GORDON WARREN
Stockman

I grew up in Marree and I have worked at Anna Creek, Glengyle, Moomba and as a Grader Driver in Alice Springs. I am currently working as head stockman at Macumba Station. When I first started working at Anna Creek they used the Bunk Cart (pulled by camels) as our tucker cart. In those days we used only horses, up to 70 -100 horses in the one plant at a time, with 10 to 12 stockman. Times have really changed these days with the use of motorbikes and airplanes for mustering.

BENNETT MAYNARD
Stockman

I was born at three mile on Macumba station near Oodnadatta. I was 14 when I started working at Macumba. I have also worked on Allendale, Todmorden, Anna Creek and Fregon stations. I still work around on local stations when people are looking for workers. I Enjoy riding horses in the stock camp and also breaking in horses.

ANDREW 'BLACKY' BLACK
Stockman

Andrew ‘Blacky’ Black can’t remember the first time he sat on a horse.

"I reckon I must have been five or six my grandfather had a station ‘round Tibooburra and my dad was a contractor. I’ve been riding horses all my life."

It’s that love of horses and their integral connection with shaping the Australian Outback which has kept Blacky in the heart of the pastoral country for 35 years and ensured he’ll be on the 2004 Hooves and Horns Down the Oodnadatta Track.

"I started as a ringer when I was 15 on Epsilon Station near Cameron’s Corner in Queensland’s far south west. Graham Betts’ father ran the place and in those days we had a horse plant with pack horses. The only vehicles on the station were a Falcon sedan and a Leyland truck. In 1971 we took a mob of 600 cattle from Marree to Epsilon with pack horses. It was the second last mob ever to walk out of Marree."

That experience was an initiation into a tradition spanning the history of pastoral Australia. From Epsilon, Blacky worked on Nappermerrie, the legendary Kidman properties Naryilco with Eric Ferguson and Morney Plains with Ted Brown, and also with Max Gorringe attending a muster at Durham Downs. In the late 70s, Blacky and Norman 'Goos' Gilby took two weeks work at the world’s biggest cattle station, Anna Creek, breaking in some colts. Blacky stayed two years. In those times, the mustering camp still boasted a camel drawn cart known as the ‘bun cart’, to supply the mustering camp which had up to 80 horses and would be ‘out’ for up to three months at a time.

By the early 80s, Blacky was head stockman at Todmorden Station near Oodnadatta (where fellow Hooves and Horns participant Bennett Maynard was his horse tailer) with Gordon Lillecrappe and spent several years as a contract musterer rounding up everything from cattle to brumbies.

But the winds of change had reached the pastoral country. Horsemanship was being usurped by horsepower of the two and four wheeled variety even helicopters became the mustering vehicle of choice for some.

"It quietened things down," Blacky remembers. "A lot of people left the country. Where there’d once been a dozen or more people, p’raps only three were needed. There are advantages motor bikes and the like are quicker, but I still think you have more control of your cattle on horses. And you can learn more about the cattle from horseback."

Not that the winds of change would defeat a man of Blacky’s skill. He spent much of the ‘80s mustering horses in the northern pastoral districts, worked on Murnpeowie, Quinyambie and Arrabury Stations where he was Outstation Manager.

For a change of pace, he became a plant operator at Moomba Natural Gas Fields in 1989, and ran into Gordon Warren a former ringer form Anna Creek who’ll also drove with the Hooves and Horns event in 2004.

Blacky spent the early ‘90s contract mustering in South Australia’s northern pastoral districts and went underground as a grader driver at the world’s biggest uranium and copper mine Roxby Downs for five years from 1997.

The money may have been good, but Blacky’s heart still yearned for the saddle. In 1999 he penned a song titled 'When Mustering’s In Full Swing', which Australian music legend Slim Dusty recorded on his album "99".

By 2002, Blacky was back where he belonged in the saddle as one of the drovers for the internationally acclaimed Great Australian Outback Cattle Drive, part of the 2002 Year of the Outback celebrations.

Since then he’s been working as a musterer and stockman from Bedourie in Queensland to Marree, at the bottom of the Birdsville Track in South Australia. He’ll temporarily leave his current job as stockman at Dulkaninna Station on the track home of legendary drover and stockman George Bell since 1932 only because he believes the 2004 Hooves and Horns Down the Oodnadatta Track event is significant.

"I reckon it’s really important. For people to get a glimpse of the camaraderie of the stock camp is a remarkable thing. When we used to go three months living with a mob of blokes and not have a real blue that’s the truth of it."

"Sleeping in swags I love it. You can look at the stars, the satellites these days it’s beautiful and you can count the buggers."

"Into the bargain, I grew up with Randall Crozier, the current Anna Creek manager, who’s putting the plant and team together for this drove. When he asked me to be part of it, I jumped at it."

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