Horses

By Patrick Ford

George Gillepsie grows up in the wild New England ranges of Australia. He is his father's son, like him becoming a highly skilled hordeman. His ability to tame the wildest horse becomes the stuff of legends.

In 1915, he and his brothers depart for Egypt with the Australian Light Horse to take part in the battles against the Turks. 

It is a tough campaign at Galipolli and in Palestine, and, along the way he is jilted by his girl at home, loses his three brothers to the war, and finds another love, only to lose her as well.

Back in Australia, he continues his love affair with his horses. The sadness of his losses stays with him always, through the great depression and hard times, before he finds himself embroiled in another war.

Finally, he reconnects with his former financee and they find, in middle age, a love and comfort neither had expected.

This is a story of a man and his horses and his full and adventurous life. Here, the horses are the real heros.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patrick Ford
• Release date: Dec 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781386906797

Patrick Ford

Patrick has had an interesting life – student, soldier, farmer, accountant, teacher. He is widely travelled and loves history. His wide experiences have given him deep well of knowledge from which to draw inspiration for his stories. He writes from his home in rural Queensland and produces what Aussies call “a bloody good yarn”.

Book preview

Prologue

The Mann River winds its way from the slopes of Ben Lomond, three thousand feet high in the New England Ranges of north-eastern New South Wales and runs through a series of tablelands to the escarpment of the Great Dividing Range. Here it tumbles down the mountains of the Gibraltar Range, twisting and turning to its meeting with the great Clarence River, and thence to the Pacific Ocean. These ranges are still sparsely populated; man clings to remote cattle stations in the vast wilderness, sustained by the small patches of fertile valley found along the rivers. In a small valley such as this lies the village of Newton Boyd. Today, there are the homestead and buildings of a cattle station, but the village has all but disappeared. All that remains are remnants of the past, a concrete footing or two, a fallen-down hall, and a neat war memorial to the young men of the district who went off to fight in the Great War to end all wars.

A separate climate exists down here, in this valley. The mountains tower over it and, in the winter, the sun makes only a brief appearance, its early and late rays masked by the mountains. Once it was a thriving little village, a staging post on the Grafton Road, in the days before the railway came to Glen Innes. Down the steep slopes to the valley, fighting gravity all the way, came the bullock wagons that carried wool to the port of Lawrence, and up the road came supplies for the people and the sheep and cattle runs of the tablelands. There was an inn, the Rosemount, a butter factory, shops, and houses. Then the railway came to Glen Innes, and later, a new road to Grafton bypassed the little valley, and the once thriving village began to vanish. Now there is the sound of silence, of something even menacing about this place, surrounded by the brooding mountains, abandoned by the passage of time.

Just up the road from the site of the old inn, hidden by the heavy forest, stood a small cottage. It had a neatly fenced yard and a set of stockyards. The old brick chimney sent up smoke for almost eight months of the year here in the valley, for the winters are long.

Curiously, there was a campfire out in the open, near the stockyards. It always burned, and at night, passers-by could see the silhouette of a tall, lean, man. In the daylight, at least twenty horses fed in the paddock behind the house, and always, for sixty or more years, one of them would be a big bay gelding.

This morning, as the few children waited for the school bus to take them up the range to Glen Innes, the eldest, a boy of fifteen, said to the others, Look, old George’s fire is out. That’s strange. There’s always smoke from that chimney. That evening he told his parents about it.

His father said, Come to think about it, I haven’t seen him for a few days. I’ll take you down to the bus in the morning and check it out.

As Andy Morris approached the cottage next morning, there was no sign of life, except in the horse paddock. There, the big bay stood at the fence, looking at the house, agitated, and now and again giving a soft snort and snuffle, tossing his head up and down. The campfire was out; Andy felt the ashes, they were cold. He knocked on the door several times, but there was no answer; he pushed the door open and entered the small building. It was stone cold, so he went to the bedroom. He took one look at the lifeless form on the bed, turned, and drove home to phone the police.

SERGEANT DICK MARTIN took one of his junior constables with him. Inside the cottage, it was dark, and they had to use their torches to see before they threw open the curtains. The man on the bed was dead and had been for a few days. Mercifully, in the chilly conditions, the process of decomposition had barely started, and insects had not touched the body.

The constable, who had never seen a dead man before, recoiled at the sight. Dick said, He won’t bite, boy. You’ll see worse than this before you’re finished.

