Heritage Tales - Earaheedy Sydney (Earie)

“Horses and children, I often think, have a lot of the good sense
there is in the world.”

~Josephine Demott Robinson

As her letters state, when Sheila went back to Earaheedy in 2005 to attempt the muster with Paul, she spent – once again – many hours lying hidden in the bushes by the six station dams, in the company of finches and thousands of flies, to study the horses. This preliminary ground work was vital. In this way she ascertained numbers, condition of the horses, knowledge of which stallion owned which mares and so on.

As she noted, there was an old mare who was on her own. There were a couple like this and it was never a good sign. With the possible exception of (single) bachelor colts, a wild horse seen without a herd is usually injured, ill or old and has either been abandoned or driven out. An old mare alone with a foal would have predators to consider as well as water, feed and milk for the foal, and her chances of survival would not be rated very good at all.

Sydney’s mother was one such mare. She was so old and in such poor health, she was almost beyond caring. When she passed by Sheila (hidden in the bushes), at the same time every day on her way to the dwindling dam with her foal, Sydney was the one who would try to warn her. Sydney (although he wasn’t known as Sydney at that point), would notice and Sheila said you could almost see him tugging on his mother’s apron strings and pointing at her going; “Mother, mother, there’s something hiding in the bushes…look, look, I’m not joking!”

But the mare ignored him and ignored Sheila, preferring to concentrate on drinking and remaining upright. Sheila knew the animal was going to die and wondered what would become of the small black colt foal – only then about six months old and in poor condition himself.

On the day of the muster – which ended up being from the air and from the ground, due to a decision not to water trap (fencing off the dams would have meant preventing the remaining native and other animals from drinking) – they managed to capture only 14 of the 40 odd horses known to be still alive on the station. The old mare was one of those caught...but there was no sign of young Sydney. Sheila worried that the foal would die but thought she had seen him and another youngster from the air and held a faint hope that he might find his way to the corralled horses.

The muster was a partial success but raised concerns. They had managed to capture some horses, but not nearly all. Would the rest die from lack of water and feed before they could organise another muster? What had happened to Sydney? They had no more time or resources to try again on that occasion and the remaining horses had literally all bolted. As Sheila’s letters state, the muster involved chasing the horses into pre-prepared yards down huge, Y-shaped chutes of hessian covered fencing. It took a lot of preparation and a number of very generous local station owners and their friends and helpers, who volunteered to help try to rescue the horses.

They caught 10 mares, 3 stallions and 1 foal, a homely looking dark brown roman nosed filly who did not seem to belong to any of the mares. In hindsight, they were the oldest and youngest, and the horses in the poorest condition. The vets placed water in buckets in the metal yards, along with hay, and left the horses to calm down and draw breath after their run. What nobody realised, at that point, was that the wildest of the wild did not know how to drink water out of raised containers...

The oldest stallion (Rex) survived the first night. Another stallion and Sydney’s sick old mother did not. The next morning, Sheila and Paul returned to find the bodies. In hindsight, the horses who died could have simply run too far or, as in the case of Sydney's mother, been in already poor condition from the effects of age and drought. This is why Sheila had not wanted to muster and the deaths were very upsetting. That left the vets with less horses…and none of them appeared to be drinking. Then a miracle happened. Two young foals suddenly turned up outside the yards, calling to the horses inside…and one of them was Sydney.

A spindly legged black colt and a strapping, golden brown filly. Both about six months old and both determined they weren’t going to be left behind. The two vets managed to get them inside the yards, where they wandered about calling for their mothers. A tall, big boned mare, later called Margaret, claimed the filly Kerry-Lynn, who then befriended the roman nosed filly, named Giselle. Because of this, Giselle managed to steal milk off Kerry-Lynn’s big mother, whenever the mare wasn’t looking. Sydney latched on to Spider, the sickest, thinnest looking grey mare in the mob who everybody had thought would not survive the night. For whatever reason, the already ill mare adopted Sydney, even though she had no milk with which to feed him. Perhaps she had lost her own foal or perhaps she had come from the same mob, nobody knew, but Sydney had a new carer and Sheila was content.

Later that morning, the horses were loaded with some difficulty onto Mr Quadrio’s cattle truck. It took time and patience. The horses had never seen anything like a truck and had to be squeezed up the ramp. Spider, in the end, refused point blank and sat down backwards on the boards and started eating leaves she found on the ramp. So that’s how six men carried her onto the truck – backwards. It became her trademark – she loaded backwards and unloaded backwards, walking herself carefully down the ramp. She was a unique individual.

