Brumby

Brumby

Brumbies near the Sandover Highway in the Northern Territory, 2006
Country of origin	Australia
Equus ferus caballus

A Brumby is a free-roaming feral horse in Australia. Although found in many areas around the country, the best-known Brumbies are found in the Australian Alps region in south-eastern Australia. Today, most of them are found in the Northern Territory, with the second largest population in Queensland. A group of Brumbies is known as a "mob" or "band".

Brumbies are the descendants of escaped or lost horses, dating back in some cases to those belonging to the early European settlers, including the "Capers" from South Africa, Timor Ponies from Indonesia, British pony and draught horse breeds, and a significant number of Thoroughbreds and Arabians.

Today they live in many places, including some National Parks. Occasionally they are and domesticated for use as campdrafters, working on farms or stations, but also as trail horses, show horses, Pony Club mounts and pleasure horses. They are the subject of some controversy – regarded as a pest and threat to native ecosystems by environmentalists and the government, but also valued by others as part of Australia's heritage, with supporters working to prevent inhumane treatment or extermination, and rehoming Brumbies who have been captured.

The term Brumby refers to a feral horse in Australia. Its first recorded use in print is in the Australasian magazine from Melbourne in 1880, which said that Brumbies were the bush name in Queensland for 'wild' horses. In 1885, the Once a Month magazine suggested that rumbies was a New South Wales term, and the poet Banjo Paterson stated in the introduction for his poem Brumby's Run published in the Bulletin in 1894 that Brumby was the word for free-roaming horses. Its derivation is obscure, and may have come about from one or more of the following possibilities: