by Zelie Bullen
During that time, I got to know Craig’s eldest brother, Mark. Before that, our relationship had been quite superficial, but as Cleo got progressively worse, Mark was there more and more—he was like an angel to her. I would stay up talking to him for hours on end—I found him interesting and fun, and I loved getting to know him.
Cleo wasn’t sick for very long before she went into a hospice and then passed away. From her diagnosis to her death was only four months. Naturally I was very sad seeing Cleo die. I was, of course, even sadder for Craig losing his mum, and for Colt, who now had only one living grandparent, my mother. I had always thought Cleo would be around to tell Colt circus stories and to play a large and influential part in his life.
Just after we buried Cleo, we took Colt to Africa for the first time. Jamie and Dana had asked Colt to be the ring bearer for their upcoming wedding. At around the same time Jim was doing a film called Mr Bones, so it was great to be able to help him on that also. It was really nice finally introducing Colt to our African family, the Stockleys, and all the lovely things their place has to offer, like feeding giraffes and lion cubs. It was a comfort to be back with the Stockleys and to experience a happy ceremony after such a tragic one as Cleo’s funeral.
CHAPTER 49
Running away with the circus
In October 2007, more and more work started to come in. Thankfully, the lovely Beverley Bryan came into our lives at this point to help us out. Craig had known Beverley for most of his life; she had grown up in the circus, spending most of her childhood and teenage years with Ashton’s Circus. She helped us when we worked at home, living in a caravan and looked after our place and the animals when we travelled away. At times she would come away to jobs with us, so she could look after Colt while we were working.
I recall the first time I was apart from Colt for the whole day, working horses in the hot sun while Colt and Beverley played in the cooler shade off set. It almost killed me being separated from my boy all day; I found it difficult to fully focus on work.
In November, we began to train three circus acts for Frank Gasser, founder of Circus Royale and Circus Olympia. Then we literally ran away with the circus and travelled with them for four months, settling the animals in. Frank encouraged us to stay as long as we liked. It was a beautiful few months. Colt had just turned two and was able to be involved in almost every part of our work. He played with the gorgeous little girls Savannah and Isabella, whose parents also worked in the show.
Craig and I trained a mixed miniature-animals act, a single pony act with a beautiful pony called Belle, and a duck act. For the latter we raised and trained ten Indian Runner ducklings; Colt helped me handle, feed and clean them. More than that, he guided the ducklings along in their training and then worked with them in the circus ring. Craig had taught our two-year-old to bow on exiting each of his acts, which of course always caused the audience to erupt in ‘ooohs and ahhhhs’.
For the first two years of his life, Colt had been a shy little boy, not wanting to leave my side; but when he went into that circus ring, his life changed. I also thought it was wonderfully fitting to see him, a fourth-generation Bullen, performing in Frank Gasser’s circus: as a young man Frank had been brought out to Australia by Colt’s grandfather, Stafford, to work in Bullen’s Circus.
Frank and his cousin Rene were both very good performers and there isn’t much Frank hasn’t had a go at over the years. Even though I hadn’t known Stafford very well, I knew Cleo well in her later years and her relationship with Frank Gasser was very special. I was touched deep in my soul that Colt’s debut in the ring was under Frank Gasser’s name. The cycle felt complete—now the youngest Bullen was being nurtured by one of the warmest men in the business, who owed his start in Australia to Colt’s remarkable grandfather. Both Frank and his wife, Manuela, were so warm to us all, and I knew Craig loved being back with Frank and back in the circus environment.
Once we were satisfied that the animals were happy and settled, we then went to work with Frank’s nephew, Sonny Gasser, and his wife, Barbara, on their travelling horse show, The Horseman from Snowy River. On this tour, there were eighteen beautiful horses, including Andalusians, Lipizzaners, four Friesians, one Clydesdale, one miniature, four Arabs, and one Quarter Horse—all stallions or geldings. I love how passionate Sonny is about working with animals, and horses in particular.
Sonny and Barbara had asked me to trick ride on the show, and help train their daughter Katherina (‘Gigi’), who was eleven years old at the time. We readily agreed. I was really enthusiastic to trick ride again, and was excited to meet and work with a Russian Cossack rider, Jamal Charepov. Soon after we’d first met, Craig had told me about Jamal, who had come to Australia with the Moscow Circus in the 1980s, and I loved fulfilling another dream—to meet and ride with this talented Cossack rider.
Trick riding in a circle was a whole new experience for me. Normally trick riding is performed fast in a straight line or around a large arena. It was fun—I didn’t have to focus as much on what the horse was doing, because Sonny worked the horse from the centre of the ring and I could concentrate purely on what I was doing.
We met a gorgeous young girl on the show, Julia Burey, who had just finished an equine course in the Hunter Valley and had joined Sonny and Barbara as a stablehand for her first job. I enjoyed helping Julia, who had started trick riding with Sonny and Jamal.
Not long after we arrived, Barbara asked if I knew of a schoolteacher who might be suited to the travelling life to help tutor the kids on the show, so I suggested a fun, vivacious girl, Maggie Ashley, who lived just down the road from our home in Queensland. We had recently met Maggie and she had worked as a groom for us a little at home and on The Ruins. She was just finishing her teaching degree and I knew she was ready for a change. She happily came to join the show as we travelled around the country.
