7 September 1933

FATE OF THE SHINGLER MARE

The Story Of A Plucky Horse

This is the tale of a wild horse which roamed the Millicent flats; of her plucky fight to retain her freedom, and how it ended.

In the late sixties a wild unbroken mare grazed the Millicent flats from Mount Muirhead to Mount Hope. She was known to the station hands as the Shingler mare. She had for mates some station horses, which she made nearly as wild as herself.

This mare stood out in contrast from all the rest. She was a beautiful dark dappled chestnut, with flowing mane and tail. When the mob was approached by horsemen she stood, with erect head, wild glistening eyes, and dilated nostrils, snorting and stamping the turf with impatient hoof. When an attempt was made to round up the mob she would make off, snorting defiance.

Where she came from none could tell, nor what was her breed or pedigree. Several attempts had been made to yard her without success. Her name and fame were known throughout the South-East.

In the early seventies a picnic muster was arranged with the stations by several residents of Mount Gambier. A number of riders were mounted on trained racehorses of tried stamina. But the primeval Millicent flats over which the mare roamed were a different proposition from the roads and racecourse of Mount Gambler. As soon as the mare saw the approaching cavalcade she issued her challenge in her usual style, careering in the direction of Mount Hope.

One of the Mount Gambier horses put its foot in a crab hole and turned turtle. Another tried to cut a corner and floundered into a quagmire. One by one the riders were outpaced. Only two followed as far as the range, where she careered over hill and gully, stopping occasionally to snort defiance. At last they lost sight of the quarry in the thicker timbered hills.

When Mount Graham station passed from the original owner to John McInnes, the horses were sold to a Robe buyer. In mid July, 1873, a start was made with the first muster. As the tailing mob passed over the flat from the Avenue to the 'Old Kangaroo Yards,' the mare and her mates were passed. She gave the horsemen her usual salute. But it was not intended to pick her up.

But later in the year the final muster was made. A good number of staid station horses and men were put on the job. The men included old stalwarts such as A. H. Bellinger, Archie Grant, Jack Testrow, 'Long' Jack Barrien, and several others whose names are forgotten. The mare and her mates were located on the flat between the Belt and Mount Hope. With the usual challenge she left for the Islands.

But she was cut off from her usual route by a couple of horse men in advance with a cannonade of stockwhips. She made for a large boggy swamp, through which she floundered with great difficulty. Jack Barrien, anticipating where she would come out on the other side, galloped round the ridge. As she was emerging; he met her as she got to solid land, rode up to her, and found she was played out.

Eventually he managed to get his stock whip round her neck. Whether she had injured herself in her struggle through the bog is not known. But she was so absolutely subdued that they were able to join her up with the mob, which was turned for the night into a paddock near the Woakwine station.

In the morning she was still in the same position where she had been left the night before, and was quietly yarded with the mob. In a few days she left for the markets. But she was done. She travelled with difficulty as far as the 'Twelve-mile Waterhole,' on Magarey's run, and then stuck up.

As it was feared that if she got back to her old range and recovered she would make more trouble, they very reluctantly cut her throat and left her bones to bleach in the sun. Thus ended the career of one of the wildest and pluckiest horses which ever grazed on the Millicent Flats.— 'Tanta-Tyga,' Millicent.

The Mysterious Letter

About 46 years ago I was at Yacka and knew some people named Craig. One day I was ploughing with a team of bullocks about a half-mile from the house and could see the homestead from where I was working. One end of the ploughing was near the road, the other at the foot of the Horseshoe Range. Sandy Craig used to bring my dinner out to me.

One day he said, "Have your dinner. Don't hurry, and I will drive the team for a round or two." He went once around, and on the second round, about half-way up, I noticed the team stop, and the off-side hind bullock walked away from the team.

When I got up a wild dog gave three dismal howls up on Range. Sandy said, "Hear that dog?" We got the bullock yoked again, and Sandy drove the team while I did some grubbing. Suddenly I noticed Sandy stop the team and look towards the house. I asked him what he was looking at. He said he thought he saw somebody ride around on a grey mare like his brother Jim's horse. I said, "Nobody around has a horse like that."

When we went home in the evening, Sandy walked around the house and said, "No tracks." Then he went inside to light the fire for tea. I unyoked the bullocks and turned them out on to the road, and then looked for tracks, near the gate, but found none. There had not been a horse near the place for weeks.

When I went inside the house. Sandy was sitting near the fire. He said to me, "Where did you put the soap?" I said, '"n the tin behind the door." He said he couldn't find it. It was getting dark, so I felt in the tin. "Here it is," I said. It was in the corner of the tin, and a letter with a black border was underneath it, not opened. I gave it to Sandy. He read it, and said, "Oh, my God."

"What's wrong?' I asked. He answered, "Jim's wife is dead." He started off to Yacka the next morning, and left me to take care of the farm. The letter had the Yacka post mark on it, and the Hammond post mark on the back. I never found out how the letter got there, as none of the neighbors saw anybody come, and none of them brought it. Now, where did that letter come from?— T. E. Francis, Mannahill.

Adventure With A Dingo

In the far north there are many salt lakes. If the year is a wet one there may be a little water in them, but at other times they are wide expanses of glittering deception.

