Everybody loves a good story.

And if it’s a true tale, outstripping fiction, of the deeds of people – or horses – it’s even better.

Some 10 years ago, Melbourne businessman and racing enthusiast Bill Gibbins was gifted a book. Its story centred on the Light Horse brigade in the Middle East in World War I, paying particular mind to an unbelievably brave and tough gelding. The book had the same title as the horse, using the name that typified the irreverent humour of the ANZACs: Bill The Bastard.

Bill – Gibbins, not the horse – did what most of us do. He declared he’d read it, and sat it on his bedside table. Six months later, it still hadn’t been touched. Finally, prodded by its provider, an abashed Gibbins opened it up.

“It just hooked me from page one,” he says. “What an amazing story!”

The book, by Roland Perry (chronicler of other Australian titans including Don Bradman and army commanders John Monash and Harry Chauvel) focused on the horse whose headstrong ways spawned a nickname weaving disdain and respect at once.

Standing 17 hands, remarkably large among the walers that bore the light horsemen, Bill The Bastard served at Gallipoli, where one of his tasks was to carry the body of war hero John Simpson, of Simpson’s Donkey fame, from the battlefield.

Bill later carried four Tasmanian soldiers to safety at once at the Battle of Romani, in Egypt in 1916. And he played a starring role in one of the greatest yarns of the conflict, the memory of which is, thanks to Gibbins, kept vividly alive today.

Late in the war in September 1918, as Allied forces sought to finally crush their Ottoman foes, Light Horse commander Chauvel planned a major offensive to break through the enemy’s defences near the Palestine coast, ride north and defeat two of
their armies.

As some 34,000 light horsemen and their mounts gathered under the cover of the orange groves of Jaffa, Chauvel needed the enemy to suspect nothing was afoot. To make them believe most troops and horses were far from that critical region, a ruse was planned that was so quintessentially ANZAC you couldn’t make it up.

A race meeting! In the middle of the desert! Ostensibly a morale-building recreational exercise for battle-weary troops, it would look like the real deal. Five races would be held, there’d be clerks of the course, stewards, authentic-looking racebooks, and of course bookmakers. To make it seem even more fair dinkum, like the Turks themselves, none of the ANZAC soldiers in attendance knew it was staged as a decoy tactic. And, lending more authenticity, there was plentiful beer and, consequently, the occasional punch-up.

As the bemused Turks watched from a distance, the meeting played out before some 10,000 spectators: 5,000 British and Indian soldiers, 1,000 ANZACs not required in Jaffa, and 4,000 bribed locals.

The feature would be a three-mile (4800m) event. After various names were suggested – the Cairo Cup, and even an amalgam of Palestine and Melbourne contriving the Palbourne Cup – the event
was titled the Jericho Cup, partly so the Turks would know roughly where it would take place.

After a torrid battle across the desert sands, and stones, the Jericho Cup was won, of course, by Bill The Bastard. The ruse worked exquisitely. The troop build-up at Jaffa continued unfettered, leading to that last, famous, triumphant drive north of the Light Horse. Bill,  eventually died in 1924 aged 21, and was returned to Gallipoli where his headstone can still be found, at Walker’s Ridge.