No shades of grey: These horses keep SA’s living history trotting along

Our police “greys” are an invaluable part of our living heritage – we need to stop horsing around and solve this problem, writes Peter Goers.

Police “greys” graze in a historic olive grove by the Thebarton Barracks. We wonder whither they’ll go?

Recently a prominent young Labor Party political aspirant asked me whether we really need the South Australian Mounted Police and their celebrated mounts. Are they anachronistic?

Police can be like your memory – not always there when needed but I happened upon a cadre of senior coppers leaving a meeting and I canvassed their opinion. They put me right. Police horses are a reassuring and calming presence, they prove an effective deterrent to, for example, drunks in Hindley Street who are less aggro when confronted by a huge animal on four legs. A policeman or woman mounted on a police “grey” which has a minimum height of 16 hands, can see further. They are also useful in tight spaces and in landscape inaccessible for motor vehicles.

They have an important ceremonial and public relations function (the Christmas Pageant, Anzac Day, opening of parliament) and most importantly, they are loved.

Police grey horses are part of the history of SA.

Equestrian policing has been part of SA’s history since Adam Lindsay Gordon was leaping about the South East and up come the troopers, one, two, three.

Many police forces use horses but SA is the only one with horses of only one colour – fifty shades of grey. This happened because only darker horses were used during WWI leaving our police with pale horses and this became a tradition.

Police hoses are good in riots. In 1931, the starving unemployed rioted in Adelaide because mutton replaced beef in rations. Nowadays vegetarians may thus riot. The horses were sadly used against the anti-Vietnam War marchers and in the Glenelg riots in 1984. They were not used against the run on the Hindmarsh Building Society in Rundle Mall in 1976 but Don Dunstan was – though, sadly, not on horseback.

Riots are few in SA but possible and, frankly, I feel like rioting most of the time. Don’t you?

Some of our noble “greys” are kept at the Thebarton Barracks and the majority of them are kept at Echunga. The Thebarton Barracks, soon to be razed for the new hospital, is not much visited by the public apart from those attending the excellent Police Museum.

Me aged four with kindy friend and another horses hoof. At the Thebarton Barracks with police grey. Supplied

I was there as a kindy kiddie aged four and photographed for The News touching a policeman’s spurs. It must have been a slow news day. The horse’s hoof looks good and so does the other one. I also attended the Thebarton Barracks for a driver’s license test which I failed which is unsurprising to anyone who’s ever driven with me.

Where will our beloved “greys” and their troopers go? Horses are privately agisted in the north parklands but a police equestrian centre in the south parklands with 12km of fences, terrorist training, tack rooms and a lunge ring (whatever that is, I want one) was opposed, the airport site was discounted and now a site at Gepps Cross is planned.

This is very handy for riots at the Pooraka shops or the Enfield Cemetery but since 81.7 per cent of the use of the horses is in the city, unless the horses gallop up Main North Road in a cavalry charge or like the four horses of the apocalypse, it means horses will have to be floated in which stresses them and delays response time.

Surely a closer site can be found? What about the old Bowden gasworks or a corner of the West End Brewery site?

Our police “greys” are an invaluable part of our living heritage just like the marvellous SA Police Band, once also threatened. We need to stop horsing around and solve this problem, and I need to think of a better pun.