Whirlwind of power and muscle
There have been plenty of powerful bucking horses produced in Australia, but JOHN ANDERSEN may have discovered which was the best of them all
HERE’S a question for rodeo fans: was Windermere Whirlwind Australia’s best ever bucking horse? Better even than Blondie or Curio? Greg Mitchell from Colane Station near
Winton told me this week that the grey mare was up there with the best and might have even been numero uno.
This is a big call when stacked up against the likes of Mount Isa superstars, Blondie and Spinifex and the great Curio, ridden only by Alan Woods.
This story is about Windermere Whirlwind – a horse few have heard of but one nevertheless that bucked off World Champion American cowboy, George Williams, at the World Champion Winton Rodeo in the early 1950s.
Windermere had skulls and crossbones, scorpions and taipan venom in her gene pool. In other words she was bad to the bone.
Her mum and dad would have been outlaws. Greg Mitchell, whose father Frank bought a grey mare with a mob of other horses from Euston Station near Longreach in the late 50s, discovered the hard way that the grey was no saddle horse. At the time Frank owned
Windermere Station.
“Back then, this was the 1950s, when they bought a mob of unknown horses, they’d ride them out of a side gate in a crush, just to see what the horse would do and if it would be okay for mustering,” Greg said.
I should explain that in rodeos, kicking straps are tightened around the flank of the horse as it leaves the chute.
It’s a strange feeling and this is what makes the animal rear and twist…in other words, buck. It wants to get rid of that strange feeling around the flank.
Out there at Windermere Station they didn’t use kicking straps. This wasn’t the intent. They just wanted to sort the good from the bad so they saddled them up one by one, opened the side gate and rode them out.
The outlaws would want to tear the planet apart. The quiet horses would put their heads down and look for grass.
The latter went into the mustering plant – the mob of quiet horses used to muster the cattle or sheep. The outlaws were sold as ‘doggers’ and sent to the pet meat plant or they were given to rodeo committees.
In some cases they would be shot, their
Windermere had skulls and crossbones, scorpions and taipan venom in her gene pool. In other words she was bad to the bone
carcasses towed out into the bush and laced with strychnine for dingo bait.
When Frank opened the side gate this particular sunny day on Windermere station and let the grey mare from Euston Station see daylight, the stockman on her back was given a vision of f hell.
He wished for a moment, before collecting himself and remembering where he was, that he’d taken a job selling encyclopedias door-to-door rather than choosing to follow his heart and go out on the stations.
The mare that was to become known as Windermere Whirlwind bucked and twisted and pawed the air with her front feet, as though reaching for heaven.
The stockman, riding in a Longreach-made Chieftain Poly saddle, lost one stirrup and then the second.
After that gravity quickly called…with a thud. Frank Mitchell gave the mare to the Winton Rodeo Association, telling them she might have a future in the rodeo arena.
And so the story began.
Much like actors and singers are often given ‘catchy’ stage names, rodeo broncs and bulls are given special names that will appeal to the watching crowds.
Names like Kings Cross, Cream Puff and Cheyanne Brave, come to mind. Windermere Whirlwind put one cowboy after another into orbit. And then one day a young stockman from Braeside Station at Kynuna lined up at a rodeo in Winton to straddle the horse that “couldn’t be rode”.
Greg said that in those days to qualify a rider had to stay in the saddle for 10 seconds, unlike the eight seconds today. The young stockman wasn’t bum-in-saddle when the whistle blew.
He was high in the air, his hands free of the halter rope when it sounded, but because he had altitude and wasn’t on the ground at 10 seconds, he was announced the winner.
It was a controversial call, but it was accepted as the judge’s decision.
In 1958 Winton hosted a World Rodeo Championship. It’s not known if this was a sanctioned world championship or if the Winton organisers were indulging in a bit of marketing overkill. To Winton’s credit, world champion bronc rider George Williams from Arizona, America, came out for the rodeo.
He brought with him an ‘international’ rodeo saddle, which is now acceptable in Australia, but not in those days.
In the 1950s Australian rodeo riders had to stay the distance in a small poly saddle disparagingly called a ‘self-ejecting poly’ or a Slippery Sam.
George Williams drew a horse in the first round, but was thrown. Another rider came out on Windermere Whirlwind and was also speared into the dirt.
Williams, smarting from being thrown in the first round, said he would ride Windermere Whirlwind in his own saddle as a feature event in the afternoon.
The officials had a meeting and agreed that he could use his own saddle as the ride was not part of the regular rodeo events.
Williams straddled the horse in the chute, pushed down his hat, thrust his left hand skyward while holding the halter rope tight in his right.
He nodded silently downwards and the chute gate swung open. Greg Mitchell said his father always said the grey mare would explode form the chute and buck hard up and
down not far out from the gate.
This might have been the pattern Williams was expecting, but on this day Windermere Whirlwind had a new game plan.
She shot sideways from the chute, spun around before rearing vertically and then taking off to one side, bucking straight ahead. And then abruptly, as her four feet touched the ground, she sucked back like the whirlwind after which she was named.
Williams couldn’t adjust to the sudden shift from fast forward momentum to reverse gear and said goodbye to the saddle as the grey mare fired backwards. Six seconds. That’s all he lasted on the Windermere Whirlwind.
The world champ had been done and dusted by a born-to-buck bush nag at a rodeo in a town and in a country no one in America could point to on a map.
There’s no record of what Williams said when he walked back to the chutes, but no doubt there were plenty of references to the lord our saviour intermixed with the more basic elements of reproduction.
If you discount the winning ride given to the Kynuna stockman who was out of the saddle, cartwheeling through the air without even a hand on the halter shank when the whistle blew, then Windermere Whirlwind was never ridden.
George Williams, a man who is a legendary figure in US rodeo circles and who has been inducted into the American Rodeo Hall of Fame, couldn’t ride time on Windermere Whirlwind.
Whether it’s just plain unfair or one of those things that go missing in history,
Windermere’s notoriety never matched that of Curio and the other great bucking horses.
And when talking about animals that buck, you can’t leave out the great bucking bull, Chainsaw.
The ‘Saw, 1400 pounds of Tnt-loaded muscle and sinew, was a mild-mannered country gentleman in the paddock, but out in the arena with a bull rider on his back, he was mental, deadlier even than a P-plater in a cutdown Hilux.
All of these celebrity bucking horses and bulls mentioned here have gone to the big arena in the sky, including Windermere Whirlwind.
Frank Mitchell took his grey mare back from the Winton Rodeo Association during the 1960s drought. Grass was in short supply so Frank and put her out on his Bareeda Station, hoping she would survive what was one of the state’s worst droughts ever.
Sadly, like so many other horses, sheep and cattle all over Queensland, Windermere Whirlwind died out on the dustbowl station.
The great bucking horse’s bones are now scattered hell, west and crooked. But, was she the greatest bucking horse ever?
The answer to that my friends, is blowing in the wind.