A pleasant ride in the bush

‘No way,’ I tell my good friend Cecile, who in typical I’m-not-Australian-I’m-actually-French fashion just grins at me and ignores my opinion. ‘I’m not riding Annie. She’s not a horse, she’s a cow.’

Annie and I are not friends. I don’t mind horse-riding, although I rank my skills somewhere between nil and novice. Last time I rode Annie, she threw me off before we left her home paddock.

‘Just keep a good grip on her. You’ll be fine.’ Cecile’s advice, delivered with a shrug.

No one can argue with Cecile. I manage to get out of the home paddock unscathed.

Annie throws her head. She sidles sideways without warning. She tries to scrape me off against low-hanging branches and she shies from lurking dangers on the forest floor, both real and imaginary. By the time we reach the riding track along the creek, my shoulders ache from holding her, my feet are cramped from staying in the stirrups and a buckle on the girth strap has worn a hole in my jeans. I’m so tense I feel like I might snap, like an elastic band.

‘Just relax,’ Cecile says, yet again.

Okay for her to say. Cecile looks fabulous on her horse. She has jet black hair and fair skin and reminds me of Snow White. She sits upright with perfect posture. Her horse never pulls or throws his head and she never displays even a hint of effort in controlling him.

I grumble under my breath, listing my inadequacies, as Annie leans into a tree to squash my leg. I dig in a heel to make her move.

Annie doesn’t like it. I feel displeasure run like a ripple through her muscles underneath me, like an earth tremor; as though an act of God is imminent. There is familiarity in it. My tension ratchets up a notch.

Without further warning - although I'm expecting it, I know what the cow is thinking - she takes off in a blind gallop along the creek-side track. Through luck and a grasp on her mane, I manage to stay in the saddle, but I’ve lost my left stirrup, which flaps at her flank and spurs her mad dash even further.

Her goal is to lose me. She ducks her head under every low branch and hurdles anything vaguely resembling an obstacle. If a horse could cackle like a witch, Annie would do just that. Instead, she snorts and heaves like a demon possessed.

I cling on.

She veers wildly to the right, through the shallow creek, and lunges up the bank on the other side.

I cling on.

I know where she’s heading. There is a picnic ground a few hundred metres away, at the end of the track. Her evil plan is to get to the grassy ground and throw me off so she can graze without the indignity of a novice rider on her back.

And still, I cling on.

The picnic ground appears before me, the end of the track nigh. I tighten my grip, shorten reins, pull, yank, try to turn. Nothing has any impact on the bolting cow I ride.

Ahead, a romantic scene unfolds: a young couple, no more than teenagers, sit on a rug on the grass, enjoying the warm day. I suspect it’s wine in their plastic cups. Their serenity is endearing, and far more precarious than they realise. Like a metaphor for life, one never knows when disaster is about to strike.

For Annie, the situation is far too tempting. She gallops straight at the couple. At the very last moment, she throws a sudden turn to the left.

I continue in a straight line. Momentum is no more my friend than Annie is.

I land on the picnic rug. Through some aeronautical acrobatics over which I have no control, I land on my back and stare up at the stunned faces of the young lovers.

‘Sorry,’ is all I can say.