Nothing unusual about a bloke wanting to catch up with his distant family. It’s just a matter of getting from here to there.
The bloke, Julien Welsh is here, well that’s Pakenham, the family, cousin Trudy and co from his father’s side, is there, being Rockhampton. About 1200 miles (1800km for the modern day fastidious) if crows still flew that direct route.
Fly? Nope, no running the gamut of luck of a Jetstar flight leaving on time (if at all) multied into the bags arriving at the designated arrival.
What about driving, just eventually find Highway 1 (we used to call it the Pacific) and cruise up at leisure and you’ll get there.
No - none of that for Welsh, the renowned high country mountain rider, wrangler - that was him in Man From Snowy River 2, horse-breaker - Elvstroem, Reward For Effort, Magnus - most of Moody’s, the Price/Kent team, Team Hawkes and numerous others, a trainer in his own right, Don’t Doubt Dory his best, a winner of eight and one at Flemington.
So, if you are a horseman, you turn back the clock, head to the bucket list, and of course go by horse and cart.
This is no mid-life crisis for Welsh, who turns 60 next year, this is some life changing boy’s own adventure.
So you can picture this, on the old stock routes and now lesser travelled Aussie highways- the Mitchell, the Newell, the Leichhardt etc - you’ve got an American style buckboard (seen them in those old American western movies right?) carrying Welsh behind his chunky Percheron draft horse Hank, his stock horse Dusty clip-clopping alongside and Nookie the dog (a blue heeler naturally), sitting in the motor-bike trailer behind filled with feed, water and survival requirements.
I catch up with Welsh for a chat, during this epic and uniquely Australian expedition, heading appropriately to a place on the western Queensland Downs called Miles, (pop 1700), where mobile reception is solid and the feed merchants are waiting.
He made Benalla his starting point for this journey on April 23, his mother’s birthday. He originally scoped out a 45 day trip. Now he reckons he is still five weeks from Rocky, but there is no hurry. Not so much smelling the roses, as dodging thistles and prickles. “You’ve got to keep your boots on out here,” he said.
“What an amazing trip, I couldn’t begin to tell you how much it has changed my life and outlook on things,” Welsh said.
“I’ve been in the industry for 35 years, I hadn’t lost the passion for the horses, but the daily grind of running the business side had worn me down. I didn’t want my marriage failing and blokes aren’t much good at talking about problems and issues, but I said to (wife) Mel, I’ve got to get on the road,” Welsh said.
“Now I’ve gone from one extreme to the other, that regimented routine at home, always wound up, never wanting to take holidays, to this, I still haven’t worked out what it all means, but it has absolutely changed my attitude towards life, for the better, I’ll be making changes when I eventually get back.”
But that, like the trip, is a long way away.
While the long journey is now sailing smoothly, and the stories of people you meet along the way could fill a rollicking Welsh book, there has not surprisingly been a few twists.
Like when he thought he couldn’t make it.
“I was about four weeks in, we were at West Wyalong (Pop 2643) and for whatever reason I thought I don’t know if we can do this, I was on the cusp of turning around,” He said.
“Then I looked out in the paddock and the horses were bucking around and sort of saying ‘c’mon we’ve come this far, we don’t want to go back’ and since then we have marched on.”
Well apart from the time when he camped out near Pilliga (Pop 207) on the road to Coonamble (Pop 2750).
“I’d set up the electric fence for Hank, tied Dusty to a tree, got the fire going and laid out my swag and fell asleep, then there was a hell of a commotion,” Welsh said.
“Hank had got stirred up and got out of his yard, Dusty broke free and they were gone and there I am at 10.30 at night in the dark going along these stock routes looking for them thinking I’d lost them and this was all over.
“The route went for miles and I’d walked for 8km and just said I’ll start looking at first light and went back to the camp.”
With the help of a local who offered Welsh his motorbike, he eventually found the pair some 15km in a wheat paddock and they were re-united.
If there was something typical - if that is with right word, on this trip it also happened on the Pilliga Road camp, where a couple pulled up in their Land Cruiser to check on their new ‘locals’.
“They had an Angus cattle farm up the road (that means about 10km) in country speak and some stock horses and asked if I could come help them with the young horses. We were having a barbeque one night and she said I’d saved their marriage; her husband had never left the farm in his life, we were almost sick of each other until you rode in she said.”
And Welsh will be riding in again when he eventually traipses back to base camp - Booralite Park outside Pakenham.
As he will with Brett and Jane Mooney at Gulargambone (Pop 400) on the banks of the Castlereagh River, they met at the once a year local Camp Drafting show and offered similar country hospitality.
Towns like Ardlethan (Pop 387), a service town on the Newell, or Wewah (Pop 2080) on the Kamilaroi Highway, mere specs on a map of the broad Australian landscape, but memorable in more ways than words.
“The people I’ve met, that have taken me in, entertained me, so interested to find out what I’m doing and why. They start with ‘where did you come from’ and then I tell them where I am going, it’s just an amazing experience.”
Like when the man who knows horses inside and out can’t explain when Hank the 800kg Percheron comes and lies down next to him at camp (Reckless/Tommy Woodcock style) in front of the camp fire, like when Nookie, the youngest of the litter, truly becomes this man’s best friend.
“I’ve learned as much about myself as I have about the horses and the dog, I know I can never stop learning and enjoying this.”
There have been stopovers in Goondiwindi where you meet the aged locals at the Kaloma Care Facility in Gough Street, bump into a 100-year-old Light Horseman who would find new life in seeing Hank then pass away two days later - as if comforted. Welsh likes it to Graham Salisbury and Subzero and their work.
“It’s that look in their eyes and I get that now.”
While life continues at home around home, he always wonders how his star premiership leading apprentice Carleen Hefel is going (a text exchange Saturday wondered how she went in the eighth at Flemington - 4th ), he gets his only electrical device, a multi phone charger, which can give him six days contact with the outside world, topped up at a big town stop, but there is the excitement of the future ahead and the accomplishment off a true bucket list item.
“I don’t know how emotional I will be after all this getting into the driveway at Rocky, it’s going to be tough absorbing all that has happened,” he said.
And then long term farm employee Billy Campbell will take them back on the horse float but on roughly the same route travelled and to see friends made along the way.
“It is going to take a long time to come down, I know that, but I know now I wouldn’t have done it any other way.
“Life gives you that when you take the time."
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