CHAPTER 2 - TOUGH LESSONS

Summary

Although the figures are subject to dispute, the Australian colonies and, after 1901, the new Federation, sent approximately 16 000 men to fight in the Boer War of 1899–1902. New South Wales alone sent perhaps 6200 men and Victoria sent less than half this, about 3500 men. The smallest colony, Tasmania, sent just 800. As many men volunteered more than once for different contingents and others made their own way to South Africa to join one of the many units raised there, or were there when the war started and did much the same thing, such figures are indicative only. The most recent and authoritative history of Australia's involvement in the war estimates that perhaps 20 000 Australian men were involved in fighting it in one way or another. Almost all of them did so as mounted soldiers.

The war that broke out in South Africa in 1899 came at a time when the mounted troops of the Australian colonies, for all their faults and weaknesses, had become relatively mature. The confused and hesitant steps of the mid-nineteenth century had been left behind, and the mounted corps of the late colonial period generally possessed, with or without justification, a surety about themselves, their military role and their martial abilities. Every mounted corps – be they cavalry, mounted rifles or mounted infantry – was imbued with ideas of the bushman as natural soldier, and South Africa would provide an acid test for both these social ideas and broader military theories about mounted troops in modern warfare.