The O’Reilly family have a long history in the Scenic Rim which couldn’t have been achieved without the help of their pack horses.
One of the original pack saddles used to transport goods to and from O’Reilly’s, estimated to be 100 years old, has been restored by saddler Chris Rohan.
The saddle was quite dilapidated when Chris began to restore it and most of the leather had to be replaced.
It took him approximately 80 hours in total to restore the saddle to a usable condition.
“The tree is definitely original and the first layer of leather is original,” he said.
Restoring the saddle required some research, but Chris is very happy with the way it has come together.
“The pack bags are original, I stripped them down, cleaned them all up and had to restitch them all. There was a lot of work in doing all that.”
Chris’ Australian Stock Horse was used to show the saddle to the crowd.
The pack saddle will return to O’Reilly’s in memory of the equine contribution to the region’s history.
At a special presentation in Rathdowney, Peter O’Reilly spoke about how guests undertook a long journey through the mountains on horseback to get to the now internationally famous guesthouse.
“By the time they got to the track it would be dark and in places it was only a foot wide,” he said.
“When it was dark you couldn’t see the drop, but when they were coming back in the daylight some of the guests got a fright from it.”
“It was a bit unpredictable with floods and so on, so sometimes they had to wait. It was an adventure.”
Peter said the family could not have built the guest house into what it is today without the pack horses.
