WILD HORSES

Evening Star, Issue 21518, 16 September 1933, Page 11

WILD HORSES

NUISANCE IN AUSTRALIA There are pastoral holdings in the out-back country of Australia where station horses, turned out on areas of many square miles and unvisited by white men, have bred so rapidly that they have become a nuisance, and have had to be destroyed. An instance has just been reported from Ceduna, on the west coast of Eyre Peninsula, near the eastern end of the Australian Bight. So troublesome did the wild horses or “ brumbies ’’ become on the six-million acre Madura station, near the head of the Bight, that horse-trappers were hired. Skill and patience were necessary for the job. The first operation was the building of a. stock-proof enclosure at a bore 2,000 feet deep which supplies water for the surrounding country. In the dry season, when outback soaks and rock holes dry, it provides the only moisture for stock in the neighbourhood, and the brumbies are compelled by thirst to visit it. The entrance to the yard was through a 12ft gate, and at the outset, the horsetrappers lay beside it at night, uniting for the horses to enter, so that the gate could be slammed and the brumbies imprisoned. However, the wild horses have developed a remarkably keen sense of smell, and, scenting” the presence of humans, they re- . fused to enter. So the trappers had 1 to resort to more' subtle methods. It } is a. peculiarity of the brumbies that they seldom look up, and, seizing on the trait, the trappers perched themselves 12 or 15 feet above the ground on the railing near the gate. The horses walked into the trap. Three catches secured 120 between them this season, and in 1932 their total was 180. Some of the best of the wild horses are kept, and once their wild spirit is * broken, they make good country hacks, for they are remarkably hardy and wiry. Their reaction when they first faced men in the yard was strange. Some trembled with fear, and a feu: collapsed.