by Zelie Bullen
I was nervous before they turned up, but when I met them I relaxed straightaway. Wendy is such a beautiful, bubbly, warm, friendly person. Tad was a bit more reserved at first; I think he was wondering who I was and what I was doing there. His mum and I explained to him that I was interested in learning more about trick riding, and he agreed to give me some lessons. Connie told him how much work I had been doing at the ranch and they never accepted any money from me for lessons or board.
I stayed with them for ten days, but it seemed like I’d been there forever. They made me feel so comfortable. I didn’t like Las Vegas or Nevada (I didn’t like the sand or the dry heat), but I knew I could live with this family, wherever they were.
The minute Tad turned up, so did everyone else; there was a stream of visitors all day every day—all kinds of different people, some of them trick riders camping on their way to their next performance. It was just a really thrilling place to be. Tad also did some animal training, which I enjoyed watching as it was different to how Sled worked.
That was an amazing turning point in my career. I am still so grateful for how warmly they welcomed me. I’ve been in plenty of beautiful homes with plenty of lovely people, but on the Griffiths’ ranch we were all the same sort of people—it was as though we had grown up together. They seemed to like me and to be impressed with what I’d been through and with the fact that I’d got off my bum and gone to meet them. It was such a big thing for me—at last I was in the world I really wanted to be in.
CHAPTER 18
A place of my own
I returned from America and after almost three wonderful years with Wayne, I decided to end it. It was one of the worst things I have ever had to do. He’d helped me through one of the darkest times in my life and now I was hurting him.
He had half-jokingly talked about getting married and having kids, but I knew I never wanted children—after all the loss I had already been through the thought of losing a child was too horrific. I really did care for him, and, because I was so grateful to him, I had thought that the least I could do would be to marry him. But when I talked it over with Tamzin, she pointed out that gratitude was probably not the strongest foundation for a long-lasting marriage. So I ended it.
Breaking up with him was just awful. I knew I was crushing him and Wayne is such a gorgeous man. He had given me his whole heart, but after what I’d been through I think I had shut down emotionally—I truly didn’t think I could ever love again.
Later in 1997 I headed off to Port Douglas for the filming of The Thin Red Line, to work for the first time as an assistant stunt coordinator. I went from Paradise Road, a war movie with an almost entirely female cast, to a war movie that had an all-male cast.
I went into the lunch tent late after a busy morning and walked up to the food table, where one other person was serving himself. Both of us reached for a spoon at the same time, so I said, ‘Oh sorry, you go.’
He said, ‘No, you go,’ and we looked up at each other.
I thought I recognised him from somewhere—maybe another film we’d worked on—so I said, ‘Oh, hi!’
He looked at me and slowly replied, ‘Hi . . .’, but he said it cautiously.
I asked, ‘Don’t I know you?’ He said that he didn’t think so. ‘That’s strange,’ I said, ‘because you look really familiar.’
At that he laughed and said, ‘Hmm, a lot of people say that.’
‘You’ve got one of those faces or something,’ I explained.
‘I guess so,’ he said. I then asked him his name. ‘Woody,’ he replied.
‘You mean, like Woody Harrelson?’ I knew Harrelson was working on the movie. ‘Do you know Woody Harrelson?’
He said, ‘Yeah, that’s me.’
I laughed. ‘That’s why you look familiar!’ He could have been rude and embarrassed me, but he was kind instead. He seemed genuinely amused, rather than annoyed.
I said, ‘Sorry I didn’t recognise you,’ and he said, ‘It’s quite refreshing actually.’ We developed a good working relationship—and I did recognise him again after that first meeting in the lunch tent! Sean Penn was another actor on that film who I thought was a great guy.
When I arrived back at the Gold Coast from The Thin Red Line, I realised that I had nowhere to live. It wasn’t a major issue as I was doing so much film work, and Snoopy and I could usually stay with friends, but for the first time in a while I felt like I wanted a home of my own, somewhere all of my animals could call home too. I had five horses agisted at Wayne’s, three ex-racehorses, Bullet, Cassity and Tilly, a pretty paint gelding I called Avatar and a gelding Nakota bred by Wayne and me from one of his polo ponies. Jan had given me an Abyssinian-cross cat I called Cougar. I felt we needed a home.
I found a place in the hinterland at Maudsland, not far from Movie World, with beautiful acreage though in need of some work. I had just received an unexpected inheritance as a result of the recent death of my dad’s stepmother—it covered a quarter of the deposit I needed. Mum, her mum and Freda each put in five thousand dollars to make up the balance of the deposit, so now all I needed was to convince the bank that I was able to make the repayments, which I thought might prove a little difficult because of my intermittent income.
Even though we’d broken up, Wayne was awesome. He and his polo patron, Johnny Fitzgerald, both wrote letters to the bank saying they would agist twenty-five horses on the property, which just covered the weekly repayments.
It was Wayne who helped me move in; he helped me move all of my gear and horses—he was wonderful, and still is. As it turned out, fifteen of Wayne’s horses went to my property, but Johnny’s didn’t, so I still needed to cover the mortgage somehow.