He took a closer look. The corpse was that of an old man with the lined and lean features you would expect of someone who had spent most of his life outdoors. Part of an ear was missing, and it may have been a trick of the light, but Dick thought the man was smiling.

He looked around the room. On a small bedside table were two framed photographs. One showed four young men, so alike they had to be brothers; two of them looked like twins. It was a standard pose. They were all wearing the uniform of the Australian Light Horse, and they looked proud and solemn. One was seated; he appeared to be the eldest, although none of them could have been much over twenty. He wore corporal’s chevrons, and he looked at the camera with a quiet, confident air.

The second photo seemed older and more faded. Stained and dirty, it looked as though the owner had handled it many times. It showed an extraordinary young woman, with lovely eyes and a face full of character. Despite the solemn pose of the time, she was quite beautiful, but also intelligent and purposeful looking.

Dick found nothing much else of value. In a wardrobe, he found a faded blue suit of a much-outdated design, and a few items of clothing. In the small washhouse, he found an ancient brass safety razor, its edge so worn with use it was eggshell thin. On the kitchen table was an ashtray, a tobacco pouch, and an old-fashioned pipe.

He returned to the bedroom. Under the bed, amongst the dust balls and a long-lost slipper, he found a biscuit tin, about eight inches square, its label so worn it was indecipherable. Dick took it out to the kitchen to examine it. Inside the tin he found memories, layer upon layer of them, newspaper cuttings, photographs, a few letters tied with a faded pink ribbon, an old army pay book, some old coins, campaign medals, and a small black box; inside the box was a simple bronze cross, inscribed with the letters ‘for valour’, suspended from a dark red ribbon. Dick knew he was looking at a Victoria Cross, the highest award for courage his country could give; there was a dead hero in the bedroom behind him.

By now, Andy had arrived. Dick asked if he could identify the body. Yes, he was George Gillespie. He has lived here for almost ever, I think. Never married. Used to do stock work when he was younger. He broke in horses for my father. He was an old soldier; his name is on the memorial over there.

There was no sign of foul play, so they went out into the sun to wait for the hearse and the coroner. Dick wandered down the road a hundred yards to the memorial, seeing the names of four Gillespies carved into the stone facing. One of them was George’s.

He counted them all; there were over thirty. Dick reflected things had changed, that once there was such enterprise and vigour in this place it could give of its population thirty young men to go off to fight for King and Country. They would be lucky to muster any today.

1 - Growing Up

Harry Gillespie was a stockman, the best there ever was, according to his peers. They scoffed at the poem about the ‘Man from Snowy River’. Their Harry could ride rings around any molly coddled Victorian! Harry was a tall and wiry man, tough as old rope, and born to ride. He sat in a saddle as though welded there, and he knew more about horses than any veterinarian did.

Harry’s living came from the large cattle runs stretching from Tenterfield to Armidale, on the eastern escarpment where the mountains rose to the sky and the scrub was thick. Most of these big stations only mustered their cattle once or twice a year, so the beasts were half-wild and hard to handle. Most of their owners, more used to a gentle station hack, or the racehorses they bred for social occasions, needed a tough man like Harry to do this challenging work, and they paid him well. Harry had a small run on the river where he kept a string of twenty or more horses for the arduous work.

Those who know horses know horses know them. Superb horsemen are born, not taught. A horse will not tolerate just anyone who climbs on his back; for those he respects, a horse will do anything, endure anything, even unto death. For others, he will deposit them on the ground swiftly and mercilessly; and man must earn his respect. For Harry and those like him, his skill with horses was his livelihood, and he wore the badge of this skill with considerable pride. For his sons, it was a matter of honing the skills they had been born with, and Harry was the best sharpening stone in the toolkit.

There were four of them, George, born in 1895, the twins, Bill and Mike, 1896, and the ‘baby’, Fred, 1898. They were in a saddle before they could walk, and, like Harry, they excelled. By the time they were ten, they could ride anything, and they joined their father in his work.

Mary, their mother, had yearned for a daughter, but her first had been stillborn; she was Lillian, and she lay in a small grave behind the house upon which her mother placed fresh flowers every day she was able. In the warm sun of the brief summer, she would sit beside the grave and talk to Lillian about girl’s things, love, marriage, and children. Mary felt their spirits were as one, and she grieved for the life and love and family Lillian would never know. She had come to terms with it now, and she could watch her sons with pride as they grew. Mary did not know what would become of them; she supposed Harry would bring them into the business, but she wanted them to grow up as gentlemen with pride in their own skills and respect for women and the church. She schooled them herself so by the time they were ten, they could read and write tolerably well, were honest, and knew right from wrong. The church was a different matter altogether.

