The Gimp...

Although riding Peter in the school holidays was heaps better than nothing at all, it was still only a holiday thing, and my Sister and I longed to have a horse of our own. Other people had horses in their backyard, we reasoned, so we set about making a stable for the Fifty Dollar Foal- the one that was in the horses, vehicles and livestock column of the classified ads of our newspaper each Saturday-that our Father was going to let me buy for my tenth birthday.

Just you wait and see.

We made the stable, if you could call it that, out of the material that was left over after the above ground pool was pulled down; which we then cut up with Dad's tin snips and nailed with large tacks to the neighbour's fence- which forms one of the walls- as does the small garden shed on the other side, and the virtually impenetratable fern fills in the rear wall. For weeks before the big event we collect the clippings from the lawn mower to save money buying hay, without knowing we would have accidently poisoned an animal by feeding it to them.

Anyway, as history shows I didn't get a foal for my birthday that year, or in fact any other year, but instead got the Little Buckaroo riding lessons that I enjoyed so much. I suppose I should say I did enjoy the lessons; at least I was near horses, which was way preferable to being far away from horses, which was how it was for most of the time. Until fifth class that is.

One of my friend's mother's- Mel Smell's- worked at a supermarket and met an English woman while she was going through the checkout with her children and their shopping. That's the only normal thing They ever did that I know about. I'd love to tell you her name, but for the sake of her kids, who would be in their late twenties if they survived their teens, I won't give away their mother's identity. After all, they know who it was that beat them with the cord from the electric jug and don't need me telling you who she is.

They lived up on top of the hill, near where I live still, in a rented house that had a backyard that ran into a fair whack of bushland. They also lived next door to one of those electricity tower land clearance strips, you know how they connect those really large power pylons together, and all of the nearby trees have to be cleared and a certain distance away from houses- so they had plenty of room to tether their ponies through the day before returning them to the run down pig-sties they utilised as their horse yards at night.

I know what you must be thinking- how could they fit horses into pig-sties? Well, these were very small ponies, let me assure you.

The smallest was a grey filly named Candy, barely ten hands high and three years old, who had almost severed her jugular vein when she got her head stuck in a rusted out car she had been grazing out of. You could still see the thin white scar on her neck.

Then there was the little Palouse mare, Frosty, who was as ugly as all fuck with her mealy face and one blue eye. She was very scared of motorbikes after having been chased by one while out riding with her previous owner- and I had the pleasure of it happening to me one day, too, when she took off while I was on her and was galloping out of control down a narrow rocky track, her ill-shod feet slipping and sliding beneath her as I clung desperately to the cheap pig-skin saddle and a handful of half-hogged mane. Even aged eleven I was far to big for her, and look ridiculous sitting so close to her narrow neck and tiny ears, my feet dangling somewhere near her knees.

That was one of the times that I told you I was scared about going too fast...

Another time was on their third pony after she became mine- a bay mare named Star Lady, who had wonky legs and a mean disposition. She was larger than the Palouse mare by a full hand, I reckon, and was ruined- if in fact she was ever any good, by the English lady's ham-fisted son, who gallops the poor bitch ragged through the Dippers at breakneck speed every afternoon because his mother won't buy the kid the motorcycle that he really wants. It's like a bush track for kids to enjoy on their BMX's and more suited to bikes than horses, but they were fun enough to canter around I suppose.

How he treated Her- and he was only a kid himself in all fairness- wouldn't have affected me in the least unless I hadn't ended up owning the Gimp myself; and I say that with much affection because I loved her for the rest of her life; but because she was never an easy horse to ride- even though she had a nice enough nature when she got older- and would insist on galloping up the same tracks that she had galloped with her last owner, much to my fear and humility. It seems I can't control every horse I ride after all.

But finally, after much begging and pleading, and after having bought all the equipment necessary to own a horse with our scrimped and saved pocket money, my Sister and I convinced our Parents and Grandmother to buy her for us. We had to buy everything else- from the saddle to the mane-comb; and were under no delusions about who would be paying for her up keep. Us. It would be understated but fair to say our Parents weren't enthusiatic about our little hobby- it was to be our responsibility.

So we would eke out our combined pocket money of twelve dollars a week and somehow managed to feed and worm and shoe her. We both secretly laugh, even today, when our other Sisters and Cousin think that they ever had any claim of ownership just because our Grandmother had helped pay for the horse. That didn't mean she suddenly belonged to all of the grandkids. We were the ones who rode the shitty bike up the hill every morning, even in the rain, to feed her. We were the ones she dragged across the peak hour traffic when we crossed the highway to her paddock every afternoon. We were the ones who went without lollies at the shop and did all those extra jobs of theirs just we could have the extra monry for things like riding lessons- because how else are we going to get to the Olympics if we can't sit prettily- and just so the horse has a full belly every night.

Not that she ate particularly well, as that responsibility was left up to the English Bitch who we paid all the money we had to but got very little in return, as she had a habit of using spoons rather than buckets when it came time to feeding her horses. Sadly, but happily, ours was not even the skinniest horse in the paddock- over the years that we knew her she filled those paddocks with an assortment of RSPCA cases- one called Rocky, who was an ex-trotter, even resorted to eating his own shit he was that hungry. True story.

