By BOB HOLDER DIDN’T set out to break a record, or go down in the history books. The 93-year-old from Cootamundra didn’t even realise he was in contention for the ‘World’s Oldest Competing Cowboy’ title, until a couple of US rodeo-goers enquired about his age.
“A few years ago, we were up at Mount Isa Mines Rodeo in Queensland, and these men came up and asked, ‘How old are you?’” recalls Holder, adopting a Texan accent for emphasis. “I told ’em my age, and they said, ‘Well, you must be the oldest competing cowboy in the world’.” Holder didn’t think much of the interaction – he had a team roping event to win. But shortly after, the folk at Mount Isa Rodeo contacted the American Professional Rodeo Association to have the feat fact checked. “They came back and said, ‘Yep, he’s the oldest in the world’,” chuckles Holder. “So that’s how this all started. It had nothing to do with me, really.”
Well, nothing and everything. Now 93, Holder has lived a life so full and exciting, it could be made into a movie (he was contacted by a filmmaker once, but the project never came to fruition). He’s competed all over the US, in front of celebrities and royalty, and, in 2018, was inducted into the Australian Professional Rodeo Association’s vaunted Hall of Fame, not only for his fearless work in the saddle, but also his wider contributions to the sport of rodeo.
I came across Holder by chance; while cleaning out my junk email folder, the subject line: ‘World’s oldest cowboy honoured at Mount Isa Mines Rodeo’ caught my eye. Six weeks later, I was on the way to Cootamundra, a four- hour drive south-west of Sydney, to meet the man they call the ‘Cootamundra Cat’. “He actually loves doing this stuff,” says Kerrie Holder, his daughter and unofficial publicist, who is a champion barrel racer herself. “You should have seen him trying to choose a shirt to wear this morning. I reckon we went through about 100 options.”
I ARRIVE AT 4H Ranch just before noon. The sun is high in the sky, drenching the hills beneath it in light so bright, I can’t seem to stop squinting. We’re greeted by a chocolate labrador called Monty, who looks more like a portly brown bear than the guard dog described by a sign at the front entrance. Holder has just returned from checking on his cattle, something he still does daily. He runs 100 of them on his 264-acre property, which he’s lived on since 1999.
“I was born in Coota. I’ve lived here all my life, but I’ve been away a lot,” says Holder as he dismounts Silver, the stock horse he’s loaning from a friend, in one fluid motion. (So fluid, in fact, I wonder if I should contact the American Professional Rodeo Association to make sure he is, in fact, 93.) “I was three when I learned to ride. I was on the roads droving by five.”
Holder’s father – also named Bob – was a drover by trade, meaning before the advent of trains and trucks, he would escort large herds of livestock from one part of the country to another on horseback. From the moment he could ride, Holder was desperate to join his dad on the stock routes. But it wasn’t necessarily the long days spent walking sheep and cattle from one camp to the next that excited him. No, Holder liked the challenge of riding a horse that misbehaved. “I always liked the horse to try and throw me off, even when I was a kid,” he chuckles. “I had one pony, and he really taught me how to ride because he was a rogue. You wanted to go that way, he went the other, little bugger.”
In 1959, someone suggested Holder try his hand at the US rodeo circuit. Having never been overseas, he didn’t know the first thing about getting there. But a friend knew a cowboy doing jail time in the States for tax evasion, so he wrote to him and asked who Holder should contact. Soon enough, Holder and three other Aussie cowboys – Chilla Seeney, Ray Crawford and Robin Yates – were boarding a ship to San Francisco.
“It took us three weeks to get over there. When we docked, we were told to go pick up a car that someone had left for us, and drive to Big Spring, Texas. So we got the car, and after we’d had a hamburger or something, we were driving on this million dollar highway thinking this is nice. Then all of a sudden, we drive down a road that says ‘Detour’. And then, bang! We’ve driven the wrong way onto the Golden Gate Bridge.” Holder leans back and laughs. “Holy shit did we hit the brakes. The coppers arrived, and they couldn’t understand us, we were talking too quickly. Anyway, they got us out of there. They said, ‘Get back on that million dollar highway, just keep going straight, don’t look back and don’t come back’.” They arrived in Texas the following night.
Big Spring was his first US rodeo. After that, Holder and his Aussie comrades travelled up to Canada, competing in Edmonton and the Calgary Stampede, where, on his 29th birthday, he rode in front of the Queen. “It was the 11th of July, 1959. I always said she waved at me and I waved back. Six of us rode before her that day, and I was one of them.”
Holder competed at rodeos in South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Oklahoma, becoming the first Australian cowboy to win prize money in the US. “That’s in the record books [at the Australian Professional Rodeo Association] up in Warwick,” he says, proudly. “If someone doubts it, they can go and check the record books.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the stakes at US rodeos were much higher. “Back then, you’d win 15 pounds on a really good bronc ride,” Holder says of standard Australian winnings. “Whereas the smallest amount I won over there would’ve been $400, $500 dollars.”
His success on the US circuit took him to New York City, where he competed on the biggest stage of his life: Madison Square Garden. The rodeo was organised by Roy Rogers, the US singer and actor known as ‘The King of Cowboys’. “Roy Rogers was there, Gene Autry was there,” Holder recalls of the celebrities he met. “It went for 21 days. We had 20 paid performances and one free one [where we rode] for [children with a disability in] America.”
