Wild horse diaries - Lizzie Spender

'What that girl needs is a pony.' So said the poet WH Auden to Lizzie Spender's father when Lizzie was eight. Auden backed up his words with a cheque for 50 but the horse never happened.



Years later fate presented her with a horse. But fate had been dramatic - it was a wild horse that she'd seen from a helicopter above the red earth of the Kimberley - the ancient, remote, uninhabited north-west of Australia. The owner of the cattle station told Lizzie to consider it hers but Lizzie decided it wasn't enough to know her horse was out there. She wanted to go back and find her horse, catch it, train it, transport it thousands of miles home to Sydney.



She turned that dream into a reality in an extraordinary adventure. It was tough, frustrating, and beset with difficulties: an unpunctual horse-whisperer, an Australian outback full of wild creatures, the sheer mechanics of building the yards. But it was also a unique opportunity in which she got to know the wild horses, watched the horse whisperer achieve miracles and took two horses on an arduous journey back to 'civilisation'. From the thrilling epiphany of achieving her dream, to the subtle satisfaction of conquering her doubts, this is an inspirational tale, alive with the character of the Australian outback, one of the last remaining wildernesses.