ROUGH RIDERS FOR SYDNEY

Horowhenua Chronicle, 22 March 1938, Page 8

ROUGH RIDERS FOR SYDNEY

NEW ZEALAND TEAM FROM GISBORNE To select a team of rough-riders, broncho-busters and cow-punchers capable of competing with the wildest from the Wild West of North America Mr. T. B. MaeFarlane, councillor of the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales, arrived at Wellington by the Awatea from Sydney yesterday. He said that he had come to choose a team to represent New Zealand at the Sydney Sesquicentennial Royal Show from April 9th to April 23rd. It appears that the East Coast produces the roughest riders in New Zealand, for Mr. MaeFarlane has selected Gisborne as the most likely huntingground. He flew to Gisborne yesterday afternoon, and will return to Australia via Auckland.

Mr. MacFarlane said that he would choose four horsemen, if he could find any good enough to compete with the best from Australia, Canada and the United States. They would have to be able to sit an unbroken horse for ten seconds from the moment it started to buck. They must also be adepts at bull-dogging, a pastime in which two riders gallop up to a steer and one leaps off, fastens on it by the horns and throws it, much as a wrestler throws his opponent from a headloek. They need only take a fall in two minutes, but the feat has been achieved in 5i seconds.

Another contest that will take place at the show will be camp-drafting. There is to be an inter-State contest between teams comprising four men and four women. This will consist of riding into a mob of cattle and cutting out certain specified bullocks. Asked what part the women played, Mr< MacFarlane said they were often infinitely better than the men.

He stated that the American and Canadian cowboys were already staying at his station, Merriwa, on the Upper Hunter River, where they, were practising. Asked if this was not somewhat detrimental to his stock, he said not. Most of them were themselves ranchers in America and in their spare time, for the sake of the sport, followed up the rodeos in various parts of the country.