Brumbies

by Paula Boer

  “Tell me everything. From the beginning.”

  Ben leant back on his arms and told her about the day before; how he’d been feeling really gloomy and gone for a long ride, ending up somewhere he’d never been before, and being found by Old Harry after his accident. “So he took me back to his hut. You should see it, it’s amazing. Lots of things made out of junk, but really comfy. Anyway, he told me how to make a corral in a ravine, and how to make yards with only natural materials.”

  Louise couldn’t take it all in. All this had happened yesterday while she read a book in her garden. “That sounds awesome, but how will we muster the horses? How will we get them back? Won’t we get in trouble if we’re seen taking horses out of the park?”

  “Nah, the place Harry told me about is close to the old road. We’ll need to break the horses to rope so we can lead them home. No one will know they’re not youngsters from the farm that we’re taking out to train.”

  Ben stood and picked up his bag. “Can you come early tomorrow? I’ll leave you my bike again. We’ll pretend we’re just going for a ride, then go and check the place out.”

  Ideas spun in Louise’s head. “I suppose so. I don’t think Mum’ll stop me from going for a trail ride if I ask Dad first. He usually takes my side. I’ll go nuts if I have to stay at home any longer. But are you sure this’ll be okay?”

  Ben nodded with conviction. “Sure, I’ll tell you more tomorrow.”

  That evening, Louise encountered more trouble than she’d hoped getting permission from her mum to go riding with Ben. She pleaded not to be kept grounded and offered to do the vacuuming when she got home. Her father supported her as she’d hoped, though she had to promise not to ride Jake, or go too fast, and check the weather report before she went.

  The next morning she rose early, leaving the house before her parents had their breakfast. A thin mist wafted over the river as she crossed the bridge on her way to Mirraburra. Frogs croaked in harmony, sounding loud in the absence of traffic. Kookaburras laughed their early morning wake-up call, chuckling as if to some great joke. Louise hadn’t felt this good since the day they mustered the brumbies. Since then everything seemed to go wrong. Perhaps the holidays would turn out alright after all.

  Louise made good time to Tumbleford Farm despite Ben’s bike being too big for her. As usual, Ben had the horses in. He continued to groom Lady as she leant the bike against the wall of the shed. Ned stood quietly munching on his hay.

  Louise joined Ben in the yard and started brushing the gelding. “Are we going to spend the whole day out? I wasn’t sure what to bring.”

  Lady pulled at another mouthful of hay as Ben stooped to clean out her hooves. “Yeh, it’s quite a way. I’m not sure if we’ll get a yard finished today. We might have to spend a couple of days out there.”

  Louise cleaned Ned’s body brush against the rubber curry comb. His coat gleamed, the big spots on his rump standing out against the white. She picked up the dandy brush to do his mane and tail.

  “School goes back next week. Will we have time?”

  “I hope so. It’s worth a try anyway, isn’t it?”

  Ben took Lady’s saddle off the railing and gently placed it on her back over the sheepskin numnah. Reaching under her belly, he grabbed the girth and did it up loosely. Picking up her bridle, he waited for her to finish her mouthful of breakfast before placing the bit gently in her mouth.

  Ben had placed Ned’s tack on the railing on the other side of the horses.

  Louise tacked him up and gave him a pat. “Good boy. Let’s not have any adventures today, okay?”

  She tightened the girth and mounted up.

  Ben and Louise headed out along Tumbledown Creek and followed the old road. Ben kept Lady in check to keep level with Ned’s steady pace. “We’ll go the same way I went with Snip the other day. Hopefully I can find the place Harry told me about, but we’d better get moving.”

  After an hour and a half of hard riding, both horses dripped with sweat. The hot day offered no refreshing breeze. Only by trotting and cantering did they enjoy the passage of cooling air. Louise needed a drink.

  “Can we stop for a minute? I want to get a water bottle out of my pack.”

  Ben slowed Lady to a walk beside Ned. “I think the creek where I saw the snake is over that rise. Let’s walk the horses there and we can all have a break.”

