"I was riding on the pommel of my mother's saddle before I could walk. We lived on a cattle property 100 miles north of Mitchell and all my family were into horses. My father, Terry, was a pick-up man and my mother, Janice, was big in campdrafting in the early 60s. The ringers on the property used to throw me on anything and I used to ride everything that moved. Whatever walked past, I'd ride it. I started riding poddy calves when I was 16 years old.
 
"I won my first calf roping when I was seven and then I started campdrafting. But that got too much for my mother. She'd be doing all the strapping and looking after the horses while I was riding calves and steers, so eventually I gave up riding campdraft. But I was riding everything that bucked at home, all the horses that I could make buck, even the milking cow.
 
"Then I went to a rodeo school outside Boonah that had these wild bulls with big horns, really bred for bucking and it's ironic that I was to break my leg there, practising to get on Chainsaw, at the very end of my career. So I started my career and ended my career there.
 
"I went to the USA in 1981. I was offered a scholarship to ride bulls at a college but I thought I was too smart and I didn't go. That was the worst mistake I ever made. But I tried rodeoing professionally. I had my 18th birthday in America. I was a kid from the bush, couldn't even catch a bus or a train and I got myself to Los Angeles on my own.
 
"When I first started, there was a concept of the old cowboy leaning against a bar, drinking and fighting and all that. Well, when I got to America, I learnt that was the total opposite. Those guys are in gyms, out jogging and they don't drink or smoke. So I learnt to be a cowboy right from the word go. A cowboy never ever complains about anything, he doesn't care whether it's snowing, raining or stinking hot. No matter what obstacles you're up against you've got to go through and defeat them, that's what being a cowboy's is all about. When they run some of those bulls in there, it takes courage to get on them and ride them.
 
"I went to America because they've been riding bulls and rodeoing a lot longer than we have, so they're really professional. I saw World Champions practise until their hands bled. But when you come back here the distances are so great it's hard to stay motivated.
 
"I still compete now in campdrafts and I'm actually doing a bit of bronco branding. It's an old Australian tradition and I've got a couple of mules. My dog Rufus comes to the shows with me to Camooweal, Mount Isa and Boulia where they have bronco branding contests, everyone knows him. It's a tradition I'm very proud to be part of because we're not following the Yanks. We've got something of our own."