There are paths across them if you know where to look for them, but if you don't you are very likely to become bogged, as below the thin salt crust there is very often oily mud or dangerous quicksand.

When my father was managing a station in the north he had an experience with a dingo, which he has no wish to repeat. While riding to one of the out-stations he left the usual road, and was taking a short cut through some sandhills, when he noticed signs that a dog had dragged a trap. After following the trail some distance, he could see the animal still in the trap on the edge of a salt lake. So he dismounted, tied his horse to a bush, and, picking up what he took to be a stout stick, set off to dispatch the dingo.

His quarry retreated on seeing him approach, and to get at him my father had to step on the salt crust for some way. However, he came up with the animal, and dealt a mighty blow, but the brush stick was not to be trusted, and snapped in two! Of course, the force of the blow was lost, and the dog turned on the man, who, in springing back to avoid it, went farther on to the treacherous lake.

The dog was now between the man and the bank, but was handicapped by the weight of the trap. The man was on the unsafe crust of the lake, armed only with a short length of stick, and afraid to run for fear of becoming bogged. His horse was tied up, so it could not go home, and in that way cause people to look for him.

He tried attacking the dog, but it was only too willing to attack him, and a fight on that unsafe crust was not to be considered. The dog could not be driven ashore, so he tried getting round it, but it moved with him, always cutting him off from safety. In his second attack the animal bit my father's ankle rather badly, and the wound was giving him considerable pain. Yet he dared not sit down to rest, for the dingo would come at him immediately. On the other hand, by keeping moving he must surely tire it down.

The day wore on, the sun travelled towards the west, and father thought of all the stories he had heard of wounded dingoes calling to their mates for help, and wondered if they would attack his horse, their trapped mate, or himself first. So the sun neared the horizon, and man and dog continued their aim less manoeuvring back and forth, till the man felt faint and dizzy, and his senses seemed to be deserting him. Another minute and he thought sure he had gone crazy.

Of all unexpected sounds in that section broken solitude, what did he hear but, clear and ringing in the evening air, a voice that should never have been hidden in the bush, singing 'Killarney.' He tried to shout, but his parched lips and throat would emit no sound. Then his horse neighed, and a minute later over the sand ridge appeared the owner of the voice. He was a rough boundary rider, but an angel could have been no more welcome. The dog still showed fight, but a bullet soon wrote 'finis' to his career, and the skin adorned our hearth for many a day.

Now if you ask dad his favorite song, he will say 'Killarney.'— 'Auntie Bee,' Ceduna.

A Crinoline Comedy

In the fifties, when the modest four wheeler gave way to the more pretentious omnibus on the Adelaide-Mount Barker road, and before the latter conveyance boasted a conductor in scarlet uniform perched high up at the rear of the vehicle, a 'bus' was at its usual starting place.

The driver, concluding that sufficient time had elapsed for the passengers to load up from the rear, loudly called. 'All aboard?' But on this particular occasion a lady balancing herself on the narrow step was essaying to enter the vehicle through a very narrow doorway. Try as she would, the hoops of her skirt prevented her.

To prevent the passenger being left behind, the genial old Captain Davison, responding to the driver's interrogation, called, 'No, a lady can't get her crin-la-ma-jig in!' Suiting action to the word, he said, 'Allow me, madam?' and reached down. Taking hold of the lower hoop of the obstructing garment, he pulled it up side ways, and the lady duly entered, amidst the laughter of the other passengers. 'Tanta-Tyga,' Millicent.

The Unknown Grave

When I was a boy there was an elderly woman in Gawler who spent a lot of her time wandering about the paddocks to the south-west of the town. I was naturally curious to know the reason. Little by little I pieced together the story. It was a tragic one.

When the woman was a girl her only sister had married a wealthy man who had taken her to South Australia shortly after the colony had been established. For over a year the girls had written to each other. Then letters from Australia had ceased abruptly. After a year of this silence the sister determined to come out herself to see why she had heard nothing.

Four months later she arrived at Port Adelaide. After a little trouble she ascertained the whereabouts of her brother-in-law's farm, and hired a man to drive her to it. It lay half way between Smithfield and Gawler. They reached it late in the afternoon, and the young girl was horrified to find that her sister had died in giving birth to a child over eighteen months previously, and further, that her brother-in-law had married again within a few months of her death.

But worse was to come, for when she asked where her sister was buried she found that the grave was in one of the farm paddocks. She was too grief-stricken to look for the grave at the time; later, when she did so all trace of it had been lost.

A Church of England minister heard of her case, and found a situation for her as a governess in the home of one of his parishioners. The girl married a squatter a few years later, and never relaxed her search for her sister's grave. But the fact that the land had been cropped several times since the burial rendered it impossible to locate it.

She never abandoned hope, however, and after her husband's death she settled in Gawler in order to be near to the locality of the grave. For a long time she had offered a reward for anyone who found her sister's remains, but it was never claimed. She died without discovering where her sister had been buried. I have no doubt that many of the older Gawler residents will remember her and her quest, for both the woman and her search were well known there fifty years ago.— 'Larrapinta,' Bordertown.

Real Life Stories Of South Australia (1933, September 7). Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), p. 13. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article90958227