Horse and Rider in Australian Legend

the long version

'In headlong gallop through brake and brushwood, over broken ground and fallen timber, after stragglers that often turn fiercely to bay ... horse and rider are expert at their work ... For proof of noble horsemanship the Australian bush may challenge all the equestrian nations in the world. English fox-hunting is mere child's play compared with the feats performed by the stockman . . . who disdain the shepherd's slothful life'. - 'An Australian Journalist', The Emigrant in Australia, 1852Since 1788, when seven horses arrived with the First Fleet, until the present day, the horse and its rider has been a powerful symbol galloping across the Australian landscape. In this engrossing and original work, Nanette Mantle explores the myth of the stockworker, the boundary rider, the bushranger and sportsperson among other heroic horseback figures through nineteenth-century Australian literature and art. Nanette Mantle recounts how an image of bush bravery, born in the stockman's saddle and recreated in the soldier-horseman of the Boer War and the First World War, inspired national sentiment, stirring verse and vibrant works of art. 'Horse and Rider in Australian Legend' captures the unique and enduring appeal of the horse, and its rider, to Australians of all eras.