Articles
Australia's Own Horse - The Waler
The majority of horses in the Corps were Walers and there is no doubt that these hardy Australian horses make the finest cavalry mounts in the world.... They (the Australians) have got types of compact, well-built, saddle and harness horses that no other part of the world can show. Rather on the light side according to our ideas, but hard as nails and with beautiful clean legs and feet. Their records in this war place them far above the Cavalry horse of any other nation. The Australians themselves can never understand our partiality for the half-bred weight-carrying hunter, which looks to them like a cart horse. Their contention has always been that good blood will carry more weight than big bone, and the experience of this war has converted the writer, for one, entirely to their point of view. It must be remembered that the Australian countrymen are bigger, heavier men than their English brothers. They formed just half the Corps and it probable that they averaged not far off 12 stone each stripped. To this weight must be added another 9-1/2 stone for saddle, ammunition, sword, rifle, clothes and accoutrements, so that each horse carried a weight of 21 stone, all day for every day for 17 days, - on less than half the normal ration of forage and with only one drink in every 36 hours!
The weight-carrying English Hunter had to be nursed back to fitness after these operations and for a long period, while the little Australian horses without any special care, other than good food and plenty of water were soon fit to go through another campaign as arduous as the last one!...."
One well known Waler was Major M. Shanahan's mount 'Bill the Bastard' who bucked when asked to gallop. Yet, during World War I, when the Major found four Australians outflanked by the Turks, 'Bill the Bastard' carried all five men – three on his back and one on each stirrup - three quarters of a mile .75 miles (1.21 km) through soft sand at a lumbering gallop – without first bucking.
At the end of the war 11,000 surplus horses in the Middle East were sold to the British Army as remounts for Egypt and India. Some horses that were categorised as being unfit were destroyed. Also, some light horsemen chose to destroy their horses rather than part with them, but this was an exception, despite the popular myth that portrays it as the ultimate fate of all the horses. Still, parting with their Walers was one of the hardest events the light horsemen had to endure. A poem by "Trooper Bluegum" sums up the men's sentiment:
I don't think I could stand the thought of my old fancy hack
Just crawling round old Cairo with a 'Gyppo on his back.
Perhaps some English tourist out in Palestine may find
My broken-hearted Waler with a wooden plough behind.
No: I think I'd better shoot him and tell a little lie:--
"He floundered in a wombat hole and then lay down to die."
May be I'll get court-martialled; but I'm damned if I'm inclined
To go back to Australia and leave my horse behind.
From Australia in Palestine, 1919
During World War II 360 Australian Walers were assigned to the Texas National Guard 112th Cavalry in New Caledonia who were eventually deemed unfit for jungle warfare. They then traveled to India where they served with the Chinese Army before being assigned to the unit known as Merrill's Marauders.
As demand for remounts declined in the 1940s, the Waler trade ended. When the Australian Stock Horse Society was formed in 1971, the majority of horses accepted into its studbook were Waler horses. The ASHS also accepted horses of other breeds, notably Quarter horses, which has always been controversial. However, while many stock horses do have Quarter horse genetics in their breeding, not all do as there are still many breeders who only breed horses of the old heritage bloodlines. These Heritage Stock Horses have extensive pedigrees often back to the 19th century and are direct descendants of Walers with no Quarter Horse or other modern breeds.
In the 1980s efforts commenced to reestablish the breed using feral Walers descended from horses that had been set loose in rural regions, when the commercial trade ceased. The Waler horse now has two breed associations interested in preserving it, the Waler Horse Owners and Breeders Association Australia Inc. (WHOBAA) and the Waler Horse Society of Australia Inc (WHSA). Only horses and their progeny derived from the old bloodlines, with no imported genetics since 1945, can be registered as Walers with the Waler Horse Society of Australia.
