According to tradition, when soldier and pastoralist James Brumby was transferred from Sydney to Van Diemen’s Land in 1801, he was forced to release a number of horses into the bush. Known as Brumby’s horses and later as ‘brumbies’, the word came to mean wild horses. Mobs of brumbies that most famously roam the Australian Alps today are descended from lost, abandoned or escaped horses that in many cases belonged to early British settlers like Brumby. Wild, independent, and successfully inhabiting a hostile environment, the brumby has become a national icon seen by many as symbolic of our national character.