A while back I was very very pleasantly surprised to have a surprise encounter that was planned by my banker Jim Glines; it was a surprise meeting with my old friend Max and his wife Marlene. Max Rouff was instrumental in getting the financing for me to buy King Fritz back in the early 70’s and Jim Glines was the banker who lent me the money to buy King Fritz. So that was quite exciting – to meet up with Max and his wonderful wife Marlene was a wonderful experience. After that I went to Australia with my really good friend James Dixon and did a series of clinics that was sponsored by Andrew McArthur. Andrew is a cattleman or a stockman as they call them in Australia. He owns a company in the United States called Plasvacc. Plasvacc supplies blood plasma for veterinarians for horses. The flight to Australia was a little delayed here and there so it took us 29 hours, and it shouldn’t have taken over 15 or 20 hours at the most, so it was quite a long trip. But we got there and it was all worth it.
Now that first ranch that we went to, owned by the Acton’s, was a 6.5 million acres and it had 300,000 cows, however out near the billabongs and the lagoons, it was called Paradise Lagoon Ranch. But out in that area where you wouldn’t think there would be anything, it looked like it jumped out from the middle of Kentucky. White fences, beautiful arenas and spectator areas that looked nicer than Spruce Meadows in Canada. This was a high dollar beautiful horse show and camp drafting facility. Camp drafting is their major event in Australia. The herd is the camp and drafting is a matter of taking single animals out of the herd cutting horse style sort of, then they run beside them at full speed and guide the cow (they call them the beast) through a barrel racing pattern shoulder to shoulder and eye to eye. It’s exciting it takes really good horses and really good stockmen. With 300,000 cows, we had no shortage of cattle to work and wonderful people – quite an experience and a lot of open country. There were Aborigines, one of the Aborigines asked me, he said “what do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?”, and I thought I would get some intelligent answer, and I said I don’t know, and he said a stick! Well they’re characters.
Then the next place we went to was Tamworth which is their country music capital like Nashville is to us and their biggest country music star ever was a guy named Slim Dusty, he recently passed. Slim Dusty, he sings ballads and most of them are cattle camp ballads, very very good – I mean really good stuff and very interesting. I like Slim Dusty a lot and was interesting to see their country music hall of fame. James was our photographer during this whole time, he stayed pretty excited.
We stayed in really nice places too! We stayed at the, I think it was called the Australian Sheep Dog Inn. Everything is pretty darn western. At that particular town, Tamworth’s, we gave the clinic in a coliseum that was far nicer than any coliseum I have ever seen in the United States. It was so well designed and so modern and it was brand new, unbelievably beautiful set up for thousands of horses and big horse shows.
Then we went on to the third place called Toowoomba. The first two were in Queensland the third one was in New South Wales. Quite a difference you know, when you are out in Queensland you get a lot of what they call bushies. Bushies are your real deal cowboys, I mean they are the salt of the earth and they’re wonderful. You get some of the bushies over there from the New South Wales too – some of those guys actually drove 40 hours to come to the clinic! They drive long, long distances and don’t think about it like we do, but 40 hours each way! There was nobody there that said that was something very different; it was pretty common I guess. In Toowoomba we had a really nice clinic there too. We worked cattle in all the clinics some of the people were pretty westernized, and some of them weren’t. But what was amazing was how some of the very traditional camp drafters got into the leverage bits and wanted to know about the spade bits and actually bought leverage bits and applied them on their horses and liked the results.
The whole trip was really really exciting, and really fun and I loved the Aussie slang. They called their wild horses of course “brumbies” and they never ever said the word spectator, but they would say “that’s a fence sitter” another slang for them – one was called a “stock yard rail mugley” and that’s a spectator also. People there just love people and I saw old friends from Collin McTaggert to Wallace and Gunthrup and his brother Max. We had ropers there too and there were some very good ropers that we got to enjoy a lot and had the honor roping with them out there.
I’ll tell you a few of the people we met and the things they said.
A.C. Graham and Evan Acton owned the biggest ranch that was the 300,000 cow ranch. There was a wonderful guy named is Bill Willoughby, and he’s a movie stunt fellow, and his son is a team roper here. Now their trees, they call them “she oaks” and “bull oaks”, there are a lot of oak trees and I never did figure how they told which one was a she or bull, but that’s what they call them. When they say they’re tired, they say they are “buggered “and they learned about a “digery-do”, it’s a musical instrument the Aboles play – they actually can breathe in through their nose and out through their mouth at the same time, therefore continuing on a long note without any hesitation for breathing, and that was pretty unique – they developed that skill somehow, guess they haven’t got much else to do. The weather forecasters, I always got kind of a laugh out of them, they would say “the weather here is going to rain” this that and then they would always finish their forecast by saying “fine weather elsewhere”. Well gosh, that’s pretty general.
