BRUMBIES REHOMERS AND KOSCIUSZKO NATIONAL PARK

PROLOGUE

KNP Brumbies after fires. Photograph courtesy of Paul McIver 

I remember as an incredibly young child,  I wanted either a black horse or a white horse. I used to fantasies of riding one on sandy beaches with the water splashing around me.  In reading  the story of Pippi Longstockings, her horse was her best friend. 🐒 🐒 This I related to in many ways, but of course I did not have my forever horse.  My fascination for these beautiful creatures lasted into my teens, I would only draw equine animals for a few years, diverting then to human conditions, and left my dream behind, including my want to paint and become a painter.  

Fast forward in the year 2021, I find myself still without a horse, I draw and paint horses, but I never owned one and never rode one, except for two occasions, which is equivalent to never riding. I have also come to the realization that I may never have the pleasure of owning one.  But as fate has it, life is strange, and sometimes if you follow your inner most self you will find yourself in places you may have never dreamed of.   I eventually did become a painter, only started painting seven years ago.  But within my art, I found the human link I was looking for between the human condition and that of my love for equine animals.  

I recently became a brumby advocate and opened this blog.  It has only been a few months but within the journey, so many things have brought me to a single thought.  If you only try,  even just trying,  you can make a difference. And even if you fail, you at least tried. So below as you read on you will stumble on a true story, and a beautiful one at that, that was written by a child, no not me. A child  that had the dream,  and the opportunity to fill that dream, and the courage to pursuit it.   

 Cheers Syndy Blog Author 

🐒 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pippi_Longstocking 

https://www.astridlindgren.com/en/characters/pippi-longstocking

BRUMBIES, REHOMERS, AND KOSICUSZKO NATIONAL PARK

 As Kosciuszko National Park is trapping brumbies at this stage, they urgently call on rehomers.  If rehomers are not available, the remaining horses not rehomed find their end  at the knackeries.🌳 This is a reality for all wild brumbies in Australia, either being culled or trapped for rehoming.  Unfortunately, the government insists on these practices arguing these animals to be feral rather than wild and free animals in their environment.

  There are many rehomers that take their time and money to take in wild brumbies. It is a difficult task as you do not know what brumby comes off the rehoming trucks.  They can be injured, also mares can be pregnant or with foals at foot but separated,  and many other problems that may come from a wild brumby.  But these horses are beautiful, resilient and highly intelligent. Many rehomers know that these animals are worth saving. Not just because they are great but because they are sentient beings with family values that outranks most humans by far.  The rehomers need to pay truck transport, vet bills as they need vaccines, vet checks,  and feed straight up. Horses need to feed every few hours as 

their digestive system is very delicate, and they can easily suffer from colic. 

It is an expensive hard and difficult route that these rehomers take, but they do it because no animal should ever be exterminated as a pest. So I am now going to introduce you to a family that is one of many that are detrimental to the rehoming of wild brumbies.

Mr Winx

Angel is a brumby rehomer and trainer and a mother of young children that have lived and learned to be with horses from a young age. What I call affectionately ‘horsy people’. Angel’s daughter Ryleigh learned to mount on a pony 8.2 hands high.  She went on to find her forever brumby and named him Mr Winx the one eye Wonder Brumby.  

Mr Winx was at first a wild brumby that lost his eye in the wild and was trapped with his family on the Snowy Plains of the National Park.  He was finally sent to a rehomer in Wollemi because no one had wanted him due to his injury.  The rehomer contacted Angel saying she had an ‘Odd Bod’ and without even seeing him, Angel took him in. He came to them as Mr Ed.  According to Angel every brumby deserves a chance. Hence Ryleigh meets her forever brumby, and with it gains the understanding of beauty compassion and friendship. Ryleigh and Mr Winx are growing together and as you will see their bond in magical.  Hence the story continues as Ryleigh gives us her own account of her relationship with Mr Winx.   

🌳 https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/-/media/OEH/Corporate-Site/Documents/Animals-and-plants/Pests-and-weeds/Kosciuszko-wild-horses/draft-wild-horse-management-plan-summary-160399.pdf?la=en&hash=F2865A67A532A6EE1328D1F40577D56F6E240029

            MR WINX THE ONE EYE WONDER BRUMBY & RHYLEIGH

Best Friends

When I first met my brumby, I saw that he could not blink from the injured eye, he could only wink, so I renamed him Mr Winx the one-eyed Wonder brumby.  A few weeks after him arriving,  my brother asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I said I wanted to ride Mr Winx.

