Pop Gus Ryder talks about his father teaching him how to hunt & trapping with wild ponies

Audio Recording

Gus Ryder talks about his father teaching him how to hunt & trapping with wild ponies

Audio Transcript

At Wannamal he told me many stories. How to hunt, trapping with wild ponies. Teaching me older brothers how to mount the pony, bagged them from fear, gentleness, a horse called – now, gentleness. When I say he was teaching them how to control a wild pony he had to teach them how to handle the pony with gentleness in the mouth and little fingers and turn them left or right and then he had a bag or bushes and things like that to take the fear out of the pony so they could mount, jump on it and that sort of thing. Then he used – like that’s what I call a gentleness but then a lady heard of what he was doing and she was an old Aboriginal lady who lived in about four ks out of New Norcia and she had a horse called Molly and this little pony was, because they were in their sixties I think, those old people at the time and this little pony was a bit too – she couldn’t control it anyway. It was going too fast for her, it wouldn’t steady down under the right moment. So she asked my Dad to take it and try to get some sort of understanding in through the pony. Anyway that became my I had to ride that little pony to school every morning at Wannamal to the gates and that but in so doing that there was so many tales around in that my age group at that time.

From: Pop Gus Ryder, interview for South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council, 12 August 2008.

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SWALSC followed cultural protocols to obtain permission to use this oral history on the website. It is also protected by copyright law and may only be used for private study, research, criticism or review. If you would like to use it for any commercial purposes, including publication, making copies for sale, or modifying it please contact SWALSC on reception@noongar.org.au or Level 2, 100 Royal Street, East Perth WA 6004.
Note: In some cases the written transcript has been edited with permission from the person interviewed and may differ slightly from the audio recording.

Permission to use this audio recording kindly granted by Pop Gus Ryder

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