Tully’s Baggage (Equine Impedimenta)

I grew up on a station in a world without television, chain saws or trail bikes. The stock work was done on horseback and occasionally a sulky would appear on the dusty roads.

Polo and polo cross was often played on the same stock horses that did the work. My mother Nancy took my sister and I on long rides around the paddocks, across the creeks and few the stands of gum trees beside the fields of oats and wheat.

On radio in the evening the performing cowboys; Smoky Dawson, Hop A Long Cassidy and the Lone Ranger cavorted alongside their horses; Flash, Topper and Silver who mostly stole the show.

The homestead sheds were full of tack used by working mounts and the teams of draft horses pulling the huge wagons of wool bales were still a living memory for older people (George Lambert’s painting – Across the Black Soil Plains – was painted in 1899.

As children we were given ponies for aesthetic reasons or in a lot of cases older calmer animals – ambulatory, experienced and unfazed by children.

I remember my old Taffy. He had a propensity to bite as you mounted, would always try and scape you off on a barbed wire fence and on occasion would kick but he was my horse and I addressed him by name. He was my companion and guide in my dreams. I was eight years old and his docile obedience allowed me to feel bigger.

A few years ago I came across a small drawing by John Sell Cotman, probably done between 1800 and 1830, of an alert slightly mythical pony loaded with equipment used by an artist as Cotman was. Palette, easel, canvases, brushes and paper portfolio. I remembered the drawing after I had completed a group of work loosely called Impedimenta – a walking figure whose progress is impeded by the weight of a ludicrous amount of baggage. I saw no reason why a metaphor concerning the travails of living could not apply to a noble animal like a horse – an animal that I was nostalgically connected to.

Their partnership with us is ancient although not without coercion but a wonderfully productive relationship nonetheless.

The image of a sorely loaded exhausted horse is tragically familiar to a lot of people. I started looking about for an older mount with a tired demeanour but as I had no luck in my district as all the horses were equestrian poseurs – I asked Gai Waterhouse if she could help.

Immediately she introduced me to Tully, a sixteen year old gelding; an old grey horse she stables with her volatile runners to keep them calm. It is an old practice – the calming effect of a grey horse on other ones.

So I found my model to carry the weight of the world as Sisyphus has done since Classical times. So Tully reminded me of Taffy.

As with the Impedimenta work the metaphorical load is similar; packs, bags, boxes, easels, paint, water bag, canvas covers, blankets, food, canteens, cups, bottles and clothes make up the imaginary burden.

Tully’s baggage is an empathetic image of a beloved companion, exhausted by a futile journey that inevitably leads to oblivion.

Tim Storrier