In the very early years of “the Colony” there was exceedingly little need for the assistance of light horses in the daily work of the place, whilst the desire to possess an animal more speedy than that owned by a neighbour had not yet arisen at all. You will, perhaps, recollect that, until the year 1813 or thereabouts, the only portion of our vast continent which was being made use of by white men was a little strip of soil between the Blue Mountains and the sea, some forty miles by eighty, and the few horses which had now been brought over from the Cape, or out from the Old Country, were simply beasts of burden, or, at the best, perhaps, hacks and harness horses. It was on the 31st day of May of that year that Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson burst their way through the hitherto impenetrable ranges and scrub into the limitless lands beyond, and it was upon that same day that the use for a swift and long-enduring saddle horse was discovered by the inhabitants who followed in the tracks of these explorers, and the first real need of the thoroughbred as a sire found its way into Australia. Yet, though there seems to have been such a limited demand for the thoroughbred steed in these very early days, there were, at least, three importations before the transit of the Blue Mountains had been accomplished, and you cannot help wondering what was the inducement which tempted the importers to take the risk. A mist floats over the particulars of these first arrivals. In the closing years of the eighteenth century there is on record that a blood horse, Rockingham by name, was shipped to Australia from the Cape of Good Hope. It was at the end of the seventeen nineties, and the only other authentic fact which I can ascertain concerning him is that he subsequently became known as “Young Rockingham.” There is no trace of anything which he may have left behind him in the way of progeny. He was probably by Rockingham, a stallion which was covering in England about this period, but not the Rockingham, of course, by Humphrey Clinker, who appears in the pedigree of Doncaster. The day of that sire had not yet dawned.