  The gentle burble of water tumbling over rocks carried to them on the breeze as they crossed the brow of the hill. Swirling pools nestled in hollowed out bends of the stream. Frogs croaked and crickets chirruped amongst the reeds along the winding bank. Swallows darted and swooped, catching the insects attracted by the water.

  Ben jumped off Lady and loosened her girth before taking a water bottle from his saddle bags. “I know where we are. No snakes today. We should be able to find the ravine from here.”

  Louise absorbed the smells of the bush around her and felt wonderful, almost forgetting why they had come so far. She joined Ben and took a few gulps of her drink. “That’s better. I’m not used to riding hard for so long. How far do you think we’ve come?”

  Ben scratched his wet hair where he had taken off his helmet. “We must have covered at least fifteen ks at that speed. Maybe more. I hope it’s not too far from here.”

  The two horses pulled at the short grass near the creek while Ben and Louise hung on to their reins.

  After a few minutes, Louise felt much better. Both horses also had a drink. “Should we get going? We don’t know how much work we’ll have to do.”

  “Sure.” Ben tightened Lady’s girth and swung into the saddle. “We have to look out for a huge rock that looks like a wombat. There’s a track to the right that leads to the ravine.”

  He squeezed his mare forward. Lady shot off at a trot before Ben slowed her back to a walk. “We’d better take it easy so we don’t miss it.”

  Ned happily walked alongside Lady on a loose rein. Louise still couldn’t believe she had such a fabulous horse to ride. Life couldn’t be better, being out in the mountains all day with Ben. Except for one thing.

  “As we didn’t see that buckskin the last few times we were out, do you think she’s way up here? We might be able to catch her.”

  Ben nodded. “Yeh, I reckon she’d have come this way. The brumbies aren’t likely to go towards Jackstown, and that fire will have put them off going east. I doubt they’d go near the highway to the west.”

  He shielded his eyes with his hand. “What’s that there? Does that look like a wombat to you?”

  A craggy rock stood alone at the edge of the trees, almost as tall as the horses. Its rough face held lichen and other tiny plants clinging in the crevices.

  Louise tried to make out the rock’s shape. “Not really. It looks more like a meatball with green gravy.”

  They moved on, following the creek, picking their way up a slope littered with loose rocks. The water tinkled as it tumbled from its source.

  Ben let Lady choose her own path. “I don’t recognise this part. We must have passed the track to Harry’s place.”

  “What’s that? Is that the wombat rock?”

  Louise stopped Ned to study the stone ahead of her. At least twice as high as her head and four times as long with a rounded top, the granite boulder looked more like a whale.

  Ben crossed the creek and rode off a few strides before turning Lady around. “Yeh, from here I can make out the head. There’s a chunk missing that looks like the eye. Come over here. This must be the track.”

  As soon as Louise joined him, Ben set off at a brisk walk away from the creek. They followed the trail that wound around bushes and boulders. After a short ride, a narrow valley opened out before them. Thick trees lined the sides and lush grass carpeted the middle.

  Louise stopped Ned next to Ben and Lady. “What a beautiful place. It’s magic. And so different to th
e rest of the park. It looks really lush.”

  “Yeh, these steep slopes must stop the sun evaporating all the moisture in the ground and I guess it gets more rain here anyway ’cause of the hills. That’s Mt. Evans over there.” Ben pointed off to his left. “Look! That looks like a lake at the far end. This must be the place. Now we need to find a giant dead tree with an old eagle’s nest in the top branches.”

  It didn’t take too long for Louise to spot the tree. Its bleached limbs stuck out in all directions like a crazy signpost.

  “Now what? Where do we go from here?”

  She gave Ned a pat as he tossed his head. She thought he must have become impatient with all the walking and stopping.

  Lady gave out a shrill whinny, her head high and ears pricked.

  “Shut up, Lady.” Ben turned his mare in a tight circle to distract her. “There must be brumbies nearby. I should have brought Snip, but I wanted to save him for the muster. I hope we don’t scare them off.”

