THAT NIGHT WE HAD DINNER at a nice bistro (called Bistro Bistro) in Cooran, just down the street from Gelignite Jack's "Dynamite Discounters" (where I had thought, for about five minutes, that they were really selling dynamite). We talked, as Aussies and visitors so often do, about crocodiles, snakes, sharks, and funnel-web spiders. "Twenty minutes," Alex kept saying, "that's all you would have." And though he was laughing and putting me on, I knew it was probably true: That was all I would have.

The next morning we woke up in the interior at the Noosa Avalon Cottages, looking through a picturesque mist

At dinner we talked, as Aussies and visitors so often do, about crocodiles, snakes, sharks, and funnel-web spiders. "Twenty minutes," Alex kept saying, "that's all you would have."

at Mount Pinbarren. Our plan was to drive from location to location for trail riding, always stopping at a restaurant along the way. Today we were to try one small trail leaving from Cooran in the morning, and then another, longer trail in the Black Snake Range in the afternoon, but the horse van had clutch trouble. We sat waiting in Cooran's post office/café, reading a thick publication called Horse Deals, an Aussie horse and horse-equipment magazine just as thick as the fall fashion issue of Vogue. Christine and I leafed through to see what might be on offer. Christine, I should say, was already in love with Soloman and was envisioning just how he would work out if she shipped him back to New Zealand and put him in training as a three-day-event horse with her others.

I had no such fantasies about Simon, the U.S. being much too far away, but of course I was encouraging her. Alex said we were bona fide "horse tragics," but so was he. Only two weeks before, in response to an ad, he had driven a thousand miles and back to pick up a kindly chestnut mare intended for Karyn. He'd had to go on the spur of the moment, since nice horses frequently sell within a few days. Horse Deals is merely a symptom of the general Aussie passion for horses. The country's biggest horse race, for example—the Melbourne Cup, in November—is of far greater national import than the Kentucky Derby or Britain's Epsom Derby.

Karyn and her mare joined us for the afternoon ride in the Black Snake Range, near the town of Kilkivan. Kilkivan is maybe 50 miles from Noosa, but it looks like a prairie town in western Iowa—flat, fertile, open, and agricultural. It's the home, every April, of another Aussie equestrian event, the Great Horse Ride, in which a thousand horses converge on the town and parade down the main street to a festival at the show grounds. Alex, who'd participated in the most recent ride, said it was really quite amazing to see a thousand horses all in one place. "It's intimidating for some of the horses," he said. "They get a little excited." Not Simon, I thought, and my instincts were confirmed an hour later, when we were tacking up and 40 or 50 or a hundred cows, pale-gray Brahmans or Brahman/Charolais crosses, appeared like a wave at the end of the road, galloping in our direction. Horns. I bent down and peered toward them. Bulls. At least one or two. I hid behind the truck. Simon perked up. But the cattle, seemingly on their own, decided not to pass us, or, rather, to inundate us, but to turn back the way they had come.

On the Black Snake trail, there were eucalyptus trees everywhere, but also a couple of famous trees, called bunya pines, that drop cones every three years, something that used to be the occasion for celebrations by Aboriginal peoples. From one promontory, we could look into three different valleys.

Simon and I were better acquainted now. He conformed to the theory that every horse has certain speeds in every gait that make for the most efficient use of energy. For whatever reasons of stride length or build, Simon's preferred speeds were slow, and usually we found ourselves watching the haunches of the other horses as they disappeared into the distance. To make up for this, Simon liked to trot after them, employing his most efficient trot, which was faster than a walk but not what you would call brisk. For a while I considered it my job to do with Simon what I would do with my own horses, which was to make him walk faster. He was agreeable to that in a way, but we both eventually decided, Why bother? He was a dedicated hill climber, though, and on every steep slope was at or near the front.