Holder still has the number he wore while competing; the felt token takes pride of place on the dresser, alongside other trophies and ribbons inside the ranch’s mud brick home, which Holder built. He shows us inside, taking us through the living room to his bedroom, and into his walk-in wardrobe. “I’ve probably got about 60 pairs,” he says, pointing towards piles of neatly stacked jeans. “Before I went to America, I’d go to a rodeo and have an old pair of rough jeans on, and a pair of working boots. But we came back with cowboy boots and new Levi’s jeans, and people would stare at us asking, ‘Oh, where’d you get them?’ We came back in all the fashion.”
Today, his favourite jeans are by Wrangler. While younger generations are more likely to associate Levi’s and Wrangler with contemporary fashion, both did, and still do, sell functional denim for farmers and rodeo stars.
“We came back from america with COWBOY BOOTS and new LEVI’S JEANS . . . We came back in all the fashion”
Holder isn’t one bit surprised about popular culture’s obsession with cowboy attire, and all things Wild Wild West. “When you think about it, it’s one of the biggest industries in Australia, the horse industry. Everything is connected to a horse – a pair of jeans, a pair of boots, a cowboy hat, shirt – it’s all connected to a horse. And rodeo, it’s bigger than racing, really. Every weekend there’s a rodeo somewhere.”
It was an expired visa that forced Holder to return home from the US – though he wasn’t planning on rushing back until a couple of government men in suits turned up at Madison Square Garden. “They said, ‘We know what you’ve been doing. There’s a ship that leaves on such-and-such day. Be on it, otherwise you’ll never be allowed back into the States again’. And they were fair dinkum.” So Holder and his fellow Aussie cowboys high-tailed it back to San Fran, where those same men were waiting to make sure they boarded the ship. “They said, ‘Thank you boys. Now you’re allowed back into the country again’.”
FROM OUTSIDE THE BARN at 4H Ranch, a rap song begins to play. Moments later, it’s replaced by a burst of country music, which gives way to a weird Kid Rock remix. Confused, I step outside to see what the commotion is about. “Here, come look at this,” says Holder, gesturing for me to come over. I watch as he swipes through video after video of cowboys clinging to bucking broncos, their bodies whiplashing with every buck. “These guys here, they’re really good bronc riders,” adds the cowboy, his voice husky from an afternoon spent regaling us with stories of his life. Apparently, RodeoTok is a thing. And the world’s oldest cowboy is on it.
If that doesn’t make it clear, rodeo has changed a lot over the years, in the last decade especially. A lot of these changes were warranted, if not overdue. Events, such as the wild horse race, which dates back to 1800s America and sees teams of cowboys strap saddles to wild horses before riding them to a finish line, have been outlawed for placing animals under undue stress. Today, animal rights groups are pushing for a national code that ensures greater protections and safeguards for rodeo stock, a move the Australian rodeo industry agrees with, and has said it’s working to establish (currently, each state and territory has different rodeo safety regulations). Meanwhile, many anti- rodeo lobbyists are calling for the sport to be banned altogether.
On the other side, rodeo-goers argue their sport is the lifeblood of rural towns just like Cootamundra; whistle-stops that, due to urban migration and increasingly tough farming conditions as a result of climate change , could otherwise risk desertion. In relation to pop culture’s yee-haw moment – most recently manifesting in Beyonce’s country music album, Cowboy Carter, while closer to home, the term ‘Inner Western’ is used to describe cowboy hat, boot and bolo-tie wearing people from the inner suburbs – it could also be argued that when it comes to contemporary society’s feelings towards rodeo, there’s an element of cognitive dissonance at play.
Holder is matter-of-fact about it all; he agrees the banning of certain events was necessary, yet he also believes rodeo plays an important part in celebrating rural life and upholding country values. Again, as the popularity of rodeo content on TikTok shows, kids are still signing up to the sport, with family-friendly events like campdrafting and barrel racing surging in popularity. Meanwhile, 25-year-old Damien Brennan from the outback town of Injune, in Queensland, is currently world number one for saddle bronc riding, having taken the US circuit by storm. “He’ll win the gold buckle this year,” says Holder. “He’d have to get smashed up not to.”
Holder retired from the bronc riding event at 44. Today, he competes as the header in the team roping event, meaning he lassos full- grown steer by the horns, while his partner goes for the steer’s hind legs (again, the safety of this discipline is under scrutiny). “I just wanted to keep in rodeo, and that’s the only way I could keep doing it,” says Holder of adopting the less physically taxing discipline (though, after watching him swing a rope above his head, it’s clear there’s still a fair bit of cardio involved). “I thought, This is great, I can still go along and do something instead of just sitting around and growing old. I couldn’t just go to a rodeo and sit there.”
“Everything is CONNECTED TO A HORSE – a pair of jeans, A PAIR OF BOOTS, a cowboy hat, shirt . . .”
At Mount Isa Mines rodeo in August this year, Holder was awarded the world’s only Over 90s Header Buckle, which he wears proudly on his belt today. As we get ready for the drive back to Sydney, the inevitable question looms: How long will Holder continue to compete? Does he keep track of any fellow nonagenarians nipping at his heels, coming for his throne? (He does not). “I’ll be riding for as long as I can,” he says, moving some chewing tobacco around in his mouth – unbeknownst to me until moments ago, he’s been stowing it in his lower lip all day. He admits his lung condition leaves him out of breath from time to time, but “once [he’s] out there, [he’s] good.
“Once I’m on the horse, I can rope all day. I don’t know what it is, but that’s how it is. A lot of people say to me, ‘Why do you keep doing it?’ And I just love it. If I want to do it, I’ll do it. You only live once.”
This story appears in the November/December 2024 issue of Esquire Australia, on sale now. Find out where to buy the issue here.
Ben Murphy is a photographer from Sydney.