A memorial statue to the Waler Light Horse was erected at Tamworth, New South Wales as a tribute to the men of the ANZAC Corps who served in Boer, Sudan and First World Wars. This memorial was constructed at a cost of $150,000, funded by grants from Federal and State Governments, Tamworth Regional Council, Joblink Plus and donations from business houses, property owners, RSL Members and the community and was designed and created by sculptor Tanya Bartlett from Newcastle, New South Wales. The military equipment is identical to that used in the First World War. Forty-seven light horse re-enactment riders and the 12th/16th Hunter River lancers took part in the unveiling by Major General William B. "Digger" James AC MBE MC (Retd) on 29 October 2005.
Today's Waler is a functional Australian horse, bred from bloodlines that came to Australia before 1945, that is free of imported genetics since that time.
The weight-carrying English Hunter had to be nursed back to fitness after these operations and for a long period, while the little Australian horses without any special care, other than good food and plenty of water were soon fit to go through another campaign as arduous as the last one!...."
One well known Waler was Major M. Shanahan's mount 'Bill the Bastard' who bucked when asked to gallop. Yet, during World War I, when the Major found four Australians outflanked by the Turks, 'Bill the Bastard' carried all five men – three on his back and one on each stirrup - three quarters of a mile .75 miles (1.21 km) through soft sand at a lumbering gallop – without first bucking.
At the end of the war 11,000 surplus horses in the Middle East were sold to the British Army as remounts for Egypt and India. Some horses that were categorised as being unfit were destroyed. Also, some light horsemen chose to destroy their horses rather than part with them, but this was an exception, despite the popular myth that portrays it as the ultimate fate of all the horses. Still, parting with their Walers was one of the hardest events the light horsemen had to endure. A poem by "Trooper Bluegum" sums up the men's sentiment:
I don't think I could stand the thought of my old fancy hack
Just crawling round old Cairo with a 'Gyppo on his back.
Perhaps some English tourist out in Palestine may find
My broken-hearted Waler with a wooden plough behind.
No: I think I'd better shoot him and tell a little lie:--
"He floundered in a wombat hole and then lay down to die."
May be I'll get court-martialled; but I'm damned if I'm inclined
To go back to Australia and leave my horse behind.
From Australia in Palestine, 1919
During World War II 360 Australian Walers were assigned to the Texas National Guard 112th Cavalry in New Caledonia who were eventually deemed unfit for jungle warfare. They then traveled to India where they served with the Chinese Army before being assigned to the unit known as Merrill's Marauders.
As demand for remounts declined in the 1940s, the Waler trade ended. When the Australian Stock Horse Society was formed in 1971, the majority of horses accepted into its studbook were Waler horses. The ASHS also accepted horses of other breeds, notably Quarter horses, which has always been controversial. However, while many stock horses do have Quarter horse genetics in their breeding, not all do as there are still many breeders who only breed horses of the old heritage bloodlines. These Heritage Stock Horses have extensive pedigrees often back to the 19th century and are direct descendants of Walers with no Quarter Horse or other modern breeds.
In the 1980s efforts commenced to reestablish the breed using feral Walers descended from horses that had been set loose in rural regions, when the commercial trade ceased. The Waler horse now has two breed associations interested in preserving it, the Waler Horse Owners and Breeders Association Australia Inc. (WHOBAA) and the Waler Horse Society of Australia Inc (WHSA). Only horses and their progeny derived from the old bloodlines, with no imported genetics since 1945, can be registered as Walers with the Waler Horse Society of Australia.
A memorial statue to the Waler Light Horse was erected at Tamworth, New South Wales as a tribute to the men of the ANZAC Corps who served in Boer, Sudan and First World Wars. This memorial was constructed at a cost of $150,000, funded by grants from Federal and State Governments, Tamworth Regional Council, Joblink Plus and donations from business houses, property owners, RSL Members and the community and was designed and created by sculptor Tanya Bartlett from Newcastle, New South Wales. The military equipment is identical to that used in the First World War. Forty-seven light horse re-enactment riders and the 12th/16th Hunter River lancers took part in the unveiling by Major General William B. "Digger" James AC MBE MC (Retd) on 29 October 2005.
Today's Waler is a functional Australian horse, bred from bloodlines that came to Australia before 1945, that is free of imported genetics since that time.
