I was a terrified four year old , and I had nothing further to do with the animals for seventy years..

Then at Dondingalong I gradually got to know a few of the neighbours , some of whom owned horses . One neighbour had a gate sign which always amused me . It read Horses Please Close . Other visitors , one would presume , could leave it open.

My daughter and son-in-law had been visiting for a couple of days , and were to fly home from Port Macquarie later that evening .t.

However , the daughter wanted to go for a walk through the bush for a final time ; down past the dam , across the bottom of the block and then up the other side fence and back to the house .

We only got down to the gully a bit past the dam , when we came upon the horse . It was standing by the fence , and seemed unwilling or unable to move except in a kind of semi-circle , using its front legs only while its back legs acted as a pivot . This was not surprising , as it seemed to have crashed its way through the rusty old barbed wire fence , and was gashed at belly and hind legs . There was a horse length semi circle of trampled grass around her .

Vanessa , tender hearted as ever , with a great love of animals , insisted we take it down a bucket of water , and I tossed a few carrots to it as a minor encouragement to do something other than stand still, to no avail.

When we got back up to the house I rang around the neighbours to see if there were any who had lost a horse , but nobody among those within a couple of kilometers along the road had any knowledge of it .

However , we had to get to the airport , so I took the young ones into town , and when I came back late in the evening I went to bed , to be woken about midnight by someone asking if I had a chestnut mare at my place . Word passes round rural communities at a great speed . I was not au fait with horse colours , but I described the animal as best I could -- it had a distinctive white blaze down its forehead -- and since that seemed to be the animal in question I was asked if it would be all right for the owner to come out to get it .

He seemed anxious when I told him of its wounds , so , even though it was now past midnight , I agreed to his request .

Not too much later he and a friend arrived , so , armed with torches and lanterns we trooped down to where the horse still stood.

He opined that it had been chased by another person's dogs , and had been driven to the western part of my property, so he slipped on a bridle and began to coax it to walk .

It was obviously in no condition to clamber across the steep bank of the little intermittent stream that ran between where we were and the house , so I led us all the way round via a less steep area , up the slopes and back to the house , where we had floodlights by which he could examine her.

He and his companion cleaned up the wounds , which had already been mildly flystruck , and as she was not really in a condition to be moved much more he asked if she could stay .

I was happy to oblige , and next day he turned up with a hypodermic to give her a shot of antibiotics , a large bag of grain , and a bucket . He told me that if she wandered from the house I should put some grain in the bucket , rattle it , and she would come .

I only wished that Vanessa the animal friend were there -- she would have loved it .

Having been assured that horses are much more sensible than cows , ( I had had a bad experience of cows that had been let into the property and rather than going round , had crashed through and broken some of my native trees that I had planted ) I agreed that she could stay as long as was necessary .

And so for some six weeks I had an equine visitor, whose health improved more and more each day , so much so that she spent quite a lot of time later at the boundary fence chatting with some horses newly arrived in the neighbour's property.

But the most interesting thing for me was that , if I woke at any time at night , I would hear the chomping sound of her grazing on the near lawn area around the house . She never went near the orchard , or my planted natives .

She paid her rent with lots of manure for the orchard -- but I now know whence comes the saying Eats like a horse ! because she never stopped grazing .