  He had barely finished speaking when an answering neigh echoed around the valley.

  “Was that a stallion?”

  Louise didn’t know whether to be excited about the chance of seeing wild horses or scared. She knew stallions could be dangerous, especially around mares, and Ben had warned her about the bachelor colts the first day they had seen brumbies.

  “What should we do?”

  “Let’s get off this track into the trees. We have to cross over this small ridge. The ravine is supposed to be in the next valley.”

  Ben urged Lady into the bush, pushing her into the scrub. She whinnied once more. Softening to his persistent leg, she walked on.

  They found the ravine exactly as Old Harry had promised. After taking a while to explore, Ben and Louise discovered it gradually narrowed. The dark gully ended in a sheer cliff face that towered above them.

  “Not even a goat could climb this.”

  Louise looked around her. On the valley floor, spindly trees fought for light and soil in which to grow.

  “This place is spooky, but it’s really sheltered. Look at the water running down the rock face. There’s even a little pool at the base.”

  “That’ll give any brumbies we catch something to drink. Harry said we should be able to build a yard using these trees. He showed me how to make a one-way gate that the horses will push through.” He jumped off Lady and grabbed the hobbles out of his saddle bags. “Come on, let’s plait the bark of the ribbon gums to make bindings like he showed me.”

  With only a short break for lunch, the friends worked hard for hours. They found dead branches on the ground and lashed them to living trees. A pair of wattles made a perfect place for their trap. They carefully constructed a V-shaped entrance that would allow a horse to push through the rail before it sprung back and closed the way out.

  Louise’s excitement built with every branch they secured, though her arms and back ached from the heavy lifting and dragging. “Do you think this will be strong enough? How will we get the horses to come this way?”

  Ben flopped onto a log and had a drink. “We need to make a funnel. That prickly wattle will make a good natural barrier. Harry says we should place branches in the gaps so the horses aren’t tempted to run through. If they’re going fast enough, they won’t want to escape up the steep hillsides.”

  Louise touched her toes and stretched her arms above her head to ease her muscles. “I can’t believe we’re going to have another chance at mustering brumbies. I had given up all hope, but this looks really great. I’m glad you met up with Harry, even if you did hurt your leg. How is it, anyway?”

  Ben took another long swig of his water and wiped his brow. “Okay, but I think we’ve done enough for today. Let’s come back and finish tomorrow. Maybe we can try the muster on Saturday.”

  Chapter 12

  Ben and Louise rose in rhythm as Snip and Ned trotted alongside each other. Snip’s ears flicked this way and that, listening to the sounds of the bush as animals, disturbed by their passage, scurried through the undergrowth. Otherwise, he had settled to work as if he had been roaming the mountains for years. His intelligence and calm attitude pleased Ben.

  “We’ll be there much quicker today now that we know the way.”

  Louise seemed content riding beside him on Ned. “And what a great day again. It’s a pity we have to go back to school next week. I could do this forever.”

  “Don’t remind me. Dad’s back tomorrow too, so I’ll probably have more jobs to do.”

  Ben’s duties while his father looked at bulls out west only involved checking the stock each day and keeping the water troughs full and clean.

  The dead tree with the eagle’s nest rose before them.

  “That was quick.”

  Louise led the way down the narrow wallaby trail that led to the secret ravine. Fresh horse droppings marked the trail.

  “There seem to be a lot of hoof prints.”

  Ben brought Snip to a halt and looked at the ground. “You’re right. These aren’t our tracks. The brumbies must have smelt our guys and gone to have a look. I hope our scent on the timber we moved doesn’t scare them off.”

  He picked up his reins and urged Snip on. “Be careful in case we see any brumbies. We don’t want to spook them today.”

  Taking care not to rush, Ben and Louise made their way to the end of the ravine where they had made the enclosure the day before. The yard stood as they had left it except for many hoof prints in the moist grass.

  Ben tethered Snip to a tree. “It seems like the horses had a good look but didn’t go through the one-way gate. Come on, let’s fix up a funnel for tomorrow’s muster.”

