Outback Heroines

by Sue Williams

  Even when Lyn first started attending equine-assisted therapy workshops in country Victoria, the other students would marvel at the way horses would respond to her. She’d walk into a paddock and immediately a few would peel away from the rest of the herd and come straight to her side. Everyone accused her of keeping molasses in her pockets.

  Lyn has always loved horses and has often found, through them, a way of helping other people.

  A nurse by profession, she was working in the clinic at Marree, the little town at the beginning of the Birdsville Track, when an elderly Aboriginal man came in, with feet that were a startling shade of navy blue. He had a history of diabetes, bad circulation and hypertension. Lyn phoned the doctor on call from the Royal Flying Doctor Service and asked what could be done. The doctor said, looking through his medical records, there was nothing left that would help.

  Unwilling to turn him away, however, Lyn instead asked him if he’d like a horse treatment. ‘Growing up on a farm, always being surrounded by horses, we used to do most of the horse treatments ourselves,’ says Lyn. ‘When I moved here, my dad gave me his old vet book as, up here, we’re so far from vets, I’d also try to treat the horses myself sometimes.’

  The man was enthusiastic about trying anything she could offer, so she told him to hop up on the examination bed, and then started to massage olive oil into his feet. ‘He came back the next day and said his feet felt a bit better,’ says Lyn. ‘So I did it again, and again, ending up doing it for six weeks in a row.’

  Watching on, her fellow nurse Anne Morphett was amazed at the transformation in the patient. ‘That man could have ended up losing his feet,’ she says. ‘But he didn’t. He’d been in a lot of pain when he came, and later said all the pain had gone. Lyn improved the quality of his life considerably.’

  After that experience, Lyn decided to take a course in how to massage people and then approached the medical authorities to see if that was a service she could offer patients once a month. They ran a survey among patients six months later to see how it was working out. The old Aboriginal man had asked the resident clinic nurse, Sister June Andrews, to write on his form: ‘When I first came to Lyn, I couldn’t sleep more than two hours a night because my feet were too painful, I couldn’t walk to the pub without my walking frame, and I couldn’t even feel Lyn’s hands on my feet. After six months, I can sleep all night, I can walk to the pub and I can feel Lyn’s hands all the way to my heart.’

  Fifteen years later, she’s still massaging a queue of patients once a month – anything from seven in a day to 17.

  Another course she did to help horses had unexpected benefits for a human, too. After completing an Equine Bowen Therapy course to treat animals for musculoskeletal, neuromuscular and pain problems using a certain massage technique, a friend came to visit. He’d been on antibiotics for three months with a sore jaw, and was in agony. He asked if she could maybe try out her newly learnt horse treatment on him.

  ‘He said he’d try anything after three months of pain,’ laughs Lyn. ‘So I made him get down on all fours, and then I read from my book what to do. It felt weird but we did it. Then I told him the book said he should come back in four days for another treatment, so he came back and said he’d been feeling much better! After the second treatment, he threw his antibiotics away and he says he’s never had that problem since.’

  Lyn was born Lynette Edwards in 1954, the eldest of six children growing up on a mixed sheep and cattle farm outside the small agricultural town of Cleve on the Central Eyre Peninsula, 140 kilometres north of Port Lincoln in South Australia. Her dad, Morris, had grown up there, going to school by horse and cart, after his parents cleared the land themselves using horses, logs and chains. Her mum, Mary, came from the Adelaide Hills, the daughter of a market gardener.

  The little girl inherited her dad’s love of horses and dogs, and was riding even as a toddler, perched on the front of his saddle and clinging to his arm as he steered the horse over jumps. Later she attended pony club and shows with her ponies and then went showjumping and mock hunting. Like most girls, she fantasised about meeting her favourite band, The Beatles, but not backstage; she dreamt about bringing them to the farm, and taking them out riding. ‘I’ve always felt very comfortable around horses,’ she says. ‘I love the feeling of riding along freely. It’s that’s freedom and connection with nature. I love the smell of horses and the way they act.’