Wayne didn’t get angry after we split up until Alex moved in, and then he decided it was best to stay away from me for quite some time, which I thought was fair enough. I met Alex Kuzelicki through a mutual friend I’d worked with on The Thin Red Line. Alex was also a stunt person, specialising in acrobatics. He was a very good martial artist, dancer, writer, creative artist and filmmaker. He and I were very different, but we still had a lot of fun together.
Alex and I were in Nerang picking up horse feed one day in February 1998 when I received a call from Sled. All he asked was: did I want to go to Africa and could I leave the following day? A few times in the past he had rung with a work offer and only given me a week’s notice, but this was extremely short notice. It was a Saturday and I was still sorting out my loan for the Maudsland Road property. I told him the earliest I could leave would be Monday night; he said he would have the girls book my flight for the Monday, and then he hung up. I looked at the phone, then turned to Alex and said, ‘I think I’m going to Africa.’
Later that day I received a call from a girl who worked for Sled’s company, Gentle Jungle, explaining that the job was on a big horse film called Running Free which was being shot in Namibia, and that I would be gone for four or five months. We were going to be in a remote community and she suggested that I take enough supplies of toiletries to last me that time because I wouldn’t be able to buy anything there. My role would be as an assistant trainer, but not to Sled, which made me a bit apprehensive. I wondered who it would be; but then I thought, ‘Who cares? You can’t worry about the future.’ The girl gave me my flight details, and that was all I knew.
Meanwhile I had been running over in my head how I could get away and leave Snoopy, five horses, a cat and a new mortgage. Alex had previously suggested he move in and he repeated that offer now. I said no, but I had to relent when I couldn’t find anyone else at such short notice. I wasn’t sure about it, but I just thought it would be a short-term solution, I was hesitant because I hadn’t known Alex that long. I suggested he move out when I returned. He agreed, and Heidi said she’d also check the animals for me once a week.
When I arrived in Namibia, I learnt that Sled was the animal coordinator for the film; he told me I would be assisting the horse trainer, Bobby Lovgren. At the time, I didn’t
realise how lucky I was. The knowledge and skills Bobby passed on to me, and continued to teach me through the years, are largely responsible for making me the horse trainer I am today.
Part of the way through filming, I had a message on my phone from Wendy and Tad. Connie had passed away. I think it was two days before I could compose myself enough to call them back and find out what had happened.
She had died trick riding at an amateur rodeo. She was doing a trick that was simple for a rider of her calibre; she was seated backwards on the horse’s neck and about to vault off when her pony slipped on a corner of the soft surface, dug up from the rodeo and barrel racing which had preceded the trick riding. Her pony had carried her in over six thousand performances and it was the first time he had fallen down. He came down shoulder first into the ground, rolling over Connie and crushing her. She died on her way to hospital, at fifty-six years of age. I was incredibly upset. I’d only known her a short time, but she was my ultimate trick-riding hero and a warm, kind-hearted woman.
Unbeknown to me, while Alex was looking after my home Mum was ringing to check up on things, and Alex told her he was missing me. Meanwhile I was having a blast working long hours in Africa with great people and I didn’t have time to miss anyone at all.
Mum thought it would be a nice birthday surprise for me if she flew Alex out for a visit. When he turned up, he was offered a job in the grips department, who look after the equipment the camera is moved on. Alex stayed for the remaining three months of filming, but he did it tough and didn’t have nearly as much fun as I did.
When we arrived home, I still wasn’t planning on spending my life with anyone. I simply didn’t want that domestic lifestyle, with any partner. I had resigned myself to a future with no partner or children, but Alex couldn’t understand that. It was all too hard, and I let Alex stay.
I didn’t want to go back to working as a polo groom, but I still wanted to work with horses so I started riding racehorses for trainers again to make money. Then in 1999 I received a call from Tony asking me to go down to the studios at Movie World to meet a man who was working with a tiger on an upcoming TV series called BeastMaster. Apparently he wanted to meet me and have a chat.
I hadn’t done any work with exotic animals in Australia before—I hadn’t even been aware that there were any big cats here outside of zoos or circuses—and I thought it sounded like fun. I dropped everything and went to the studios to meet Brenton Bullen.
CHAPTER 19
Bullen Bros
My initial opinion of Brenton was that he was a lovely man with a good sense of humour. I didn’t know that he came from a circus background; I don’t think I had ever heard of Bullen’s Circus before. Brenton’s grandfather Perc’ had started Bullen’s Circus in 1922, with just a couple of acts, which grew into one of Australia’s largest circuses in the 1950s and 60s, and continued for three generations. Bullen’s stopped travelling in 1969 but remained in the public eye with seven Safari Parks throughout Australia and New Zealand, and their famous ‘Bullen’s Animal World’ at Wallacia in Sydney, which closed down in 1985. Their last Lion Safari Park closed not long after that.
Brenton wanted to know what experience I had with big cats and who I had worked with. I told him I wasn’t a tiger trainer, but he said that was OK, because he wasn’t looking for a trainer—he just needed someone who had been around them before.