Every day for the next two weeks until Christmas my brother rode his push bike out to the paddock and worked with Mr Winx. On Christmas morning, he put a saddle on and lifted me up and took me for my first ride on him around the paddock.

 I was really nervous at first, because my first pony Lil Kenny is only 8.2 hands tall, and I fell off him so many times. But I did not really learn to ride on Lil Kenny in the end, I just learned to hang on and stay on.

Mr Winx is way bigger than him, standing at 14 hands. When he first met me, he was really nervous too. He would see shadows on his blind eye and would spook often. Therefore, my mum employed the leather man to make him an eye patch, so when I ride him, he does not spook as much.  I think that it is really cool because he looks like a pirate! One day I want to get him a pirate outfit and for me a parrot costume, so we can do fancy dress.  Mr Winx the pirate and myself the bird on his shoulder!

Six weeks later my mum’s best friend Vanja, took us to Goulburn Show and Mr Winx and I won second place in the lead class and second place in the riding class. We travelled together to eight shows that year, being 2019, and Mr Winx and I won many ribbons!  We won twenty-four place ribbons, three reserve champion ribbons, one Champion ribbon and two trophies and a  nice rug. Mr Winx also won the Southern Cross Brumby Registry High Point Competition, and I won the Southern Cross Brumby Registry Junior Champion for the whole year!

 The Southern Cross Brumby Registry and the ‘brumby family’ helped and supported me as I gained experience in riding.  Mr Winx got a big scare one day in riding class and he took off and dragged me on my bottom and all the brumby family cheered for me when he stopped.  I got up and went back to class. Another time he got scared when I was riding him in a show and he took off away from the ring as he spooked, and the judge gave me a special ribbon because I did not fall off.

In competitions

In the year 2020 Mr Winx and I won Runners up in the Southern Cross Brumby Registry High Point, we got beaten by a brumby called Candy Cane, she belongs to a friend of my mother,  a lady called Meaghan and they do lots of fancy riding.  Candy is a white brumby, she is so beautiful. I always had wanted a white brumby, but Mr Winx is a bay rabicano and that just makes him even more special because rabicano is a very rare colour and many do not know what causes it.🐴🐴

Showing is lots of fun, but we do other stuff too. Mr Winx found a friend in Drover, a brumby owned by my mother’s friend Vanja. Drover is a Brumby from the Northern Territory. He has become Mr Winx best brumby friend.  Vanja and mum would take us out camping for weekends.  We went swimming in the river and did trail riding and obstacle challenges. Drover has really helped Mr Winx learn lots of new things. They play with each other and love each other, even when Mr Winx  rips Drovers rugs or runs into him on the blind side, that happens a lot!  When Mr Winx was learning to be a riding horse, he would get scared of something and run straight into Drover and smack right into him and Drover never kicked him or got upset he just would tell Mr Winx that it was ok. 

Mr Winx is my best friend;  he comes running to me every time he sees me, and we play follow the leader and tag in his paddock.  Sometimes I just go out and climb up on his back while he walks around the paddock and he always will look after me. I am so glad I have him, I talk to him all the time. I taught him to do a kissy face trick with me, and to count and to find me when I am hiding.

My mum rehomes many brumbies, when they first come from the wild, but Mr Winx is never going nowhere, he is my best friend, ever. Mr Winx is the most special brumby. He is so easy to do new things with now. We did an obstacle clinic and the man said "That little horse is all heart isn’t he, he is a calm thinker and will do anything you ask him to". 

Wild no more

 I am so lucky to have my very own brumby, only my mum and I ride him, and I don’t think I will ever let anyone else ride him, not even my brother!  I wish every kid could have a brumby of their own because then the brumbies would not be culled or killed. They would all have homes to go to and all kids would find an absolute best friend like I have in Mr Winx.  

Ryleigh and Mr Winx. 

🐴https://www.grullablue.com/colors/white_patterns.htm

http://equinegenetics.blogspot.com/2010/02/rabicano-not-roan.html

I would firstly like to Thank Ryleigh for taking the time to tell us her beautiful story and Angel for allowing us to publish the story publicly. Of course,  I am sure there are other stories out there regarding animals, and their forever young people, and  especially brumbies.  Most poignantly is that even with such an injury this dear brumby found a forever home and became a champion for them. The intelligence of these horses is outstanding and their calm nature unsurpassable.  I have heard time and again how quickly brumbies are haltered and able to form relations with their new human families.  

