Photo credit: NSW Police Force

At certain times of the day and night something quaint, even antique, happens in our 2011 postcode area.

Carefully coiffured and perfectly pedicured, shiny horses with police mounts clip-clop past in pairs creating a staccato of authority on our streets. Their adagio moves sound and appear as an echo from our nineteenth century past.

But these silent sentinels are not for show.

The New South Wales Mounted Police Unit (NSWMPU) is an active police presence and part of the general New South Wales Police Force. It was founded in 1825, almost 200 years ago, by Governor Brisbane with recruits from a British military regiment stationed in NSW at the time. They protected travellers and chased convict escapees, among other things. Capturing outlaw gangs of escaped convicts, also referred to as bushrangers, was their main employment. The Bushranging Act of 1830 enabled arrests without warrant of anyone suspected of being a criminal.

The NSWMPU remained a division of the British Army in our colony until it took on a more civilian role.

It is now the oldest continuous mounted police horse group in the world and a proud piece of our heritage.

For over a century it was a key part of policing as horses were the main form of general transport.

The NSWMPU was formed three years before the London Mounted Police and 38 years prior to the 1873 formation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, known as “The Mounties”.

By the 1900s the NSWMPU had grown to a strength of over 800 personnel and more than 900 horses. Most stations throughout the state had mounted units attached to them. Horses were the most common mode of transport. Around this time the unit moved from their Belmore Barracks, to allow for the construction of the present Central railway station, to a temporary base at Moore Park, and then on to the Bourke Street Police complex at Redfern in 1907, where they remain today.

Horses used by the NSWMPU generally include a variety of breeds, including heavier horses, draft horses and Clydesdale crosses. Horses were also donated including former race horses.

Houses and their mounts undertake rigorous training; it takes up to two years to train a police horse.

They are not “show ponies”. Duties include traffic and crowd management, patrols, and ceremonial protocol duties.

Currently, the NSWMPU has a strength of 36 horses and around 38 riders, or mounts. Nine full-time grooms are employed to assist with the care of the horses and running and maintaining the stable complex.

They have recently been trialling iPads to give them access to the same information when on patrol as non-mounted police.

Although they are only one single horsepower they manoeuvre through heavy traffic with ease. They may lack the blistering 0-100 km/h acceleration in 2.5 seconds of the latest 1,000 horsepower, $900,000 SF90 Ferrari, with its own prancing horse logo, but both have mid-mounted engines and exceptional road grip and handling.

See photo above of Sergeant Fox (right) and former Mountie Senior Constable Malone (left).

By Andrew Woodhouse

Heritage Solutions