WHAT more could a young country boy dream of than to travel around Australia with his best mates chasing wild cattle during the week and riding bucking bulls on the weekends.
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That was the life cowboy Peter Wallis lived in the 1970s and ‘80s.
These days Mr Wallis lives on the top of a hill with his wife Sharon at the end of Mullemblah Road, Alma Park, but the cropping and livestock farmer still holds those rodeoing memories very close.
What brought that rodeo career to a firm but satisfying close was riding a bull just that one last time last year as part of a legends feature class at a rodeo held at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.
Mr Wallis was one of eight retired bull riders to put on a show for the crowd some 30 years after they had been in their prime.
Mr Wallis grew up at Broadford in Central Victoria, longing to ride bulls for a living.
His mother was “a hell of a worrier but Dad had done a few [rodeos] in his younger days so he didn’t say much”.
Mr Wallis’s first rodeo was in 1973 when he was 20 years old, which was the start of a career that hit the big time with little delay.
“I won the saddle bronc riding event in 1974 — the Charlie Flanagan memorial at Omeo — in the second division,” Mr Wallis says.
“I rate this as one of the best. If you win something when you’re just kicking out you think you’re in the big time.”
He went on to win the second division saddle bronc ride at Mount Isa in 1975, regarded as the pinnacle event of that division at that time, and by early 1976 he was riding in the open division.
“Once you won $1000 you automatically had to ride in open events,” he recalls.
“I went to a bronc riding school in Brisbane at the end of 1975 and came home and won the first three bull rides in 1976.
“Right from the start I was leading the bull riding, I led from start to finish that year and I went on to win the championship.”
While there’s plenty of pride for Mr Wallis in the glory of those days, what he really values is the time he spent with his mates following the rodeo circuit.
He travelled with his cousin Bernie Wallis and friends Jim Pierce and Bruce Watkins.
“We drove a blue Falcon station wagon and called it the blue mule,” he recalls.
“We joked the rodeo wasn’t over ‘til the blue mule boys had been.
“They were the best days of our lives.”
When Mr Wallis was asked at Rod Laver Arena last year what the highlight of his career had been, he thought first of ribbons, prizemoney and glory.
And then he delivered these carefully chosen words:
“The highlight of my career was punching an old blue station wagon down the road, full of gear bags, swags and saddles, with mates Bruce Watkins, Bernie Wallis and Jim Pierce. We were 10 feet tall and bullet proof. We chased wild cattle all week and on the weekend we nodded for the gate and rode like hell ‘til the whistle went.”
He reflects now that those early days were
particularly special because the four of them didn’t have high
expectations.
“If anything haunts me, it’s the bulls I didn’t ride.
“There was Cream Puff — he bucked me off seven times — and Point Danger.
“And Tony Lagooner — I did ride him; it was one of the few times he was ever ridden.”
In early 1977 Mr Wallis decided to try his hand at the US rodeo circuit for six months.
“I was riding well, but there were so many to compete against,” he says.
“I rode at Cheyenne but there were 200-odd bull riders. It was a fantastic experience to go to the States.”
He also ran a bull riding school in Tasmania in 1978 before he retired in a bid to maintain his profile but in 1983, at 30, Mr Wallis realised it was time to call it quits.
“I wasn’t quite as competitive as I had been and I didn’t want to operate at that level,” he says.
For a cowboy who followed the circuit for 10 years, Mr Wallis did well to not sustain any lasting injuries.
The only highlight is a kick in the mouth from the early days, after which he was “eating soup for a week”.
After his retirement, the desire to nod for the gate one last time persisted.
When stunt performer and former cowboy Lance Anderson talked of a Legends class for the Melbourne rodeo, Mr Wallis jumped at the chance.
He rode a bull called Santa Claus and while he only managed three seconds and four lasting bucks, the time he spent on the bull’s back is not what means the most.
“It felt good to slide down on the bull, have the rope in my hand and I was doing it again, nodding for the gate one last time,” he says.
“But the big thing was to have my son pull the bull rope for me and to have my family in the grandstand.”
The 55-year-old says he wasn’t scared, he just had a “good dose of nervous adrenaline”.
“When I got bucked off I saluted the bull and the crowd really loved it.
“And I talked about our respect for the bulls — they sit under a tree all week long, get a trip away every weekend all expenses paid and they get to keep their testicles all their lives.”
After his cowboy career ended, Mr Wallis got married, he and his wife Sharon had three children and 14 years ago they moved to Alma Park to farm the wide open spaces of Mullemblah.
Now their property is on the market.
When they move, Mr Wallis will need to find a new space to hang up his spurs because after the bull ride last May, “I told Sharon that would be the last one”.