  At 16, she went to Adelaide to study nursing and, when she’d qualified as a registered nurse, she applied for, and accepted, a job in what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. With seven months to fill in before her departure, she did some work for the Royal District Nursing Service, visiting people in their homes, and then received a counteroffer: a job in Marree in the north of the state, with a good wage, a train ticket, all food supplied, electricity paid for, plus a car. She felt she couldn’t refuse.

  As the fresh-faced, softly spoken 20-year-old with startling blue eyes and black hair stepped off that train in Marree back in 1974, she was noticed by local farmer Gordon Litchfield. He went over to say hello to the new sister, and discovered she loved horses. The next day he turned up with a horse he offered to lend her. ‘That gave me an excuse to phone her every night to find out how the horse was going,’ he laughs. ‘I was attracted in the first place because of her looks, and then it was everything else.’

  Lyn resisted his attentions at first. She told him she was keen to do her midwifery course, and wasn’t interested in having a boyfriend. ‘But he found ways to make me fall in love with him,’ she says. ‘He talked me into marrying him, and said he’d come with me to do my mids if we got married . . . So I never did make it to Rhodesia, and he always says he saved my life as that was about the time the troubles there really started.’

  Back then, Marree was a stop on the old Ghan line from Adelaide to Alice and was a busy railway town with about 300 people, two nurses and a fortnightly visit from a Flying Doctor. It was a hectic pace of life, dealing with injuries on stations, miscarriages and illnesses, and often having to fly out to patients. A year later, Lyn went with her new husband – true to his word – to Port Pirie on the Spencer Gulf to study midwifery. When they’d finished, they moved to Wilpoorinna, the property that had been in his family since 1958 when his parents came down from Clifton Hills on the Birdsville Track, and into its lonely homestead in what was then little more than a set of barren ochre sandhills, scattered with red gibber stone, with barely a sliver of greenery in sight. At age 23, she had their son, Adam, and, 15 months later, their daughter, Sarah.

  With Gordon working away so often, Lyn learnt quickly to be self-sufficient. She worried terribly about Adam since he had bad asthma and she often fretted that in an emergency at night in such an isolated place it would be a dangerously long trip to hospital. But she continued to nurse part-time at Marree, 40 kilometres from the property, and still managed to compete in campdrafts and other riding events. The rest of her time she’d spend helping with the 2000 cattle and 8000 sheep and their growing herd of around 50 horses – racehorses, ex-racehorses and stockhorses, some of which were descendants from the first horses Gordon’s parents had brought with them. ‘We started out with a few horses but, because we were so keen on them, people gave us their horses, and it doesn’t take much for them to breed,’ Lyn says. ‘We’ve been married now for 37 years so we’ve ended up knowing different generations of horses.’ She strokes the neck of one chestnut filly. ‘We know this one’s grandmother and great-grandmother!’

  Lyn also home-schooled the children and, just as her own father had done for her, taught them to ride early in their lives. ‘She’s always been a great mum,’ says Adam, now aged 36, and a champion rider himself. ‘She encouraged us to ride from an early age, and we’d always go to shows, so we grew up in a real sort of horse culture. She loves horses and understands them and hopefully she passed that on to us.’

  She also passed on a real love of the Outback, despite many of the hardships of l
iving there. Her daughter Sarah, 35, says her attitude to it is simply infectious. ‘One of the wonderful things about Mum is her passion and joy for station life and the adventures it brings,’ she says. ‘It certainly takes strength of character to survive in the Outback, but it is a special quality that defines her; it is about embracing the experience and the adventures it offers. Mum has never grimly endured station life; it has always been cherished and shared. If you look at the incredible friends she has from all walks of life that she has made in many different circumstances, all those talented and unique people seem to recognise that same spark and generosity of spirit in her.’

  Eleven years after Lyn gave birth to Sarah, she and Gordon had another surprise, a baby girl they called Ellen. She too learnt how to love the land, care for animals, and ride horses. ‘It was always a lot of fun,’ says Ellen, 24, now working as a vet in Clare, north of Adelaide. ‘We’d go out riding and she’d make up all these games. If we saw a lizard, we’d have to canter for 100 metres, a kangaroo and we’d trot for 100 metres, or a dead animal and we’d have to get off and walk. Or we’d ride to a favourite picnic spot and have sausages and pancakes. We’d make our own little jumps or go to what we called “The Neverlands” and just jump through the bush. It was a great way to learn to love the Outback.’