  After tying Ned beside Snip, Louise pulled on a pair of gloves before hauling old logs to gaps in the prickly wattle along the edge of the forest.

  Long lengths of bark from the ribbon gums lay all over the ground. Ben found a strong piece and rolled it into a rope. He lifted the timber to the height of a horse’s chest and secured it as best he could with the twisted strands of bark.

  The work went quickly. Ben whistled bush ballads as well as his favourite rock tunes as he heaved and tied. By twelve o’clock, all the gaps in the scrub had been filled on either side of the valley, making a funnel to guide the brumbies to the holding pen.

  “Let’s find somewhere for lunch. We could go back to the creek.”

  “That sounds great. I’d love to get my boots off and freshen up my toes in that mountain water.” Louise brushed off her jodhpurs and untied the two horses, passing Snip’s reins to Ben.

  Riding out of the ravine, Ben decided to take a different route. “We don’t want to make our tracks too obvious. The brumbies might be put off.”

  He led the way along another trail he’d spotted. Ben ducked under branches as Snip picked his way over logs and round trees. The track rose and fell as they crossed a ridge, coming to a steep slope. The trees finished, unable to cling to the bare rock.

  Ben waited while Louise caught up with him.

  Sweat trickled down her face. She brushed it off with the back of her arm and slumped in the saddle. Building fences had been hard work and they had left home early that morning. “We’ll have to turn back. We’ll never get down there.”

  Ben gazed at the valley below. “Look! There’s that small lake in the distance. Ned’ll be alright. He’s done this sort of thing before. It’ll be a first for Snip though. Give me a head start before letting Ned pick his way down.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Ben applied his legs to Snip’s sides. The young gelding dithered and hesitated to go over the edge of the stony ledge. Ben kept the pressure up and his horse’s head pointed the way he wanted to go.

  With a sudden leap, Snip plunged down the hillside, hopping from rock to rock.

  “Steady, boy. Don’t break a leg.”

  Rocks tumbled pas
t Snip from above. Ben realised Ned had started the descent. He didn’t have time to look around to see how Louise fared; it took all his concentration to stop Snip from rushing too fast to the bottom. The young horse sat down on his haunches and slid a few metres, stumbled again and scrambled on. Ben’s heart raced as he held Snip in check.

  Snip pulled to gallop off as they reached the bottom of the slope. Ben fought hard to make him stand still and wait for Louise and Ned.

  “That was scary.” Louise and Ned joined Ben and Snip. “I’ve never done anything like that before. Wow! Ned was so good.”

  The Appaloosa seemed to have a smile on his face, as if to say ‘No problem’. Unlike Snip, he wasn’t even blowing.

  “Well done. You’ll get used to it. Ned is really sure-footed. I love riding places like this.” Relieved that Louise had made it safely to the bottom, Ben pushed on to find a spot for lunch. “Come on, we can canter from here.”

  He let Snip go, knowing his horse needed to run off the excitement of the descent.

  The tiny lake shimmered like an opal—blue, green and black ripples played across the surface in the mild breeze. A stand of snow gums stood near the water’s edge, making a perfect spot for a picnic.

  Ben unsaddled Snip, fastened the hobbles and let him free. “Harry told me about this place. He calls it Kingfisher Lake. I wanted to surprise you, but I wasn’t sure I could find it.”

  Chuffed with himself for his bush navigation skills, Ben took off his boots and waded into the water. “Aaaggh! It’s freezing. Come on in.”

  Louise sat with her back against one of the gnarled guMs “In a minute. I want something to eat first.”

  She’d already washed her hands in the water and now emptied all the goodies she’d packed from her bag—a couple of oranges, a muesli bar, ham and tomato sandwiches with tomato sauce and a bottle of home-made chocolate milk with honey. “Come and help me eat all this.”

  The friends had a leisurely lunch while the horses grazed nearby. The hobbles stopped them going too far while allowing them to walk with limited steps. They seemed content, swishing their tails at the flies and keeping close to each other.