I really loved that Colt was being raised in a lifestyle that was in between home life and movie work. It felt like an extended family environment, and he had other kids to play with.
CHAPTER 50
Grace
The show took a break over Christmas, and Craig and I decided it was the perfect time to visit Tad and Wendy, who had had their fourth baby by then and still hadn’t met Colt. For three years we’d been wanting to get back and see them and it just hadn’t happened.
Nothing could have prepared me for how wonderful it was seeing Colt with their children. I had always thought their boys were beautiful and well mannered, but they treated Colt just like one of them. Gattlin, Callder, Arrden and Garrison are very well-rounded kids, and are very much part of a team. They look after each other and support one another, and have vibrant personalities. All of them are incredibly talented; although they’re not even teenagers yet, the two oldest, Gattlin and Callder are doing very well in the film industry as up-and-coming actors and stuntmen.
The boys are fourth-generation trick riders and have ridden at some of the biggest shows in America. Gattlin and Callder can perform full-grown men’s tricks, and there is nothing cuter than seeing little Arrden going into one of his routines on his little Shetland pony as it flies around the ring.
We love being with the Griffiths. Every time we go there and spend time with them, the family is bigger and better and more fun—it’s like being at home, but with even more stuff happening all the time! They are yet another family we wished lived across the road from us, so we could spend more time with them. I would like nothing better than for Colt to be around the boys all the time; he loves them and they call him their Australian brother, and we refer to the Griffith boys as his American brothers.
At that time there were only three rules in the Griffith house: don’t lie, be nice to each other, and be nice to the animals. When we came home, they became Colt’s three rules too.
Another thing we brought back from that trip was saying grace. We had been home a couple of days when Colt, now three, asked why we hadn’t said grace. It was a ritual the Griffit
hs followed before each evening meal, and Colt liked it, so now we do it too. We don’t have a set prayer; we often start out by saying, ‘Thank you for this food,’ and then we progress to recalling whatever has happened during the day. If we know someone who’s sick we’ll express the hope that they get better. Sometimes we simply say thank you for the banana skin being yellow. We don’t necessarily thank God in our grace. I don’t have any education in that department, so I don’t thank God as such or ask Colt to specifically thank God. Our grace is just a general ‘thank you’ to the universe for everything we have or hope for.
I feel that there is an amazing energy source inside all of us. I have had access to it a couple of times and gone, ‘Wow.’ It’s a natural high that I have felt as an adult and remember feeling as a child. I am not sure how to connect with it properly, but I wish I could ‘plug in’ whenever I felt like it. For me it feels like love, peace, unlimited unconditional freedom, wisdom and power.
I know there are people who think God exists in each of us, and I understand what they are talking about, though personally I don’t call it God. I believe we can all find confidence in ourselves. And, once you find it, it is like a vortex of unlimited possibilities.
In January we returned to Australia and went back to work with Sonny and Barbara. Like most travelling shows, when it’s time for a performance it’s all hands on deck. This time Craig was also on a horse and he went into the ring to perform in an Akubra and Driza-Bone at the beginning of each show. When Craig and I were performing in the show’s opening troop drill, the older kids would supervise Colt backstage. He was always very good; he understood how important it was not to leave whoever was looking after him when Mum and Dad were busy. Once the troop drill was over, Craig would get off his horse and take Colt to the caravan for a bath and dinner, or they’d sit and watch the rest of the show.
I suggested to Sonny that he invite Mark Eady to have a look at the show, and Mark came on board as an outside director. He gave some great input, with fresh new ideas and ways to improve the flow of the show; he also managed to work Colt into the show with the miniature pony.
With Frank’s show we had seen how Colt liked being involved, but it was on Sonny’s show that we truly realised how much Colt loves to perform. Craig was particularly thrilled that Colt displayed such natural showmanship skills; he carries on the family tradition from Craig’s father and grandfather. We all wished that Stafford and Cleo were there to enjoy it with us.
CHAPTER 51
My toes are facing the wrong way!
We had been with Sonny and Barbara for over a year, and away from home for a year and a half, when I had my accident.
I was trick riding on Sonny’s beautiful horse Mozart, a gorgeous Andalusian stallion I loved to ride. We were showing in the New South Wales city of Wagga Wagga and there had been a terrible storm only hours before the show commenced. The ground was waterlogged, but the arena where we performed, which was always in the centre of the tent and covered in sand, seemed unaffected. However, as is often the case, the tent had been erected on a slight slope, although the surface appeared to be dry, the stormwater had in fact soaked into the back corner of the arena, under the sand. The trick-riding act always finished the show so, as usual, the surface had been churned up when we rode out to perform, exposing some of the wet clay base beneath.
