Free Life As I Know It by Michelle Payne Page B

though. He never took as long from then on.
    Clocking someone was part of family life. The boys were always fighting—and it was not uncommon for one of the girls to be sporting a shiner as well. Dad bought a pair of boxing gloves andthat’s how Patrick and Andrew would sort out their differences. I used to put them on as well. So we all learned to handle ourselves.
    Feed-up time was a real team effort. Someone had to make up the feeds, and crushing the oats was the worst because it was such an itchy job. Everyone tried to get out of that job and do something else. Someone would bring in fresh straw from the hay shed in a wheelbarrow for the boxes, and someone else would be laying it down in the boxes. Another kid would put fresh water in each box. Anything but crushing the oats …
    When the horses were brought in at night, the chaff also had to be made up, which meant putting lucerne into the hay cutter—just as bad as the oat crusher as all the dust would get down your shirt and make you unbearably itchy. Thankfully Dad used to do this job most of the time if he wasn’t at the races. He used to put a towel around his neck to stop it from getting down there. The horses that didn’t come in at night also needed their water troughs filled up and feeds taken out to them.
    As it was getting dark, Dad would make up the bran mash—fine bran mixed with molasses and hot water. I would do the final round with him, giving the horses a couple of handfuls each of the mash. We’d go to each box inside, where the better horses were stabled, and he’d put his big hands in the white buckets and feed them. The horses loved it and there was no doubt they were Dad’s mates. They’d rub against him affectionately as he’d give them a pat with his clean hand and some of the older ones would give Dad a little neigh as he opened the box door.
    As we turned off the lights I would take hold of Dad’s hand and we’d walk home under the moonlit sky back to the house to have dinner. I used to hold Dad’s hand wherever we walked and usually I’d have to break into a little jog to keep up with him.

    After we had returned to Home from Rochy, some of the older kids moved away. Their blossoming riding careers took them to Melbourne and around the Victorian countryside. Bernadette was based in Adelaide for a while, where she had a lot of success. Patrick was riding in Hong Kong. I remember the day Patrick won the Doncaster Handicap when he was sixteen. Seeing him ride and win, I was just thinking about what he was doing—how he rode, his patience, his hands. He has the best hands to get a horse to settle, and patience in the finish. You’d be thinking he was waiting too long but then he’d pull it off. He just knows his horse; knows how to read them. And he was never much of a whip rider. He always got the horse going more through encouragement rather than the whip. He’s like that now with his training. He’s very kind to the horse. It’s all about the kindness, unless they obviously need some standing over. But when I did a lot of trackwork for him, when I was about fifteen and onwards, he was very hard on me, a real arsehole at times. Looking back now it toughened me up and made me a lot more capable.
    Once the older kids moved on it meant I was given more of the responsibility of working the horses in the mornings. Maybe two or three horses would need a gallop. From when I was about eleven Dad would let me gallop up the paddock in a straight line with Cathy and Andrew. The horses knew to stop at the top. As I got older I progressed to riding beside the car. He’d get me to rate the horse. We’d do evens, which is 15 seconds for 200 metres, and then we’d work a little faster. Dad taught me the importance of knowing precisely how fast your mount was going, to develop a way of understanding time and speed. It took a lot of practice, a lot of hours in the