A Jindera woman has spent close to six hours waist deep in a mud hole holding her exhausted horse up while help arrived.
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Cheyenne Allen held onto Buns the horse after he fell into the hole which trapped the 600 kilogram animal.
Miss Allen and her boyfriend Harley Matthews were riding in Beechworth on Monday around 2.30pm when a wallaby scared the horse.
"He jumped sideways and then fell down an embankment into a massive mud hole or underground spring," Miss Allen said.
"We had no idea that it was there as it just looked like a dried up creek.
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"He sunk straight away and he tried to get out but with the suction from the mud and water he couldn't move, it just kept sucking him further under."
Not knowing what to do, Miss Allen jumped into the hole with Buns.
"I immediately took my boots and jeans off and jumped in to help, exhausted and mud-splattered, I clung to Buns who was trapped for more than an hour already, keeping his head high out of the mud while we waited," Miss Allen said.
"We had no hope of getting him out by ourselves so we called friends for help, once they arrived we all tried everything we could to get him out but six of us just wasn't enough."
Three hours down and the group decided to call for the local emergency services. But that wasn't enough and the Technical Large Animal Rescue team at Macclesfield Fire Brigade travelled more than three hours to assist.
"Once they arrived with all their special equipment to get him out we then had to call local vet Helen Robinson who came out to sedate Buns so we could free him from the mud hole," Miss Allen said.
"Once he was sedated we were all ready to prepare ourselves to pull him out - there was about 30 people."
"It was roughly about 10.30pm by the time we got him out.
"He is now happy and glad to be out, clean after the long wash and getting very spoilt at home."
"I would like to say a special thank you to Eric Bast and his team from Macclesfield Fire Brigade, who didn't get home until 3am, the teams from the Beechworth SES, Beechworth Fire Brigade, Graham Fisher, who also owns the local pizza shop and supplied pizzas for everyone involved, and everyone else who came out and helped in such a difficult situation."
