In these times of mechanised travel the city dweller is apt to think of the Policeman in association with a motor cycle or a high-powered wireless car. That is, at least, when the association is not restricted to the hot pavements and the measured tramp of the man on the city or suburban “beat”. 

Let us visualise another Policeman on patrol. He is, perhaps, thinking of a lucky fellow member of the Force who has a shady walk under overhanging awnings, blazoned with pretty neon signs and attractive shop window displays of the city, whilst he sits easily in the saddle with the western sun striking fiercely upon his back, and his horse, which that day had just covered a short patrol of sixteen miles, is quickening its pace as it approaches the township wherein lies the Police Station. The stable and the feed box. The last few miles traversed have just been over a dusty road, the flies most annoying, and the patrol just a  prosaic check-up upon some bagmen camped by a bridge, the inspection of a couple of slaughterhouses and a visit to a neighbouring landholder working a small property of only a few hundred acres, merely to learn that there were no complaints, except against the continued dry weather.

Arrived at the Police Station, the horse is rubbed down, stabled and its feed placed in the box. when a call from the window of Police quarters announces that ''There is something in the mail."

The mail which arrived by the four o'clock train was collected by the Constable's wife who has been "on duty" whilst the official member of the Force was away on patrol, and she hands him an envelope from Superintendent's Headquarters and waits till he says. '' Orders for another special patrol.''

''Another week away, I suppose?'' she inquires. 

"No, only about four days this time,'' he answers, and they go inside the house to make the necessary preparations. The Constable has some office duties to attend to; travelling stock permits to sign, a return of slaughterhouses inspected and fees collected to prepare, and a couple of short reports to write–enough to keep him busy for an hour or more after tea.

SPECIAL PATROLS

Throughout the wild and rugged cattle country of the coastal areas of New South Wales and the wider stretches of the Tablelands and Western Plains the mounted Police make Special Patrols. They comb the mountain gullies for cattle ''dumps"–being secluded places where stolen cattle may easily he hidden–or they ride through a huge sheep station, searching mob after mob of sheep, noting brands, watching for strange breeds, that is, breeds different from those of the flocks running on the properties, and inquiring into reports of losses and of thefts.

The Police Force at Gwabegar, in the person. of the mounted Constable, awaited the arrival next clay of the mounted Sergeant and Constable from Wee Waa, and the three proceeded on Special Patrol through the Pilliga Scrub, visiting the various sheep runs, examining cattle roaming the scrub, questioning the possessor of sheep skins from which the ears had been cut off, restoring to their rightful owners sheep that had unaccountability “strayed” to another property and incidentally indelibly impressing upon the minds of all and sundry met with that the Police were about and were likely to show up at the most unexpected places.

Such patrols are reported in detail and their courses are traced upon a large scale map at Police Headquarters showing the trails crossed and recrossed until at last some sections of the map look like a puzzle of the "find-the-route-taken" variety.

The mountainous country bordering the Kingston and Barraba patrols; Urbenville, Woodenbong and Acacia Creek; that very rough country between Howes Valley and Putty and out towards Rylstone and Capertee; the mountain regions between Glen Innes and Armidale; the Gulf country about the Ebor and Guy Fawkes Rivers; the wide stretches beyond Lightening Ridge and the rugged coastal country between the Tweed and the Hunter, have all been visited at intervals, as well as the Upper Colo Valley and the South Coastal dairying and cattle areas. 

These patrols may occupy four days or four weeks. Sometimes the parties are small, consisting of only three Police, but on occasions as many as eight mounted men and two black trackers have composed the Police party and the territory combed has covered 3,000 square miles. Such a party usually divides and traversing differing routes to an appointed meeting place, patrols a total distance of 780 miles in three weeks, the different members visiting en route dozens of station properties, camps, villages and hamlets.

The cold summary in which such a patrol is recorded at Police Headquarters ignores the weeks of hard riding in hot sun or the meagre shelter of a cliff in teeming rain, the precipitous bridlepath, the slippery claypan, the recovery of the gear from a pack-horse that has tripped and fallen down a chasm. These are all merely incidental to a patrol of the object of which is to prevent stock stealing, or failing prevention, to investigate the theft and arrest the thief; to suppress the destruction of native animals and birds and to trace and seize furs and pelts, and proceed against the illegal traffickers in such things, to prevent the slaughtering of diseased cattle; to examine the flocks of sheep being driven along the various routes to see that they are properly described in the travelling stock permit carried by the drover, and that they do not include sheep of other brands garnered from holdings along the route. 

Not all of the patrols are clone in daylight. Every month member of the Force must patrol by night to protect the station owners from thieves who use motor lorries in their depredations upon sheep and calves. Neither are the reports of sheep and cattle stealing well founded. In fact, on many occasions, the mounted Police have had to ride the station property for days and also to check the station records of shearing, branding and of deaths to prove to the pastoralist, who has complained of the loss of several hundred sheep, that one-half of his loss is clue to mortality–the dead sheep, being located in difficult country or dense scrub which the owner himself has not properly scoured–and the other half to errors in bookkeeping!

On these patrols the Trooper carries in his saddle-bag a complete set of sample ear-marks used by the pastoralists through whose district he is patrolling. These samples are cut in leather “ears.” Some members of the Force carry a notebook in which is recorded the name of every station holding in his own and neighbouring patrols, together with illustrations of the earmarks used by each pastoralist. His practised eye readily detects the presence of a strange earmark in a flock of sheep or in a mob being driven along the stock route. 

Occasionally in checking-up on a complaint of sheep stealing, the mounted Constable will play the part of boundary rider, discover where a fence is down and find the allegedly stolen sheep quietly grazing in the next paddock, perhaps six miles away. But this is all in the day’s work of a mounted man in the Police Force, and when such patrols are completed he goes back to his Station to carry on with the routine work of inspecting slaughter-houses, issuing travelling permits, measuring mining operations, testing motor drivers and registering cars, inspecting forestry areas, issuing food relief and fisheries licenses, recording the names and addresses of unemployed and assisting them to employment, serving summonses, and collecting statistics of the pastoral and agricultural wealth of this great State. 

lt is from the enforcement of the provisions of the Pastures Protection Act however, that the mounted Police of this State derive their principal duties, and the special patrols, night patrols, and ordinary patrols, are the means adopted. In the patrol of one area alone the result was: Eight head of stolen cattle recovered and the thieves traced and convicted; two men convicted of having stolen wool and skins in their possession; one offence under the Crimes Act detected and the offender convicted and fines; five holdings visited, 273 stolen sheep recovered and the offender arrested and convicted.

The day of the horse has not passed and will continue while sheep and cattle roam the plains and coastal country. It is an indispensable adjunct of the Police Force in its protection of the pastoralist and agriculturalist in those areas of the State of f the trafficable highways, the supervision of which is now the function of the fast-moving motor vehicle. But what of the horse himself? Many of the remounts at present in the use throughout the country have delighted Sydney people in processions throughout the city and in the musical ride performed annually at the Royal Agricultural Society Show.