Bootoolgah

[Corowa]

Name: Bootoolgah
Species: Brumby
Gender: Filly
Age: 3 years

Appearance: Bootoolgah is long-limbed mare with the promise of great swiftness. She has a strong, sloping shoulder and powerful hindquarters, and stands at 15.1HH. A throwback to her sire, Bootoolgah has the conformation of good station stock, built for stamina and speed.

Bootoolgah has clean limbs, and though the mare is a touch light of bone, she has strong, flat joints and hard hooves.

Having inherited Myrrina’s queer colouring, Bootoolgah is a light blue-roan. However, it is as if she has been sprinkled with snow, for she is marked with white, and it is this queer blending of blue-grey and white, for which she had been named.

Personality: Bootoolgah is a shy mare, having run alone with the wise mare Mulga for much of her life. Though she knows how to move without track or sound and to understand the call of the wind as it moves amongst the snowgums, she knows nothing of the ways of stallions, and is made uneasy by the presence of a large mob of brumbies.

She herself, is gentle and wise, having listened to everything that Mulga has taught her. Yet Bootoolgah knows nothing of her mother Myrrina, or of her sire Tingara, that great stallion who had once been King of all the Cascade brumbies. Though sometimes, she finds herself filled with a longing for something that seems nothing more than a half-remembered memory; of a mare, sad and beautiful as the snow.

History: Bootoolgah was born on a windy night, in amongst the steep southern gullies of the Brolga’s Country. Tingara had vanished into the snow-swirling wind, but even the wind told not whither he had gone. Myrrina, filled with a terrible loneliness for her mate, had travelled to the higher country of the north, longing for the steep snowgrass slopes of Lake Cootapatamba.

Yet Myrrina was heavy with foal, and travelling so many long, hard miles had strained the mare. A strong wind gusted from the snow-covered tors of the Ramshead, and by night, it had turned to a gale. So it was, in the lower gullies of the Brolga’s Country, Myrrina sheltered in amongst the snowgums and alpine ash.

In the blackness of night, with none but mopoke to watch over her, the mare gave birth to a queer white filly. So it was that Bootoolgah, out of sorrow, by loss, was born. For in the fierceness of the storm, when the wind howled and none dared stir, the wise old mare Myrrina, breathed her last breath.

Yet there beneath the snowgums, there stood a brown mare, watching. It was the mopoke that saw the mare call to the queer white filly, saw the filly stir and go to that gentle, brown mare. Then both mare and filly melted away into the bush, and none knew what it was that became of them.

Genes: Ee/aa/RNrn/SBsb
Extra Comments: Bootoolgah means ‘crane’. Myrrina x Tingara