High-country brumby chaser Bonnie Orchard in record quest

Brumby mustering has an uncertain future in Victoria’s High Country, but that isn’t stopping a 13-year-old girl chasing the caught-by-rope record.

Bonnie Orchard riding a green broken brumby. Picture: Zoe Phillips

IN THE foothills of the Great Dividing Range, about a 20-minute drive north of Benambra in East Gippsland, 13-year-old Bonnie Orchard stands squinting into the horizon, scanning the scrub for wild brumbies.

Many other teenagers would be spending their evening at home; tackling their homework or simply watching television.

Bonnie doesn’t have a television at home.

Bonnie and Craig Orchard. Picture: Zoe Phillips

And even if she did, it’s not likely she’d be inside on a night like this, the cool air of the night rushing over the mountains as she and her father prepare for an evening chasing brumbies.

When she’s not on horseback or at school, Bonnie helps her father, Craig, with his duties as farm manager for Vince Pendergast, a stalwart of Victoria’s high country cattle community.

Much of this country was burned in recent bushfires, Craig says.

About a dozen horses stand gleaming in the light about a kilometre away from our parked cars.

Bonnie and Craig hatch a plan.

They’ll ride quickly and quietly up the hill, circling around the brumbies, then driving them down and along the flat section of the paddock, where photographer Zoe Phillips will lay in wait, ready to capture their image.

Methodically, father and daughter lead their horses away from the cars, before mounting up and disappearing into the bush.

We sink into the grass and wait.

BONNIE AND CRAIG

BONNIE recalls her first time riding with her father with clarity.

She was only six years old.

“Dad was on Ernie. I was on Jaz. I was wearing white pants with flowers on them,” Bonnie says.

Craig with Bonnie. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Craig, originally from Swifts Creek, south of Benambra, has horses in his blood.

“I’ve been chasing brumbies since I was a kid. Wherever there are brumbies, I’ll be there,” Craig says.

Craig has caught more than 900 brumbies in about 30 years, the second highest number caught by rope second only to high country icon Ken Connelly.

But Bonnie is on his tail, determined to follow her father into a life on the land.

To date, she has caught only one brumby, in May last year.

It didn’t go to plan.

“I lost my stirrup. Got my rope tangled,” Bonnie says.

“She caught the brumby, though,” Craig says.

His face beams with pride.

“I want to beat his record of brumbies. I just want to get higher than Dad, even if it’s just one,” she laughs.

Craig is sceptical.

Bonnie Orchard working an unbroken brumby in the yards. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Not of his daughter’s ability, but of the future of brumby mustering in the high country, following the 2020 decision by Parks Victoria’s parks management to resume brumby culls.

“I know they’re not a native animal. I see both sides of it. But there’s got to be a happy medium,” Craig says.

Craig says he feels the damage done by feral pigs to state forests in two years is possibly greater than what cattlemen and brumbies have ever done in about 200 years.

DAY YIELDS TO NIGHT

WE ULTIMATELY miss the horses.

Our fear of scaring off the wild brumbies means we’re too far away from them as they thunder past, the sound of their hoofs drumming the earth.

They disappear into the night.

Craig and Bonnie lead their horses back to the cars, the sun finally yielding to the mountain and plunging us into the violet light of the night.

For those of us not native to the high country, the vast landscape is as foreign and fascinating as the surface of Mars.

It’s a terracotta vista; craggy and wild, shaped as much by bushfire and drought as it is by its history of pioneering cattlemen and roaming brumbies.

And moving through that landscape are Bonnie and Craig; the past and the future riding together, side-by-side.

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