Under a hotter Sun; Taffy alias Davey;

Taffy;
We didn’t understand much about horses and agreed with his suggestions. It didn’t take long and a horse and a saddle were delivered to us. Les told us the name of the horse and we understood something like Taffy that was then unfamiliar to us so we called him Davey.
This was the day when Taffy alias Davey started his life with us on “Little Gem”, and we were quite unaware what tricks he would be able to play on us. He was a lovely horse who knew its own mind. The girls had already had some riding lessons that they had received from Boyd a retired stock man and horse trainer. Marie-Louise took charge of Davey and his saddle. With lots of care and love he was pampered and brushed. His hooves that had grown long were cut and polished with oil. Poor Davey hadn’t had so much attention for a long time.
When she wanted to go riding Davey had to be bribed with a blue bucket containing oats.

When he saw the blue bucket he forgot to run away and then could be saddled.
Sometimes she would come home walking, yelling and swearing because Davey had wandered off and left her stranded far out on the property.
He was a good stock horse when mustering the cattle he knew all he had to do, when he was in the mood. I think he knew when he first saw us that we were suckers, he owned us and let us pretty well know the situation.

When he arrived he was left in a small paddock to get acclimatised. Four railings closed of the paddock. It didn’t take long and Davey had opened all the railings and was proudly emerging and wandering off.
We took him back in his paddock and closed the railing. Each railing was also tied with a string. In the night I saw suddenly a huge black shape going past the bedroom window. I was flabbergasted what was out there? I wakened Peter and told him to have a look outside. Davey was gently grazing and munching on the short grass outside our bedroom window. Davey had opened the strings and the railings and made again an escape. We were really hard thinking about naming him Houdini. Later we watched him how nimbly he was able to use his lips to open gates and railings and even knots in strings.

He really liked to eat the heads of thistles. Those heads are so prickly one can hardly hold them with ones fingers. Davey would gently nip them from their stems and then slowly turn them around in his mouth until softened and ready to be chewed and swallowed. He also liked the small figs that grew on a giant Morton Bay Fig tree. He especially loved them when they were already fermenting. When he had eaten his full he acted very strangely. He galloped around, threw his hind legs high up, whinnied and snorted, behaved completely out of context as he was usually a quiet, friendly horse.

We bought a small rowing boat named “Kmisitsch”, as it was said that it was bad luck to leave even the smallest of boats unnamed. It was generally left down by the river. Out of no particular reason Marie-Louise thought of bringing it up to the shed. She fastened the boat with a rope to Davey’s saddle. She jumped into the saddle and Davey went ahead and pulled the boat. For a while this went quite well. As the boat tumbled over stones and gave up tinny sounds the horse got agitated and tried to look back what was actually following him.
They came to the upper paddock where Marie-Louise had to leave the saddle to go and open the railings to get through. I was in the kitchen and suddenly heard this tremendous noise, crashing and splintering of wood. I ran fast out onto the veranda to see what happened. I just saw Davey jumping over the railings the boat still attached to him crashed into the railings the anchor flew over his head and landed in the soft turf. The impact of the crush released the rope attached to the saddle and Davey took off as fast as he could run. Since then whenever he saw the tinnie, Davey took great precautions not to come in any way in contact with it again.
I have never been on a horseback. Marie-Louise said:" come on mum" and saddled the horse for me to go riding. I was out of my depth I knew nothing about horses, they scare me. I just knew the front from the back of a horse.
To my amazement I liked to be carried in a rhythmic, slow trot over the property. I had a good view from the saddle and could go near the cattle without them being frightened. There was just one small problem. Davey always took me half way down to the river and then he turned around. No persuasion what so ever made him go further. After a few minutes hesitation he took me straight back home. My horse riding skills were absolute useless. When mustering cattle I was usually send far away from the action.