DAY OF THE HORSE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19139, 7 October 1936, Page 5

DAY OF THE HORSE

REVIVAL PREDICTED AUSTRALIAN POSITION I ’OO R QUA IA T V RE M OUNTS SYDNEY, Sept. 28. Experts everywhere on the Royal Agricultural Showground at the annual Horse Exhibition on Saturday expressed delight at the displays, and there was general endorsement of the view that Australia was moving towards a revival of the days of equine pre-eminence.

The Acting Premier, Mr. Bruxner, who was one of tho, judges, said that the horse was by no means a thing of the past, as was shown that day. There were a splendid' lot of horses and turnouts participating.

“1 have noticed, going round the shows,” he said, “that there are many more horses in the ring to-day than there were a few years ago. Lady riders, particularly, are more numerous. Throughout the farming districts the horse is coming back tremendously. You could buy heavy horses a few years ago for £6 or £7 —prices at which it did not pay to breed them.” A prominent buyer in Air. Bruxner’s company produced invoices to show he had paid £3O and £35 for heavy horses. “Y’ou can get any price for hacks,’ he added. “The difficulty is to find utility hacks.” Mr. Bruxner added that the police could not get YValers (horses bred in this State), and if there was another war to-morrow, it would be impossible to mount a Light Horse Brigade with the type of horses used in the last war. In the last two years of the Great War, tho only class of transport on which lie could rely to get rations to his men was tho horse-drawn G.S. wagon.

The president of the Horse Association of New South Wales, Alderman J. McMahon, said the procession was smaller this year than last, as some of the military horses had suffered from strangles, and it would have been unfair to the other competitors to have allowed them to participate. He thought there was a growing interest in the horse, which would increase as public imaginaI ion was aroused.

“A man recently came to Australia to buy horses for the Indian Army, and lie reported, after travelling throughout Australia, that only 2 per cent of the horses he saw were fit for remount duty,” Alderman McMahon said. “This man had to go to America to purchase remounts and mules. He was paid £66 a head for every horse landed in India and approved by the Indian Army an thorities.”

Tho Second District Base Commandant, Colonel F. Lorenzo, said that about six years ago lie saw a young Clydesdale stallion that won second prize at a big show sold for 40gns. To-day that horse would bring 400gus. He added that the Defence Department did not have difficulty in buying remounts, probably because it went tlie right way about doing so.