29/08/2026
It's heartbreaking that none of these brave and loyal horses made it home 😭💔.
But all is not lost and their legacy lives on in the Guy Fawkes Heritage Horse ❤️🐴.
A legacy that the Guy Fawkes Heritage Horse Association is proudly committed to preserving!
In the desert camps of Egypt in late 1918, Australian troopers received the order that broke their hearts. The war was over, but their horses were staying behind.
Among the men facing that reality was Trooper Oliver Hogue, known to readers as "Trooper Bluegum" an outback journalist from New South Wales who had enlisted with the 6th Light Horse Regiment in September 1914.
For three long years, his Waler had carried him through the desert campaigns of Sinai and Palestine, sharing scarce rations of water, enduring shellfire, and navigating shifting sands.
Quarantine regulations and shipping shortages meant around 13,000 surplus Australian horses in the Middle East could not be returned home. Of those, 11,000 were sold on, mostly as remounts for the British Army in India, and only one Waler, Sandy, the mount of Major-General Bridges, ever made it home to Australia.
Unable to bring his horse home to the bush, Hogue sat down and wrote his now famous poem titled The Horses Stay Behind, capturing the grief of thousands of bushmen leaving their trusted mounts. The poem describes how the men had planned to buy their horses from the army and dreamt of the good times they and their beloved Walers could enjoy back home.
Hogue survived the entire war, from Gallipoli to Damascus. He took leave to England in January 1919, but contracted influenza in London and passed away on 3 March 1919, having never seen his home soil again. He was 38.
Today, the bond between the light horsemen and their bush-bred Walers remains one of the defining stories of Australia's military heritage.
What do you think made that bond between an outback stockman and his horse so unbreakable?
Sources: Australian War Memorial, Trooper Oliver Hogue Collection; State Library of New South Wales, Light Horse Records, 2026.
Images Credit: Australian War Memorial A05426 / P11277.004 / Public Domain.