He was stoked, because I lived locally and had some experience with tigers, and he asked if I could help him for the week. He wanted to get Sasha, the tiger, used to the sets and different environments, to see how she handled them before shooting started. I worked with him for a week and then he asked if I could help during the first week of filming. Before I knew it I was working full-time on BeastMaster.
BeastMaster was about a man who could communicate with all animals; with his animal friends, he would fight baddies and save damsels in distress. Both BeastMaster and another television series, The Lost World, were being filmed simultaneously on the Gold Coast by a joint Canadian and Australian production team. It was a good opportunity for me to gain experience not only with exotic animals but in paid stunt and trick-riding work as well.
After a couple of weeks of filming, I called Sled and told him what I was up to. After our phone call, he went away and did some research. He came back to me and said, ‘Be careful—Brenton’s from a circus background and they usually don’t know the film business.’ I now know what he meant—circus trainers are good with their animals in an environment where both the animal and its handler are comfortable, but taking them out of the circus ring and onto a film set can be a very different thing.
Sled was looking after me. He called regularly to check on how I was going and to remind me to be careful. He asked what the tiger was like. I said Sasha was lovely, a very gentle tiger, but that something weird was happening that I hadn’t seen happen at Sled’s place. The tiger would sort of bark at Brenton and he would jump back and stand there; eventually, the tiger would lie down and pant for a while, before getting up and making her way back to the trailer.
Sled swore. He could see how much Brenton didn’t know. I asked him why Brenton allowed this to happen and he said, ‘Because Brenton doesn’t want to be eaten!’ He told me to listen—I was not to get myself killed. Brenton and I were out of our depth.
But Brenton was careful, and because he knew his and the animal’s limitations, he didn’t get either of us killed. The smart thing about Brenton was that he didn’t push Sasha to get exactly what was specifically outlined in the script. If the tiger didn’t want to do something, filming would revolve around what she did want to do. If the script called for the tiger to stand majestically under a tree in the distance, they would make do with the tiger lying under the bush she liked. The script may have read that the tiger walked through or jumped over a creek, but if Sasha didn’t feel like it, the script would be rewritten to read that she walked along the creek. The entire crew would simply adjust to suit the whims of Sasha the tiger.
With animal training, you get what you pay for. A Hollywood trainer like Sled, used to working under the pressure and demands of top directors, would have been able to ask one of his tigers to stand majestically under that tree, but he would have definitely been an expensive alternative to Brenton. However, I learnt a lot from Brenton too. He’s not a Hollywood trainer, but he’s a good animal handler, and he has a lot of compassion for his animals.
Over the years, I’ve been very fortunate to learn from many different people, in different situations, with different sorts of animals. One of the most important things I’ve found with animal training is to always be aware of how much you have yet to learn.
Fortunately, Sasha was a well-behaved tiger. She was very good with Daniel Goddard, who was the lead actor. But there were times when Daniel would become a little complacent with her. He would be caught up in the moment and he would squat down in front of her (making him seem smaller and more vulnerable); then you’d see her lift or lower her head, or she’d stop panting and start staring—all of that tiger hunting behaviour.
A lot of big cats, particularly lions, will take possession of things—maybe a ball, a bit of carpet or a bone. They can even take possession of a piece of ground. They also have a tendency to lock onto something or someone. When they have gone into this instinctive hunting mode, you need to know what to do to get them out of it. Thankfully, Sasha was a very good tiger and was easy to distract. Brenton would say, ‘OK guys, I just need to take her for a walk.’
Safety is paramount when dealing with any animal, but particularly something that can kill you. There were certainly times when we had to have our wits about us. If Sasha was suddenly in a foul mood, she might threaten one of us. If she wanted to be left alone, we would give her some space and let her go back to her trailer, which was her personal territory. She’d go in there and we’d roll the canvas cover down over her enclosure to give her some privacy, if that was what she wanted, then walk away and leave her�
�you didn’t go in there with her, ever.
We always carried canes and pepper spray as a precaution. Sasha was always on a very thin rigging cable with a high breaking strain—if it ever appeared in the shot, production would colour it out afterwards. Sometimes we would attach a double cable to her, with me holding one cable and Brenton holding the other. That way, if she went for Brenton, I would hold her, and vice versa. Tigers are strong, but Sasha was a small tiger and she did have a fair bit of age on her by then; she’d had many years to prove herself as being about as trustworthy a tiger as you can get.
I don’t say that lightly, because I remember something Sled said in an interview about the making of the film Gladiator: ‘The only thing predictable about a tiger is its unpredictability.’
A number of different animals appeared on BeastMaster. Sometimes they were written into the script because we had access to them; on the other hand, if the producers required a certain animal, they would talk to Brenton, who had contacts with various animal owners. Brenton’s dad, Stafford, provided Cecil the baboon; another circus owner, Frank Gasser, brought his gorgeous black leopard; Mogo Zoo in southern New South Wales supplied Tom the puma; and the Bullen elephants were written into the script.
Brenton’s younger brother, Craig, had been travelling around Australia with their three elephants for four years—two years on the Moscow Circus, then two with Lennon Bros Circus. When the elephants first arrived at the BeastMaster set, Brenton and I were still on location. We arrived back at the studio lot just as it was getting dark.