  Lyn Litchfield. (Photo by Jimmy Thomson)

  One of the headline events of the Year of the Outback in 2002 was The Great Australian Outback Cattle Drive. The Birdsville Track was chosen for the drive, 600 cattle and 170 horses were gathered, and the 515-kilometre stock route from Birdsville to Marree was divided into a number of legs for visitors, who included Australian city slickers, international tourists, legions of local and overseas media, and old bushies simply wanting to relive the atmosphere of the long-gone droving days.

  Lyn was recruited as a horse tailer – one of the team responsible for watering and feeding the horses and bringing them to camp in the morning – as well as a general rider-helper and nurse. Gordon, a stockman who’d taken part in many real cattle drives in the past, was brought in to match riders to horses, and cut a memorable figure among the tourists with his trademark big, grey handlebar moustache and tall, wide-brimmed hat. They supplied 70 horses, both theirs and their friends’.

  The drive was an enormous success and others followed as bi-annual events. But they were never without incident. ‘That first one was pretty nerve-racking because most people couldn’t ride, and they tended to be older,’ says Lyn. ‘Some of the horses were quite wild too. One time, I was asked to look after a man who was 90 years old! It took Gordon, me and someone else to even get him on the horse, then I walked beside him with my heart in my mouth. I could see the cattle disappearing ahead of us and after about five minutes I said to the man, “Do you think you’ve had enough? Would you like to go in the horse and cart or in a car?” He said, “Yes, yes, I think I’ve had enough!” We both breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Another time, a lady of 81 had signed up for the experienced group of riders, which always set off last as they could trot and canter to catch up to the cattle. We only had the liveliest horses left for that group, which wasn’t normally a problem. But we tried to find the quietest of the lively ones for her as she said she had a dairy farm, and rode mostly to get the dairy cows in. Well, she had a broken-down old saddle that she said she used to ride to school on and when I asked her if she was ready to trot, she was appalled and said she’d only ever intended to go at walking pace. “Oh no!” she said. “I don’t want to trot, darling!”

  ‘I could see the cattle disappearing in the distance but very soon they were out of sight completely. You’d think it would be easy to follow the tracks of 170 horses and 600 head of cattle! But no, it was a place where there was all this dry creeper sort of plant and vegetation on the ground, I could hardly see anything. But she wasn’t the slightest bit worried; she felt as safe as a church riding with me. She was telling me how she used to yodel and did some yodelling for me, which was good, but I had my heart in my mouth the whole time and I couldn’t enjoy it. I was terrified they’d have to send a helicopter down to find me and this old lady on a horse . . .’

  Another older rider was absolutely no problem on a later leg. Initially, Lyn feared the worst when she saw the woman was around 80 years old and had a pink perm and a green leather handbag that she refused to take off her arm while riding – she didn’t want to be separated from her cigarettes, she explained – and then confessed she hadn’t ridden since she’d finished school. Despite this, she plodded along happily on Lyn’s horse, while Lyn took the wilder mare. ‘She was so confident,’ says Lyn. ‘My horse didn’t feel any stress from her, so he behaved perfectly. How wonderful to be 80 and just sit on a horse and enjoy the whole thing!’

  Lyn did it again in 2007, while Gordon and Adam took turns on the other years. ‘But it was a terrific experience, we all met some interesting people and had some really good horsemen with us. I made some great friends.’

  The event showed her how much other people could enjoy riding horses through the bush, and afterwards she organised some horse trails for local kids, and also introduced riding programs at Leigh Creek. ‘It’s amazing how much she does to help others,’ says good friend Cindy Mitchell, her nearest neighbour, on a station 100 kilometres away. ‘She was asked the other day to go to the school at Hawker to show them the horses, so she got up in the freezing cold of night to load the horses and then do the three-hour drive to Hawker just so the kids could see them. I think they looked at them, then went back into the warm inside, looking at her horses through the windows while she was still outside in the bitter cold!’