It was an almost-impossible task keeping them at their books. Outside, wondrous things filled the world. Along the river, fish abounded in the larger pools and they could watch a platypus in the early morning and the late afternoon as it left its burrow to forage. There were rabbits and wallabies in droves, and all the birds of the mountains, the kookaburras and kingfishers, the beautiful king parrots, and the scarlet rosellas, wood ducks and other waterbirds.

If the great outdoors was a regular draw card, the horses were the stars of the show. From a tender age, they immersed the boys in the horses. Their father talked about them all the time, and while he was away at his work, they became responsible for their welfare. They learned how to groom them, exercise them, feed and water them, and keep their feet healthy. Bill and Mike, a little bulkier, and the strongest of them all, learned how to shoe the horses. In this hard country, shoes and good hoof health were essential. They learned rudimentary blacksmithing, using the small forge and anvil in the lean-to out the back, to shape the shoes. Sometimes it took two of them to hold the horse’s leg and affix the shoe, but they always got it done.

They grew up strong and fit. All were over six feet in height, big men, thick through the chest and shoulders, but remarkably light on their feet, and they rode as if they were a permanent part of the horse. They earned a reputation as skilled stockmen, and people knew not to mess with them, for they stuck together like glue and to pick an argument with one was to take on all four. They were not aggressive men, but they would take nonsense from no man. Once they were all old enough, it was the practice to leave one boy at home to help Mary with the farm while the others worked in the cattle camps. It was a roster they were glad to follow. They all were close to her, and the work was easier at home, the food was better, and there was a soft, warm bed at night.

The bar at the Rosemount Inn was a social centre and Harry would introduce them all to it when they were old enough, but he schooled them in responsible drinking. They all enjoyed the bar because it was a meeting place for people from miles around. Sometimes there were bush dances in the little hall, and once a memorable party for the men returned from the South African War. The boys were a little young for this, but they hung around the Inn and saw several things from which they would soon learn valuable lessons. One was the sight of a pair of drunken men trying to fight each other. For almost five minutes, each swung terrible blows at the other. None landed, and both men ended up arm in arm, urinating against a tent, before staggering off into the darkness to collapse near the campfire.

It horrified the twins. Bill said, When I grow up, I’m never going to drink; look how stupid it makes you! Mike was not so sure and later he became a sensible drinker. Bill never drank at all, and later they became known as ‘Grog’ and ‘No Grog’ Gillespie. It was a handy way to tell them apart, for they were almost identical. Their favourite joke was to answer to each other’s names, causing untold confusion. George was ambivalent about alcohol. He could enjoy a drink, but he could take it or leave it. However, Fred was a different matter altogether, possessed of a reckless streak, acting on impulse. When he is old enough, thought George, we’ll have to watch him. George was already wearing the mantle of responsibility for his brothers. Then something happened that threatened to drive apart their closeness.

Of course, it started with a girl. At the Christmas dance, they met the two cousins of a friend. They came from the town of Glen Innes. Josie and Grace Adams were related to the people who owned the Rosemount Inn. They were staying for Christmas and a week thereafter. It was Christmas 1913 and George was eighteen years old, the twins just seventeen; they were all smitten. The twins were adept at dealing with girls, their identical features always evoked interest and a sort of fascination in young women. Some liked to think, Which one would I choose? Straight away Josie and Grace fell under their spell. Josie was tall and blonde, a beautiful child who would grow into a beautiful woman. Grace was dark and awkward, shy, and dowdy looking. Now she was the ugly duckling. One day soon she would be a beautiful swan, but the testosterone driven judgement of young men could not see that.

However, the girls came as a package, drawn together for mutual protection against young men with improper intentions. The twins left the matter of ‘who got the ugly one’ for later determination. They visited the girls daily, took them for chaperoned rides through the bush and picnics by the river. Before they left Newton Boyd, Bill and Mike had got their parents’ permission to visit them at their homes. For several months, they rode for many miles each Saturday just to get a smile of welcome and an occasional chaste kiss on the cheek, but soon their rivalry boiled to the surface. Both wanted Josie, but she would choose neither of them.

They came to blows, avoided each other; each tried to visit Josie without letting the other one know. Their work suffered and their