One of the most popular trick-riding moves is the ‘full fender’. In this trick I turn my head and torso to the right and continue to pivot in that direction as I slide down the left side of the horse and finish up facing the ground; but then I turn my head to face forward again, sitting down low on the left side of the horse. My left foot/ankle is firmly in the left stirrup, my right foot and calf are tucked under the horse’s body along the girth to brace myself, with my body jutting out perpendicular to the side of the horse. Holding your legs in tight and bracing the right-hand side of your torso holds you in the trick and, as you get more confident, you can drop further towards the ground and drag your hands and hair in the sand. It can be a spectacular-looking trick.
On this wet night in Wagga, it was when I dropped down into the full fender that Mozart slipped on the moist ground and fell on top of me, stabbing my left foot and ankle into the ground under his weight. Along with the thud of the impact, I heard a loud crack.
I was pleased to see that Mozart was uninjured; he got up straightaway. Craig and Sonny’s brother-in-law, Michael, were beside me in an instant. As I spat out the sand, I looked down at my left ankle. It was twisted backwards, facing the wrong way. My left toes were pointing towards the heel of my right foot and I remember thinking, ‘That doesn’t look good!’
They carried me off-stage while the rest of the performers and crew did their best to ease the tension among the shocked crowd. Craig took me straight to the emergency department at Wagga Base Hospital, while I consoled a very shocked and upset Colt on my lap and struggled to ignore the pain. I forced myself to act composed for our son, and I was amazed when I later realised that I hadn’t shed one tear.
Freda and Bert drove over from Gundagai and were in the hospital room the following morning when the surgeon gave us his verdict. He said it was a particularly bad break, the worst he’d seen of that type. I had a grade-three fracture of my talus bone, meaning that the bone had broken into several pieces, which had been distributed through the soft tissue of my ankle. The only grade higher is a grade-four break, when part of the talus bone breaks away and penetrates the skin, so it was fairly bad. A grade three was almost unheard of until the early 1900s, when air force pilots would present with them after crash landings. It is a very rare break and is mostly seen in people who have survived high-speed car accidents or bad parachute landings or, I guess, when a horse has fallen on them when they are balancing underneath the girth!
Interestingly enough, I had thought about that trick many, many times over the last few months, thinking that I didn’t feel a hundred per cent right doing it on a tight circle. But everyone loved that trick, especially on a circle at speed, when you can get really close to the ground, so I’d kept performing it.
Tad, of course, told me off later. ‘Well, what have you learnt from that? Listen to yourself! There are plenty of other tricks to please the crowd.’ He went on, ‘What have I told you before is the most important thing about trick riding? Footing, footing, footing. If your footing is slippery, rocky or uneven, do not trick ride.’
Poor Craig felt so guilty about not checking the surface before I came on—it was something he almost always did without me even knowing. He said to me afterwards that he should have warned me to watch that back corner—it was just a feeling he had.
I hadn’t noticed the surface. I should have, but I didn’t. It was silly of me—you should always prepare thoroughly for a dangerous performance and I’m not proud of how complacent I had clearly become. You should always do your own checks and, as Tad said, you should always know the footing is safe.
The surgeon went on to explain that the talus is one of the most important bones in the ankle joint, linking the leg and the foot. It not only articulates with the bones of the lower leg at the ankle joint, it also connects the ankle to the mid-foot. One of the worst complications that can happen with this sort of break is that the blood supply gets permanently cut off to the talus, effectively killing it and not allowing it to heal. Unfortunately the blood supply to my damaged talus had been interrupted. I had also broken off the bottom of my fibula, one of the two lower leg bones connecting to the talus, and dislocated the ankle joint.
The surgeon told me that I would probably always walk with a limp, and I wouldn’t be able to run again. He said the ankle probably wouldn’t work like it used to—it wouldn’t roll or rotate properly, and I wouldn’t have full flexion. But, more importantly, I wouldn’t get sufficient strength back to be able to spring off it.
Finally, he said that I had less than a five per cent chance of ever having a functioning ankle again, and I should start to think abo
ut a change in career.
CHAPTER 52
Five per cent
I cried for about five or ten minutes at the hospital, once Fred and Bert had left. Then and there, I wanted to speak to Tad and tell him what the surgeon had said; he was the only person I really wanted to talk to.
Craig said to me, ‘I’ll get him on the phone, but you need to remember that that doctor has no idea of who you are, what you are capable of and what you want to do with your life. He is used to dealing with people who aren’t motivated, people who listen to statistics, who don’t focus on their health or their attitude.’
It was exactly the right thing to say to me but, although I appreciated hearing those words, I doubted them. I was still very shocked by the surgeon’s stark prognosis and I thought that Craig was just doing the husbandly thing and trying to support me. I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t sure if he was right.
Craig called Tad on his mobile. As I lay on the hospital bed trying to compose myself, I could hear him in the corridor explaining what had happened. Then he came back into the ward and passed the phone to me. I heard Tad say, ‘Hi, sweetie,’ and I could barely stop crying.
‘Tad, they said I’ll never trick ride again.’
He was kind but stern. ‘Well, why would you listen to them? What would they know about you?’ Then he repeated, almost word for word, what Craig had just told me. For a moment I thought it must be a conspiracy between Craig and Tad, but then I realised that I’d just heard their entire brief conversation so there was no way Craig could have prompted him. The knowledge that these two very important men in my life believe in me so unconditionally still brings me to tears.