Occasionally Australia

I had to shoot a horse once. A real live horse, with a real live gun. She was a Brumbie, a wild Australian pony, and she was running in a small herd of them down on the coats at Point Sir Isaac, near Coffin Bay on the Eyre Peninsular in South Australia. I was 18.

Our farm in Aus was a very small place. When I say our, it was nothing to do with me, I was just there in my gap year. It actually belonged to the brother-in-law and sister of a friend of mine. It was only about 1500 acres, just six fields and almost exclusively sand. As Paul, the boss, was overly-keen on repeating, it was one of the driest farms in the driest state in the driest continent in the world. I still have no idea, and not much more interest, in whether this is true. But it was an experience. I learned to ride a dirt bike, drive a Landrover across the most inhospitable terrain, drink, and be a foreigner in a (very) strange land.

One of our sources of income was reputed to be wild ponies. Paul, an erstwhile bronco rider would, in theory, break and sell them to local families to ride in the gymkhanas. There were about four horses on the farm when I arrived, and one of them, Gussie, and I became mates. She loathed me because I was English and I adored her because she could do tricks. She always snorted and bobbed her head up and down when I came into the stable. I think she was telling me to piss off. I got that impression anway. Funny how I can remember that, but have no recollection of the stables. Anyhow, if you tickled her under her armpits with your toes while in the saddle she would stand on her back legs. It looked dramatic. We used to use her for cattle work, until I could persuade them that a motorbike didn’t need to be groomed, fed, even if you weren’t using it, and was less likely to chew through the reins If you let them drop while chatting to a comely blonde who found your trick on her back of mild interest. I think the killer blow in the argument was when I said a m/c would beat a horse over a hundred yards. Aussies are easy to manipulate: just turn everything into a competition. Luckily I never had to prove it. The one time we started to try, he fell off the horse because he was pie eyed. Everywhere he went he had a bottle of beer somewhere about his person. We would drive into Port Lincoln, which took about 40 minutes, and each consume two or three beers, including whoever was driving. He used to maintain that if you switched off the engine and coasted into town that did not constitute driving. I once was so sick that I had to take the door of the Landrover apart and clean within its works. I don’t know why, but we never got caught.

However, to sell horses, you need stock. And we had none. That meant trapping some wild ponies. So off we went to Point Sir Isaac. To get there was a journey of some difficulty. You had to cross a nature reserve, and then follow the road beyond the fence. I think the gate was padlocked. It was certainly high, perhaps 10 feet. Then you were in wild, untamed country with no road and just sandy unstable soil or even deeper dunes beneath you. It was hard to walk on, let alone drive over. In maybe 20 journeys up and down that track on my motorbike I only ever saw one other vehicle. Ours. And only ever one other person, who was walking and only about 50 metres from the nature park. I don’t know who was more surprised, me or him that someone should come from the wrong direction, looking hot and dusty and tired. An accident out there would have meant certain death. There was a revolting amount of offensive wildlife that would snuff you out as soon as look at you, and no mobile phones in those days. I don’t remember carrying even a bottle of water. Most likely if I carried anything, it was a beer.

At one point the track led you out onto a beach. I have never seen a beach like it. The total journey over this rough sand track was maybe 50 km from home to the trapping place. Of these about 10 - 15 k were along the hard empty sand of the beach. I never saw a single person on this beach. It was heaven, I could open up the bike and ride through the very edge of the surf. Once I did it one way, then back, and then back again. It was like a dream, or a movie. Only it was neither. These were some of the few moments of real joy I experienced in Australia.

Here’s what someone else has written about the same place, but about 20 years later. I don’t remember the beach the same way. Perhaps I never knew it was dangerous. I thought it was the only safe bit of the ride. We had a certain gung-ho mentality about us. Nothing was planned and our safety was taken for granted, not assured. I never saw a tide table while I was there. My memory is that they were planning to open up the Point to tourists by extending the nature reserve and that this was the last year of pony trapping. It seems this has happened:

“It was only 30 km or so to the next night’s campsite at Point Sir Isaac, almost at the tip of the Coffin Bay Peninsula. The drive took the best part of the day. The track runs for several kilometres along Seven Mile Beach, where, should you get stuck, you face the distinct possibility of watching your car disappear under the next high tide.

The tide chart said we were OK until about 5pm. The hard packed sand between the tide marks – the best place to drive on a beach is littered with rocks in places, so we had to move higher up the beach where the fine, dry sand made the going extremely difficult. Fear and momentum got us through.

After another night of solitude, camped behind the dunes amid the mallee, we backtracked to Coffin Bay and paid the oyster man another visit. Lunch was a dozen oysters natural. Did this really have to end?”

Seems it is still not exactly hospitable.

I’ve realised this will take longer than I thought. There’s more to tell about Australia. I’ll get back to it, and to shooting and to horses.




Stand easy