Rodeo celebrates long local history

Buckjump competitions near Warwick were recorded as long ago as 1857 at Canning Downs, Queensland’s first pastoral run, only 5km up the Condamine River from the centre of town and just across the river from the rodeo grounds.
These events more than likely led to a bullock ride and some buckjumping being held in conjunction with the show at Queens Park in 1906 to 1908.
In 1926, as a result of a dispute with the council, the society moved to new grounds at the far southern end of Albion Street (the dispute led to a referendum which the council won). The land was donated to the society (Warwick is one of only three show societies in Queensland which own their own grounds).
The very first official Warwick Rodeo was held in 1906 and Warwick became the home of the regular Australian Championships from around 1928.
In 1931, the open campdrafting competition became the Warwick Gold Cup, named because of the presence of the then Governor of Queensland, Sir John Goodwin, who presented the very first Gold Cup to the winner.
After the 1931 presentation the Gold Cup was then backdated to 1928 and the winners of the 1928 to 1930 campdrafts were presented a Gold Cup too.
The Warwick Gold Cup, paid for each year by the business houses of Warwick, remains today as the “Holy Grail” of campdrafting in Australia.
The Warwick Rodeo was not held during the war but plenty of rodeos run by American forces and charity groups were held on the grounds. (No results for these events were ever kept and over the years, people who claimed to have won Warwick Rodeo during the war years cannot be validated.)
Warwick Rodeo was immortalised in song by Australian country music legend Buddy Williams in the early 1940s – Heading for the Warwick Rodeo – but well before then, Warwick had built up a reputation for tough buckjumpers, wild cattle and great prizemoney.
In the 1940s the Open Buckjump, known now as the Saddle Bronc Ride, was for the $200 Cobb & Co purse – the weekly wage then was about $10.
In 1946, after six years of war and no official rodeos, the Warwick committee was second to affiliate with the new Australian Rough Riders Association (ARRA) to ensure the best riders in the country were competing.
The first committee to join was Marrabel, South Australia, just two weeks earlier. Today, that affiliation still stands as firm as ever but the ARRA has now become the Australian Professional Rodeo Association (APRA).
Although professional stock contractors now supply all the bucking stock at Warwick Rodeo, there was a time when Warwick’s own buckjumpers were considered the best in the land, so good in fact, the best 50 of them went by train to the Royal Easter Show in Sydney and to Brisbane for the annual Brisbane Exhibition during the 1930s and 1940s and were still being transported for other big promotions as late as 1955.
Interestingly, these same bucking horses were spread around the district, three or four on some properties, five or six on others, and it became a big annual event just to bring them in at rodeo time.
The committee last bucked their own horses in the rookie event at the 1982 Warwick Rodeo and, although it was hard to see an end to the era, it was no longer practical to retain the herd.
Time in mustering, less property owners willing to agist bucking horses free of charge and the extra work in the backyards needed to handle horses, which hadn’t seen man at close quarters for 12 months, were the determining factors.
Fully stocked contracted rodeo started in 1983.
Story kindly supplied by the Warwick Show & Rodeo Society