Category: Featured History Article

The name Waler is derived from New South Waler – meaning a horse bred in NSW, as the colony was first referred to – where horses were shipped from on the eastern seaboard, NSW then including Qld. It was coined as a term for horses sent overseas for remounts for the British armies in China and India, and for Indian regiments. Rajahs as well as the English in India bought Waler ponies for polo. We were sending horses away by the 1840’s – it quickly became a major trade for Australia.

We have direct descendants of those horses. Andrew Tennant and John Love took a big mob of horses from South Australia to Undoolya, next door to The Garden, in 1880.
Andrew Tennant and John Love took a big mob of horses to Undoolya, next door to The Garden, in 1880. They were from South Australia, being mostly Thoroughbreds (as they were then, not all registered) and good carriage and hunter types of roadster breeding. Some had a significant amount of Timor blood being from Horse Peninsula (now Coffin Bay).