"I was born in Townsville in 1937. I'm called Bonny because my older brother couldn't say Ronnie and it stuck. When I first started rodeoing I'd pay my entries as Ronnie, but none of the announcers knew me as Ronnie so it got a bit confusing. And I thought 'Bugger it, I'll stick with Bonny'.
 
We grew up on Strathmore Station where my father worked for Ted Cunningham. I was fulltime employed when I was ten years old. We learnt to live pretty hard there - it was hard work and no quarters given. Old Cunningham was a good man to work for but a hard man. The worst part about his death was that I never got to see him in later years. Every year I thought, 'I must call into Strathmore and see Ted', and I never ever did.
 
"At one time I thought I'd never follow rodeo, it was too tough a sport. But as I grew older it got in my blood, and I went rodeoing full time. Back in those days it was easy to get jobs. We'd pull into a town like Mount Isa and we'd all work for a month or two - out on the road gangs, whatever was going. Around Winton we'd go out in the shearing sheds, and when we were in Townsville we'd all be working in the meatworks. We'd do our rodeos every weekend and go back to work.
 
"A bunch of fulltime cowboys would travel together in those days. There would have been 20 or 30 of us. We didn't live in each other's pockets but we looked after each other. Most of us had wives and children. I had some of my own time event horses and we had them in a truck behind a caravan with six kids. They were part of the family, and we looked after them because they were our bread and butter. I think they got better food and were better looked after than the kids, sometimes. When the kids started to go to school we'd prop in one area and I went away on trips on my own, but I think a lot of the time when they should have been at school they'd be away rodeoing. My girls barrel raced and one of them was close to winning an Australian title, but they're all married now and scattered all over Australia.
 
"Most towns we went to we were treated like local heroes. They'd look after us. We'd go to South Australia and they'd say, 'You can stay with such and such a person', and they'd take you out to their place, give you a meal, take you to the rodeo and home again. In big areas where there were a lot of cowboys, they'd have shearing quarters somewhere, and the cockies used to bring in sheep, meat and everything like that for you. They really, really looked after us and we really appreciated that too. And there's none of that done today, it's just not there.
 
"The very first Mount Isa rodeo was very good. We were all at Blackall and the Committee flew five of us that were leading in the All Rounder that year, paid airfares and accommodation, and just looked after us. That was great. They wanted the top cowboys here, and in those days of course the roads were all dirt, there was no bitumen between Mount Isa, Cloncurry and Winton.
 
"It's hard to say which event I preferred, it depends. At times you'd be bulldogging for six months and you'd go, 'Gee, I love that bulldogging', and then you'd start riding bareback and say, 'Gee, I love bareback riding'. It depends on how you were drawn. If you were drawn good you could win, and I'd think 'Well that's my best event'. But then I won four of five titles in bronc riding and I didn't even think I was a very good bronc rider, yet I was wining titles. There were other guys travelling with me that I thought were better bronc riders than me, so I must have been drawn right to win those titles.
 
"I still keep in touch with the old crowd, and a lot of us are still judging. We get together now and again and see one another. I suppose it's sad when you think of it - we see one another more at funerals. When an old cowboys dies all the cowboys turn up.
 
"Rodeo's changed a lot. We had the rougher conditions, but there were so many changes that we went through, especially while I was on the APRA Board. Change of saddle, change of events, the whole system changed while was riding, and I was part of that. But I still think we had the best of it".