horse by English Cavalryman, Lieutenant-Colonel R.M.P. Preston, D.S.O.
(November 16th, 1917) ...the majority of the horses in the Corps were Walers, and there is no doubt that these hardy Australian horses make the finest Cavalry mounts in the World..they (the Australians) have got types of compact, well-built, saddle and harness horses that no other part of the world can show. Rather on the light side according to our ideas, but hard as nails and with beautiful clean legs and feet. Their records in this war place them far above the Cavalry horse of any other nation. The Australians themselves can never understand our partiality for the half-bred weight-carrying hunter, which looks to them like a cart horse. Their contention has always been that good blood will carry more weight than big bone, and the experience of this war has converted the writer, for one, entirely to their point of view. It must be remembered that the Australian countrymen are bigger, heavier men than their English brothers. They formed just half the Corps and it probable that they averaged not far off 12 stone each stripped. To this weight must be added another 9-1/2 stone for saddle, ammunition, sword, rifle, clothes and accoutrements, so that each horse carried a weight of 21 stone, all day for every day for 17 days, - on less than half the normal ration of forage and with only one drink in every 36 hours! The weight-carrying English Hunter had to be nursed back to fitness after these operations and for a long period, while the little Australian horses withuot any special care, other than good food and plenty of water were soon fit to go through another campaign as arduous as the last one!
Contact: beeandah@origin.net.au
Visit ,
Australia's
Bloodhorse (Some famous quotes about Walers,history, links
and interesting endurance facts.) for history lovers 'The
Development of the Australian Saddlehorse"( extracts
from Malcolm Kennedy's thesis, The role and significance of
bullocks and horses in the development of Eastern Australia 1788
to 1900.)