  But, undeterred, she keeps up programs for schoolkids including mini-cattle drives, trail rides, barbecues, gymkhanas and riding camps for local Aboriginal kids, as well as using her equine-assisted therapy training to help all manner of people. Anne Morphett says the results are remarkable, especially with youngsters, with Lyn constantly making positive remarks to those in difficulty, and congratulating them on every advance. ‘You can see their marks really improving at school, and their confidence growing and them interacting so much more openly with other people,’ says Anne. ‘It’s beautiful to see.’

  There were also some Aboriginal children with problems at home whom she really helped, Cindy adds. ‘She promised them riding lessons if they went to school every day, and that had a great effect on their attendance. Some of the kids she helps aren’t even aware they’re being helped. She does it in such a quiet, unobtrusive way. Horse therapy is big in the US but it’s not so well known here. I think she’s a woman way before her time – especially here in the Outback!’

  It’s not only through the horses she contributes to the community, either. She’s taken a number of workshops to improve the service she can offer to patients at the Marree clinic, including aromatherapy, reflexology and using Australian bush-flower essences for helping with certain problems, like sleeplessness or quitting smoking. There are also her ‘Women’s Walks’ for women to get together and help stave off loneliness in the bush.

  ‘She gives off such a positive vibe all the time,’ Anne says. ‘She’s thoughtful and caring and often brings round a cake or flowers to people and, in the Outback, a bunch of flowers is amazingly uplifting. She’s always ready to listen, too, which is a great gift, and she’ll constantly go out of her way to help others. She’s completely selfless but she gives so much energy to other people, sometimes I think she will wear herself out.’

  Today, Lyn, now aged 59, is taking some feed out to some of the horses by the dam that she and Gordon dug, 5.5 metres deep. She greets them each by name and lets them nuzzle her before embracing each one warmly. One of her dogs, Wizzer, runs along constantly at her heels. He’s hoping they’ll have a swim together in the dam, but today he’s out of luck. She just doesn’t have the time.

  Her days are still full, despite her children having grown up. Adam is now busy as a stockman on the family properties, while his wif
e, Kate, is a vet; Sarah is in the Middle East as the communications officer for a hospital where her husband, Tom, is an organisational psychologist with the world’s largest oil company; and Ellen is in Clare, working as the nearest vet to Wilpoorinna – a mere 470-kilometre drive north. Lyn travelled overseas for the birth of Sarah’s second daughter, Augusta, two years after her first, Agatha, and has just celebrated the first birthday of her grandson Sydney, Adam and Kate’s first child.

  Horses continue to play a big part in her life, and of those around her. Keen on endurance riding over long distances, she started breeding Arabian horses for that purpose and became so successful that she even sold some to Qatar and Dubai in the Middle East, as well as to buyers around Australia. Her first stallion was lent to her by champion endurance rider Meg Wade, who became a good friend and visited Wilpoorinna regularly in her helicopter, choosing some of Lyn’s foals. In 2009, Meg fell from her horse in a terrible accident while competing, and was left in a coma for three months with a fractured skull and brain injuries. It’s a source of comfort to Lyn, and some pride, that it’s one of her Arab mares that is helping Meg through her rehab, working with her and her disability to achieve a new set of goals, including returning to endurance riding.

  Adam has also gone on to win acclaim for his horsemanship. In 2006, he starred as the lead in the Discovery Channel documentary Outback Cowboys, and he and Kate both worked on Baz Luhrmann’s epic 2008 movie Australia, he as cattle wrangler, and she as the vet. In thanks for his efforts, star Hugh Jackman presented him with a gift of an engraved belt buckle. The year after, Adam was chosen to deliver the Melbourne Cup to Flemington, then ride in a traditional ringer’s outfit on his stockhorse Minstrel, carrying the gold trophy down the straight before the big race, watched by thousands of cheering cup fans and five million viewers on TV. ‘Kate had to wash the horse first as he was so dusty by the time he got there,’ laughs Lyn. ‘Then he started eating all the grass from the stable, and then ate some grass on the track during the rehearsal. It was a worry!’