Photographs Provide the Link

Angela Tiede, February 2026. Image: Leslie Thomas’ horse, Blyth-Kybunga area, 1925. Claire Thomas private collection, via Waler Data Base @ Facebook.

Photographs are a very effective way of checking the link of our current Waler horses to the past. Nowadays it seems the term is used for horses that don’t really fit the bill of old-fashioned horse which is why there are so many photographs and stories from our past horse history on this website, which is all for the Waler!

For those of us lucky enough to have Waler horses in our paddocks it’s wonderful to see old photos pop up here and there that strike a cord, strongly reminding us of the horses we see each day. It might be the stance, the look, the overall presence, just something very familiar that jumps out. I had a quick look through photos online to check if my horses from Todd River Downs had that same heartwarming blast from the past feel that all my Walers have. Sure enough, they did.

For example, this is my mare Bess in 2024 (centre), and a photograph of a woman on a horse in 1912 (Iris Solomons riding a black horse on a bush track. Photograph by Douglas Solomons, 1912. Tweed Regional Museum) and of a drover in 1966 (A drover and his three cattle dogs jog along behind a herd of cattle during an annual migration drive near the Victorian section of the Australian Alps, May 1966. National Library of Australia).

Certainly, it comes up time and again whenever any of my horses are in a public place, such as at the Collingwood Children’s Farm. Random visitors from Australia and overseas regularly tell me the horses remind them of their native horses back home, the photos on the wall of their grandparent’s houses, the precious heirloom family albums from a time when horses where a key feature of everyday life. Their first pony, the baker’s horse, prize-winning horses they remember from agricultural shows, and so on.

It’s easy to forget to record things from our daily lives and I am often reminded of this when seeking out photos for a particular story or enquiry: is it really that long since I took a nice photo of each one of my horses? My foal who is now three, my riding stallion who is now a senior, my four-year old freshly started mare who is rising ten, and so it goes. More often than not we rely on others to record our horses for future, and I am lucky to have friends who do this from time to time, keen photographers who love visiting my horses in the varying seasons for the different background and light.

The feature photo on this post is much like stallion Pinjee looking at me, it prompted me to write on this topic as both are very handsome old-fashioned horses indeed.

And imagine my excitement at seeing this old photograph hanging on the wall in the Chinese Museum in Bendigo last year (Jim Brown on Horseback Dressed in Regalia, Bendigo, early 20th century. Photograph sepia, photographer unknown. Collection Bendigo Chinese Association). My mare Topsy (and her daughter Mollie) for sure!

If it looks like a Waler and acts like a Waler than it probably is a Waler, that’s how I think about it for starters. With credible historical breed location history and ideally ancestry DNA testing to help sort out the wannabes. There is something just so old-fashioned and reassuring about them, and I don’t associate this with modern horses. I know, I am biased of course. But maybe you agree.

My pony mare Hale has doppelgangers from the past too (Boy Scout on a pony, State Library NSW)…now the rarest Waler of them all.

Pony mare Indi was everywhere to be found, both ridden and in harness as in these photos (Mr Graham’s pony trap in Cleary Street, Hamilton. 19/02/1898. Snowball Collection Newcastle Region Library; Walkabout magazine: New South Wales photographs c1947, State Library NSW)

Gelding Tommy too! His kind face looking at me through the ages, mobs of them way back then (State Library S.A. Horses on Todmorden Station. 1938. Photos by George Aiston, Dept. of Lands, South Australia.)

We are so lucky to have access to historical photographs so let’s not be the era that breaks the cycle of shared experience. I would love future generations to enjoy our Walers, so please help keep them around in as original form as is practicable now in 2026, nearly 80 years since we ended our famous horse-trading days and started importing modern breeds. Give the Walers the opportunity to speak for themselves, without fear or favour.

• Section: Waler Tales