It is not all roses out there as some brumbies come with injuries and many complications.  The problem is no animal should ever face slaughter just because some humans decided to colonize a country and 200 years on, our human condition refers to them as pests and feral, because of our colonization and disturbance to the native flora and fauna. ⏳I can not help but think of the dandelions that were introduced and now even if not native are part of our common landscape. Some things are irreversible, and no animal or mammal should suffer because of these mistakes made by our social structures and conditioning.

It is imperative that we teach children, being the next generation to create values that are ethical and withstanding with the ‘human’ ideology and not follow the social conditions put to them without learning to think and feel for themselves. Just because a government tells you why they do it and give you justifications, it does not mean that it is right or ethical. 👈It is just a law passed by the conditions of that society, usually with other interest in mind that are not publicly voiced. ♠

 As homo sapiens, generally, we are obsessed with self-preservation, property, and power, the latter two being a creation of our citadels.  This has become the reason for many wars and discords.  One thing that has kept us from destroying everything is the empathic ideologies that lay behind  what a human may be within our ideology of what being ‘human’ means.👪  Without this we become ‘self-absorbed’ in our behavior without reason, to gain what we want, without regard to the consequence that lay before us, or the will, to change anything even ourselves.  In addition we fall into the human pit falls that constitutes our human weaknesses. Such as power and greed, them being at the forefront of most problems within our ‘human condition’ not to mention modernity and science, but that would be getting off topic somewhat.    

 Therefore, brumbies run into this equation, due to the conditions created within Australia’s history. The government has decided that our impact on the land has caused damage and we thus need to change and control our impact. But instead of saying, well no more increase in human population, as that would devastated the land, they decided to create parks and manage the animals.🌲 This of course happened all over the world.  Not just here. There is only 4 % of wildlife left in the world today, and brumbies make part of that percentage.  That in the equation is a drop of water in the sea in comparison.

 Therefore, because they are introduced animals, and not proclaimed Australian, they are culled or trapped for rehoming.  With them are deer, pigs, and wild dogs, to mention a few. But so are kangaroos, native yes, but still considered a pest. 🦘🦘Hence the argument of ‘native’ to me fly’s out the window, as humans retain anything that does not profit them ‘a pest’.  No matter what science you place behind your argument, as we all understand that animals need management because we have taken over the world. With it we have created an increase in our domesticated animals for human consumption and decreased the wildlife to few pockets of land called ‘National parks’.  We still deforest, mine, and take over land also for agriculture and urbanization, but we must control and manage wild animals and convince others that a wild animal does not belong to their environment , because humans urbanized the rest of  the land.

 We cannot change the system overnight. Brumbies are horses that really belong in the wild and in their environment. Europe has started to ‘rewild’ some animals.🐎 But in Australia, the reality is that they are not wanted in the wild by the Australian Government and if they are, they are to be contained to a few. Culling and trapping are the reality and slaughter is also a reality for brumbies that are not rehomed.  There are other, better alternatives to management, such as fertilization control, as an example.  A much better alternatives than culling and sending them to knackeries..

Some progress has arisen, as recently they are trying to pass a law for racehorses, making it illegal to send a racehorse to a knackery, as they too have suffered the same end.  They end up there when they are no longer profitable. 🏇 Hence, it is the values we set in our societies that need to change.  This will take time, and in the meantime rehomers are their only saviour for the brumbies, where they are rehomed, like in Kosciuszko National Park. 

 There is nothing more beautiful than seeing a child with their beloved animal. It is a privileged to have a horse, as they are expensive to have and keep, but if able, as evidence in shown by the story between Ryleigh and Mr Winx, you will never forget them, and with it, teach your children what ethics are, for a better world.   

Brumbies forever!  Cheers, 

Syndy 🎠 Visual Artist Brumby Advocate  

Mother and Foal Photograph curtesy of Paul McIver

 ⏳https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/program/australia-in-colour

👈https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/lockeessay/section16/

 ♠https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/locke/section6/

👪 https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/socialcontract/section2/page/2/

 🌲 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_parks

🦘https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/06/how-kangaroos-could-be-jeopardising-conservation-efforts-across-australia

https://www.animallaw.info/intro/kangaroo-culling-australia#:~:text=In%20response%20to%20the%20growing,'cull'%20or%20shoot%20kangaroos.&text=Whilst%20this%20measure%20is%20meant,the%20cull%20is%201.1%20million.

🐎https://rewildingeurope.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAv6yCBhCLARIsABqJTjZoVRaSyTNlqx3OqrDAZm5llAAtsXKAE2K3ngPryjPPaV7eN9BuVIUaAietEALw_wcB

🏇https://www.animalsaustralia.org/issues/horse_racing.php