The paddocks were just poorly fenced dirt squares that turned to mud at the mere thought of rain, so every day we would have to pick bags and bags of the lush green grass that grew down at the nearby plaster factory and empty it in with her for a bit extra to eat, but she always remained skinny until we moved her away to the Farm. On weekends we would take her out of her paddock to graze around the the more grassy spots but she had to be put on a tether during the day because we couldn't afford to feed her hay as well as pay for her small daily feed and agistment fee.

We had to take it in turns to ride the ancient bike we have resorted to stealing from our older Sister, but we were quite lucky to have the bike at all, even if that was just because it meant we didn't have to walk. We did that plenty of times too, when the tyre got flat or when there were two of us and the bike rack was taken up with a biscuit of hay or the saddle. Much later on in the piece our Mother would drive us if it were raining or if we were running really late for school, but she certainly never Always did it, as is her recollection.

I would get doubled down the hill by my Sister, and she knew I hated it- but she would always take her hands off the handlebars-and going around corners, downhill, quickly and with no one steering is not my idea of fun. One time I bailed off the back just after the road had been newly gravelled, because she was threatening to do it, and I took off half my chin. A single black hair grows out of the scar...

Not that we minded having to go there every afternoon; I reckon we would have spent even more time with the horses had our Parent's allowed it. I didn't enjoy having to pick up the shit every afternoon but I did it anyway because there was no other choice. I drew the line at handling the shit with my bare hands the way the English Bitch did, though, and would take an empty bread bag for myself to use as a glove.

In a round about way I think I'm trying to tell you the story about the time that I went riding with the girl who used to own the little Palouse mare; the same girl who had been chased by a hoon on his motorbike and given the horse a neurosis about noisy machines on two wheels for the rest of her life...

I organised on the phone to meet her halfway there. In a car the distance is next to nothing, but riding to Horse's Paradise took the whole day, so it was better if you took a backpack with at least a sandwich and an apple and a few plain biscuits to munch on throughout the day- because there would be nothing else until you could get home and gorge yourself on fresh pieces of rock melon and green grapes. And that wasn't going to be until much later. The horses were fine, not eating all day,but if your horse could be easily caught you could take their saddle off and let them loose for an hour while you relaxed in the shade and drank cold lemonade, while the horses roamed nearby in their halters and ate the wild oats that grew all year long at Horse's Paradise. That's how it got it's name- because of the oats- but you had to be careful that your horse didn't eat too many of these wild oats or they just might turn into a nutter on the way home, and bolt.

I was pretty pleased with Myself, actually, for getting as far as I did- for actually getting to go through the gate of Horse's Paradise. The horse had practically behaved herself, almost, for a change on the ride over- but the whole relax and rest while the horses grazed over an easy lunch never eventuated and neither did the cold lemonade part. Before we could even park the horses my mare ran off on me, hurtling faster and faster towards the skinny gate that leads towards home; it's only as wide as a common garden path.

No offence meant to garden paths.

Just as we go through the gate I lose the tenuous grasp that I had of her mane and I fall, swinging beneath her neck and tiny pounding hooves. Somehow, luckily, she manages to come to a dead stop in the middle of the gate while I am still swinging beneath her belly. My friend wants to stay and ride back up the hill, but then again her horse Shannon is safe, in inverted commas, and won't gallop off back down the hill the moment we turn around, and I'm too shaken and afraid after falling off and almost hurting myself really badly- so I go home by myself, leading her back through the gate that takes me away from Horse's Paradise for ever.

I am quickly getting angry at the horse for ruining my afternoon when only a moment before I had been so grateful to her for coming to a stop so suddenly and saving me from being crushed through the tiny gate, so I get back on her, trying to prove to her that I can actually be the one in control for a change. Then, as if she knew I had the shits at her, she decides to gallop for about one kilometre out of control down the side of the road near the golf course, near where my Little Son now goes to pre-school- her hooves surely sending sparks up from the flints of rock on the side of the road that we gallop across, before ducking at the last moment beneath the trees and onto the track that takes us past another sort of riding school, and over the creek towards home.

I could have killed the bitch for running on the road because her shoes are loose; the so-called 'farrier' who put them on-the English Bitch's drunken husband no less- didn't allow for the fact that the walls of her hooves are so thin in places that the nails rip through in days rather than in weeks, and for most of the time they are hanging on only by a thread and two or three nails at best.

It seems thatI have spent my life looking for another Horse's Paradise to visit, where the wild oats are numerous and the grass is softly rolling beneath gently waving branches of trees overhead. My own Horse's Paradise has brown post and rail fencing that runs for miles over the gently undulating green pastures, where mares and their foals graze side by side and frolic in apple orchards. And then there's my massive modern farmhouse on the horizon. I'm moving in right after I win Lotto.

Horse's Paradise certainly wasn't where we agisted our horses for the first five years that we owned them, that's for sure. And at long last I can finally reveal the hidden name of this story is Horse's Paradise- if you hadn't already guessed it by now, that is.

I'm just sorry that you had to wait until it was almost finished to find out...