There was a race track and it was called Ups N Downs, well that’s interesting, so they say lets “sus it out”, that means let’s check it out, when they say “the penny dropped”, that means the light bulb came on, I got it, I got it mate! And when they say things are ok, it’s right, that’s ok that’s good, “Ridgy-didge” or “fair dinkhum or dinky-di”. Then when they have to go somewhere they say “they are going to do a walk about”. They call their cattle catchers the ones who work out in the ranches “bull busters” sometimes and the wild cow is a “scrubber”. The herd is a “mob”. The two Gunthrup’s I really enjoyed, that was Wallace and Max, they were old friends from 15-20 years ago. I saw a lot of my old friends, I saw Lori and Gayle Lauer they were the first Americans to go over there with their family, Greg Lauer and that would have been in the 60’s taking the first Quarter Horses to Australia. Then they say going to a fast food place, they say let’s “gobble and go” or if someone is a dumb person, they call them a “dipso”. If a horse bucks and he kind of has his head down and he hops along, they call it “pig rooting”. I really enjoyed meeting Cameron McIntyre, a great horseman.
There was places that I went and they had cute names like Zilzie, I liked that one. Another name was Yipoon that was a beach. I saw emus, I saw black swans and of course kangaroos. When you have a horse wreck, instead of saying a horse wreck they say “he had a buster”. If you go to Colonel Sanders they say “we’re going to Kentucky Chuckies”. If you have to go to the restroom, you might ask, “where can I spend a penny?” that means restroom. If I’m stuffed, say “I’m stuffed mate”, or “buggar” that means I ‘m tired and if they say “dickey” that means it’s not right or I’m not right, or if I’m really beat up or tired they say “I’m plucked and played mate”.
Then they turn donkeys in with their stallions and the bulls, the donkeys actually break up fights so -the donkeys don’t let the other animals fight – after they’ve been with the donkeys for a while you can throw the stallions in a pen by themselves and they’ll all behave – It’s pretty amazing!
They have good food there, our breakfast was something like omelets, they had mushrooms, bacon and sausage and ham and poached eggs and fried tomatoes.
Bill Willoughby was a fellow that I met there that I really enjoyed – he organized the stunts for Snowy River. The whole trip was quite interesting.
So from Australia I was only home for a couple of days, went on the Rancheros Vistadores ride over here in Santa Barbara ,Solvang ,Santa Ynez area, that was a weeklong thing, really enjoyed that. Then right after that my friend Greg Norris, had a clinic in Big Stone Gap, VA. That’s where the real hillbillies live. I worked last year with Greg and his hillbilly friends and we had a very good clinic there. Greg’s horses looked good, and Greg’s doing a good job and you know it’s sure interesting how many of those little houses and farms still fly the confederate flag. They call the civil war, not a civil war; there was nothing civil about it. It was the war of northern oppression and trust me, they are still unhappy about it. Even though much of that doesn’t get out here to us, there’s a lot of really hard feelings about how the north treated the south even after the war. I stayed out with Greg for four days with his group and I totally enjoyed them and had a wonderful time.
And then I went to Yakima last weekend and that was the weekend of the 30th and 31st of May. Yakima is home to my dear friends Roger & Sue Hart and of course their kids. They’re just the sweetest nicest people in the world. And Sue Hart I don’t know how she does it – this was her 42nd clinic I’ve put on for her! She’s put on two clinics a year for over 20 years and she’s filled every single one of them. She pulls people from Montana, Idaho – I have no idea how she does it. She is a dynamo that one! She’s alive and over the top on everything she does – she’s a mover!
Now I’m headed today, which is Thursday, the 4th of June, and I’m headed to Arlington WA, to my friend Gretchen Salstrom. And Gretchen is a show horse lady and has rescue horses too, she has a business with rescue horses, and it’s pretty interesting how that works. I’ll go there for 3 days then head off to Watford City, ND hoping for the best. Then guess what, I get a weekend off so I’m going to have some fun, I think I’m going to the Bob Feist roping, and watch it, I have never been.
Well I hope you enjoyed my little update here. I can’t really make it sound as exciting as it been! I’m blessed! I’m having the best year I have ever had! I have never had this many clinics I have never had every clinic over filled. We had one clinic cancel and that would be in Ohio and I understand that the auto industry had a lot of impact on that. So other than that everything has just been great. I’m getting to rope a lot, but I pulled some muscles inside of my thigh, so my favorite horse trainer in the world is Kate Neubert is putting some extra time on my colt Turbo, while I do clinics and recover. And Kate also helped us do our television shoot yesterday, with two colleges Quincy Feather River College and Cal Poly from San Luis Obispo, they each brought their top three riders and their top three horses and they have a contest, and we film it and critiqued it. So watch for it on RFDTV. Kate was our judge and Kate is the babysitter/trainer or trainer/babysitter for Turbo if I have to leave, and so being as I hurt my leg, my doctor said to stay off of it for a couple weeks, and the timing is perfect, I’ll send Turbo back to Kate.
Kate Neubert, she’s a goddess. Kate Neubert is perfect; there must be something that I don’t know about her, because I don’t think anybody can be that perfect. She’s a wonderful person and such a skilled talented individual. Her timing is fantastic; she knows how to put a cow on front of a horse and keep it there; and she takes really good care of my horse and does a wonderful job with him, and I couldn’t ask for more, plus she’s pleasant to be around for sure! So I totally enjoy Kate. If anybody ever wants to send a horse to somebody, I sure would send mine to Kate which I did!
Sounds like you are livin’ it up, Les! Congrats! Have fun and we so enjoy reading your blogs.