"Trooper Bluegum, you're next."
I stepped forward. A hundred volunteers had been marched down from Victoria Barracks, Sydney, and were undergoing the riding test prior to being drafted into the Australian Light Horse.
"Mount and ride," said the sergeant.
I leaped on the bare back of a hog-maned colt. Three other candidates were already mounted waiting for the signal. One was a Sydney "bushman" and was obviously nervous. The other two were bushmen from Riverina and the Hunter River and they grinned confidently.
"Cross this flat," continued the sergeant; "leap the bog, jump the sod wall, gallop to that marker, and return."
Some fool orderly gave my mount a crack over the back with a rope and away we galloped. The flat was easy, though I had not ridden bare-backed for some time. The bog offered no resistance and we leaped the sod wall neck and neck. Then the horses wanted to bolt and they took some stopping. Anyhow, the first half of the test was safely through.
The Sydney bushman was looking more at ease. The others grinned expansively. "That's dead easy," said the man from Narrandera. "Call that a riding test?"
The return signal was given, and the quartette started off. All went well till the water jump loomed ahead. Here half a dozen yelling orderlies were posted to spur on the chargers to the leap. The three bushmen cleared the obstacle with hardly a splash, but disaster was in store for the City bushman. Right on the brink the horse stopped dead and the hapless rider was shot with catapultic force head first into the bog, amid roars of merriment from the assembled army. We three countrymen "passed," were promptly marshalled with the horsemen, and marched to the doctor's for medical examination. The City bushman was sent to "the gravel-crushers."
In a huge marquee in Rosebery Park were a score of virile young Australians stripped for the fray. Sun-tanned bushmen they were for the most part, lean and wiry, with muscles rippling over their naked shoulders. Splendid specimens—strong but not too heavy, rarely topping thirteen stone, for all the heavier men had been sent to the infantry. But these were ideal Light Horsemen.
"Bluegum forward."