There is no diagnosis: only bewilderment, frustration and despair expressed in horseman's vocabulary. They put their ears back at his unusual clumsiness and in small, cunning ways that only he could detect stopped working as hard for him.'

A creeping, intermittent numbness appears in his legs which, significantly, the horses are quick to sense: 'The pair of workhorses noticed it first – that the feeling had begun to leave his feet. Riding out in a storm, Roley is hit once again by lightning though this time it appears to have the opposite effect. It becomes questionable, however, whether this curious equestrian mojo has any effect. The union is sealed when their triumphant image is reproduced on a biscuit tin, and by Roley's gift of foal's bread – a lump of tissue found in the mouth of some new-born horses and believed to deliver good fortune. He invites her to join him in the dual competition, which they win with ease, their mounts landing with identical stride. 'I could run along an old fence line as narrow as a nail.'Īt a country show he is struck by the sight of Noah Childs, a 14 year-old drover's daughter who is capable of coaxing a temperamental old mare over 6ft obstacles.

He seems to have developed his extraordinary, cat-like equilibrium after being struck by lightning as a child: 'It was like some of that lightning must've stayed in me,' he says. Roley Nancarrow is the 1926 high jump record holder for New South Wales, famed for flying over hurdles with his arms outstretched 'as if at the apex of the leap, in the sheer balance and faith of it all, he was being welcomed into the Almighty's arms'.

Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears