Waler Horse Owners and Breeders Association Australia Inc

Some historical quotes and journals...
These clippings are taken from numerous articles, journals and quotes from historical documentation throughout waler history.

Horse breeding, says Mr. Robb is easy provided one keeps up the quality with the strain and classing breeding mares so as to use only active medium weight draughts. In the course of an interview Mr. Robb outlined the breeding methods which will produce the right kind of horse. Putting a thoroughbred sire to an active medium draught mare produced the heavy artillery horse. The thoroughbred sire is again put to the mare of this cross to produce the light artillery horse. The thoroughbred sire again on the second cross produces the three-part bred remount which should have plenty of bone and stamina, provided by the draught blood, while the thoroughbred sire maintains the level of breeding.The Australian medium draft horse was once famous throughout the world as a willing worker and fast mover

Indian Remount Trade - Outlet for South Australian Horses. Adelaide Stock and Station Journal, November 23 1932

Lt. Col. Maygar, V.C. and his grey horse were both severely hit.Australia’s walers, already world-famous for their work in India and in the South African and Russo-Japanese Wars, were in this company subjected to a searching comparative test. They proved by common consent incomparably superior to all their rivals, except perhaps the best of the horses from the British Islands which included a number of valuable hunters and officers’ chargers. Expert horsemen differed as to the best type of horse disclosed by the miscellaneous Australian remounts in the campaign. Some good judges expressed a preference for the stocky, powerful pony types to be found among both the Australian and New Zealand regiments. But although these small animals, many of which possessed Welsh Pony blood, had many admirers, the lesson of the war was that, provided a horse had bone and substance, and was not too eager and fretful, the closer it was to the English thoroughbred racing strain the more valuable it was for active service.
The horses of a light horse regiment were not uniform. They included every type of animal, large sturdy ponies, crossbreds from draught Clydesdale mares, three-quarter thoroughbreds, and many qualified for the racing stud-books. As a consequence of such mixed breeding, they frequently offended the horse-lover's eye by their faulty parts. But the one quality they all possessed which made them superior to the horses from other lands: they were all, or nearly all, got by thoroughbred sires. This quality, reflected throughout in their spirit and their stamina, was their distinguishing characteristic. During sustained operations, on very short rations of pure grain and no water over periods which extended up to seventy hours --- when horses of baser breeds lost their courage and then their strength - the waler, though famished and wasted, continued alert and brave and dependable. The vital spark of the thoroughbred never failed to respond. As long as these horses had strength to stand they carried their great twenty-stone loads jauntily and proudly.

Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine 1914 -1918. - M.S.Gullet

The Waler was mainly grass or hay-fed in his own country and the bigger type did not do well on the short rations while in South Africa. A report by the Assistant Inspector of Remounts in South Africa describes the type sent to that country as "light on the leg, ewe-necked and angular. Has undeniable quality and was expected to prove hardy, wiry and untiring. This type has not done well in South Africa." The small cobs, known in as "nuggets", were excellent, but the larger type both from New Zealand and Australia lacked recuperative powers, though another report spoke well of them. This report has a description of the small Waler, written before the South African War, which leaves no doubt how useful he was. ‘The "nuggets’ was a ‘big little" animal, a symmetrical, typical English three-quarter-bred hunter of 16hands to 16.2, focused into a height of 13.2 or 13.3 hands with slightly lower withers. These horses have combined stamina, courage and speed; their paces, when on a long ride, are a jog and a canter. They are in Australian parlance "cut-and-come-again" customers. The smartest stock horses, those in use for drafting cattle, are also small and handy and well up to twelve stone.

Regular Army Horse Remounts. - Major G. Tylden

Generally speaking, the men of the Desert Column had a profound contempt of the Arab horses which they encountered, which were out-performed by their larger blood-brothers from overseas as regards general carrying and endurance. While the English thoroughbred and his close relative the Waler sprang largely from Arab progenitors, the war proved beyond doubt that Western methods of breeding and rearing had improved these horses beyond comparison with the original Arab stock.

The Australian Horse at War. - Douglas M. Barrie

< Back to More about