SADDLE-maker Col Hood loves all things western, writes GENEVIEVE BARLOW
At 76, Col Hood is a lonesome western cowboy, still wearing his Wrangler jeans and Texan cowboy boots.
Though a long way from the Wyoming plains in the US, where cattle handlers on horseback rode into legend as hat-wearing, baccy-chewing, square-jawed, handsome, tough guys, the Daylesford-raised saddle-maker has spent almost a lifetime bringing the romance of the US cowboy downunder.
His greatest contribution was his self-made Western saddle, which sparked the widespread distribution of the Australian-made western saddle.
With its high horn at front and high cantle at rear, and often beautifully carved leather, it was just the ticket for sitting in for long days on a horse.
It sure was different to the Australian stock saddle, which had developed from the English hunting saddle.
Col says childhood romance with cowboydom was stoked by film star Chips Rafferty's "slow easy drawl and great big grin" in the 1946 movie The Overlanders, about outback cattle droving.
He abhorred ockerdom but liked Rafferty's drawl and adopted and revised it to develop his own western inflexions, which were consolidated during trips to the US and Canada later.
Even today, over the phone he sounds like a good ol' western cowboy.
He trained as an engineering pattern maker before taking up with Melbourne leather worker John Chirnside.
"I'd bought a horse as a teenager with 10 pounds saved from my first job," Col says.
"I put a rope though its nose and rode it home. Then I bought a stockwhip.
"Every flower in Mum's garden was whipped. It was when I went to get it fixed that I met John Chirnside.
"He taught me how to make stock whips, riding crops, hacking canes.
"He taught me how to carve leather and when I said I wanted to make a western saddle and that I'd start by making a saddle tree he said make two and we'll both do it."
Soon, orders for more western saddles arrived.
"Then the rodeo boys from Mt Isa wanted to present one as a prize at the rodeo and then the next year they wanted to present two," Col says.
Today, Col's rawhide carving days are largely spent passing his skills to Kilmore saddle-maker Nicole Dean.
But the years between have taken him Australia-wide and overseas to rodeos, cattle musters, outback stations and cattle runs, where he made his living making whips, saddles and other riding accoutrements.
He also bred Quarter horses.
He's made saddles for Indonesia's then President Suharto, for RM Williams and the movie star Kit Carson, and lived in city garrets, on riverside plains and camped in swags.
He's had his share of pain, losing his oldest child in 1983 and later divorcing.
Today, he lives at Balmattum near Euroa in a 150-year-old cottage and recently he published a book called Droving Down the Cooper: A Saddlemakers's Yarns, about his life and adventures north in the 1950s with a mate called Spinifex Mick.
With his big hat and fancy jeans, he's truly the cowboy he dreamed of becoming and he has a saddle bag of stories to boot.
- For Col Hood details, visit his website. Droving Down the Cooper: A Saddlemakers's Yarns, by Col Hood. Rosenberg Publishing rrp $24.95
