Tommy’s horses in the hills
In the back hills of Raetihi there is a horseman who has a certain way with Kaimanawa horses. Carly Thomas spends a day with him.
To tell the story of Tommy Waara you have to start with his place. It doesn’t have a number, just a yellow bucket at the cattle stop. The land is wide, with rocky clusters jutting out of steep hills – hills to gallop up, hills to get to the top of. His horse yards, holding seven Kaimanawa stallions and two chestnut mares, are bigger than his dot of a house and below the Makotuku River thunders past a stand of native bush. And there’s Waara, with his hat pulled low and his collar turned high – out-stretched hand and a grin that lets you know you are welcome to step into his bit of magic. He points to the sky. ‘‘Everything just goes right over the top of me here.’’ He has called this place home all of his life and it has been in his family for at least 150 years. Waara has gone away, but he has always come back. Horses too, they have always been here. The paddocks are vast, fences sparse and as Waara’s story starts to tumble out like the river beneath him, a young bay gelding edges its way towards his voice. ‘‘I can remember way back when Dad and his sister and brother-in-law used to split totara batons and posts from out of the bush there and they used to supply a lot of the local farmers.’’ It was heavy, manual work in the 1940s, a time when cross-cut saws did the job of a chainsaw and big draught horses were used to haul the wood out of the bush. The posts that run beside the deck that Waara is sitting on are ones he found perfectly preserved in the bush. His dad would have had a hand in making those posts. The timber that Waara’s son and grandson built his house with is local too and the length of it was determined by how long a plank was. Everything else has been salvaged. The doors are all different. A great slab of weathered, polished wood makes the kitchen bench and the sink is old and deep. Real billy tea heats on the gas stove and Waara explains they put the windows in upside down with the bigger one at the top, ‘‘so that all you can see is view’’. He chuckles, ‘‘it’s all a bit wonky eh?’’ His little house is off the grid. His power comes from solar panels. His heating from a chuggy little pot belly and his water from a spring that his father contained with a stone catchment years ago. It fills with crystal-clear water and scuttling koura as well. The original house was up on the hill and Waara used to ride a horse to where the school bus would come to take the local kids to school in Raetihi. What he rode was a case of, ‘‘first up, best dressed’’, and he remembers there would be a scramble to catch the most well-mannered horse. They were just a part of life, used to plough the top paddocks, make hay and carry the men on their hunting trips into the hills. Waara says they lived off the land and so horses were an important part of their day. He wasn’t taught to ride. ‘‘We were chucked on a horse and we would just learn how to stay there.’’ Waara’s mum died when he was 10 and his dad brought up him and his eight other siblings. When Waara was 20, his dad died in a digger accident and so, with no parents, the family unit left behind had to be tight. ‘‘There were younger ones who still needed looking after.’’ Waara went away to work when he could, but he came back to make his home. And so the horses came back too. He has a knack for training them, doing the initial handling and then starting them under saddle. Waara has made a name for himself with his soft and slow ways. People call it things: horse whispering, having ‘‘a way’’, but Waara shakes that off. ‘‘Nah, it’s just common sense.’’ He has always had the Kaimanawa horses in his sights. He remembers long before the feral horses, who call the wild expanse of the Desert Road their home, were mustered and culled to keep numbers down. Locals were known to catch them, using horses and ropes, and he knew then that there was something about them, something he liked. They belong in these parts too, just like Waara. The Department of Conservation monitors Kaimanawa horse numbers, keeping them at 300 to ensure there is sufficient feed out on the tussock land to sustain a healthy population. Every few years, or as required, there is a muster, and in recent years horses that are surplus to the 300 are adopted out to homes for training. In 2014, Waara was asked to take part in the Kaimanawa Stallion Challenge. The challenge was part of the Kaimanawa Heritage Horses push to re-home the horses by showing people they are clever, malleable and suitable for a range of equestrian disciplines. And this is when Te One and Tukotahi, two Kaimanawa stallions, came into Waara’s life. Tukotahi has since died, but Te One has become Waara’s firm friend and No 1 horse. ‘‘He’s a bit special. I can do anything with him now.’’ But it wasn’t like that from the get-go. When Kaimanawas come into yards, they are wild, scared and far from their place of comfort. Everything is new – the yards that hold them, the people who have put them there, even the hay that they are fed. Tukotahi thought, ‘‘bugger this’’, jumped out of the yard, ‘‘and hooned off way into the distance’’. ‘‘I thought, ‘right. well that’s that then. He’s long gone’.’’ But then when he saw he was on his own, without a herd and that the other horses were still back in the yard, ‘‘he jumped back in again’’, Waara says. ‘‘And I thought, ‘right, well I have something to work with here. He’s not stupid’.’’ The way Waara was taught to train horses is not the way he uses now. Back in his dad’s day the men ‘‘broke horses’’. They were tied up, hobbled and they were forced. It was done quick, and bucking and rearing was ridden out of them. ‘‘I did it that way too back then, but then I just started doing things different, as in a lot different.’’ Waara waits, he sits with his horses, he talks to them in a language they understand and he listens to them too. He moves among and with them and it takes ‘‘as long as it takes’’. ‘‘It’s easy on me. It’s easy on the horse. It’s all about patience, getting to know the horse and the horse getting to know you, that’s the important bit. They want to connect with you, they really do.’’ There are seven Kaimanawa stallions in Waara’s high-sided yards right now and two mares in a smaller round yard. He was there when they were brought in to the Desert Road yards. Waara helps with that end of the muster, to keep things calm and to make sure the horses are loaded with care. And now they are here, eyeing him up, listening to him as he points out particular characteristics. They look very far from the wild, snorting creatures that first set foot on his land two weeks ago. ‘‘It doesn’t take them long to settle down. ‘‘They are clever. They know what they need to do, you just have to give them the space to do it.’’ The stallions are with Waara for a good start. He will handle them, quieten them down, get a head collar on them, have them gelded and teach them to load on to a horse truck. They are destined for homes in the South Island and once they get there, Waara will focus back in on his own horses. The three crazy miniature ponies live the good life alongside a grunting kunekune pig. The ‘‘little buggers’’ ignore an electric fence to canter to the creek. It’s Tommy Waara’s place. His place in the world. And it’s like magic.