The surviving horses were then trucked the several hours back to Granite Peaks Station, where proper yards were available. Unloading them took almost as much time as getting them on, probably because they were tired, scared and in a strange new world, never having been off Earaheedy. In the end, the smell of water and hay in the yards encouraged a younger stallion, later named Pope, and roman nosed filly, Norma, to totter down the ramp. The others soon followed.

At first, the horses tried to suck the water beneath the water troughs off the ground. They had no concept of drinking water from any sort of container. It took Sheila’s patient reaching in and tapping on their chins from outside the yards, to get them to raise their heads and see what was, literally, right in front of their noses. Fresh water – an endless supply. It did not take them long, after that, to drink greedily and begin to munch on the hay scattered about the yard. They were on their way to recovery.

Sydney and Giselle – the toughest of the tough in miniature – survived the journey south along with Kerry-Lynn. That these foals did so, in a truck loaded with nervous adults, is a testament to their hardiness and also to the care and concern shown by the adult horses. The mob looked after it’s foals, tucking them away in the middle when someone approached and being careful not to step on them when loading and unloading. Even Rex the stallion was careful around the foals. They snatched milk from Margaret and learned to eat hay. Giselle had cut her chest and arrived in Margaret River looking very thin and extremely tottery, but she rallied well under veterinary supervision and quickly began to heal.

Spider, Sydney’s newly adopted “mother”, survived as long as she could. She seemed to rally with the others and ate and drank more than her fair share, even approaching the humans along with Pope and Norma, on occasion. When Sheila examined her teeth she aged her – only eight years old. Eight years wild, although she was not as nervous as one or two of the younger mares and seemed to realise that these strange two-legged predators were in fact trying to help. On the odd occasion where it did get too much, Spider, contrary to the last, ran in the opposite direction to the herd and took Sydney with her, having the good sense to go to a quiet area and sit down. After first being halter broken, she sat and refused to be led. She was left to think about things and get up again on her own, which of course she did, in her own good time, and was consequently taken back to the yards.

The vets and their helpers were careful what they fed the horses – harsh living, starving wild horses cannot be given rich domestic food straight away. This can, quite literally, kill them with kindness. They had to have oaten hay in restricted amounts, paddock hay, and a mixture of ordinary chaff, lucerne chaff, flaky bran and minerals, in specific doses. That was all – except for grass, of course, which they “discovered” in Margaret River, and ate in spades.

Surprisingly, none of the horses were found to have intestinal worms of any kind. Their wild desert existence had saved them from one of the main banes of domestic horse’s lives. The internal parasites could not live out their full life cycle without adequate moisture and on Earaheedy, the horse’s world was dry and barren. Hence no worming required.

Unfortunately for Spider, her health had already been compromised by drought and the harsh conditions on the station – in the end it appeared that despite her will to live, her organs had already begun to shut down. There was a cold snap in March 2005, a fortnight or so after the horse’s arrival. Despite being sheltered and munching contentedly on hay when last checked, Spider succumbed during the night. She died, leaving young Sydney in the care of his new found herd.

Over the coming months and like the other two foals, Sydney learned much more quickly than the older horses to adapt to “domestic” life. The foals learned to love attention and – as Sydney had an umbilical hernia and was castrated early as a result of this – the young fellow learned to like having his tummy scratched. He would stretch out in the sun and allow anyone to come up and tickle his dark underbelly. He has grown and is already “greying out” – as are all the foals. He will be a striking looking horse and probably end up around 15.1hh. A good size for riding about the countryside. He is a bright little fellow and learns quickly. Sydney was sold in May 2005 to a lovely local family and is well on his way to being spoilt thoroughly rotten and having his own way completely. We are certain that – wherever they are now – both Spider and his mother would be very proud. “Earaheedy” as he has now been re-named, will surely live a very long and fulfilling life in the company of man.

UPDATE - 2009

"Earie" still belongs to the same family who adopted him in Margaret River as a foal. He is now a strapping 3.5 year old gelding, almost fully greyed out. (See photos at right.) He enjoys a very good country life with several other working horses on the large cattle property belonging to his owners. Earie is a real personality - a tough, active fellow who has recently been educated to saddle and will shortly begin training as a campdrafter. He has the same natural herding/chasing ability as all the Earaheedys and makes new fans where ever he goes. His rescue has been a great success story.