Agnes Hyland (1878-1939) was a professional horse trainer and circus performer. Born in Queensland, Agnes was the eldest of twelve children. From the start, Agnes’s life was deeply rooted in performance and horse training. Agnes’s mother, Elizabeth Ah Pan, was the daughter of a Chinese publican on the Goldfields and her father, Thomas John Roberts, was a stockman and horse trainer who established Hyland’s Circus in the late 1880s.
At age twelve, Agnes embarked on a 1300-kilometer ride with her father to the Normanton gold rush in Queensland. It was here that she began her international career as a horse trainer. Agnes believed horses were intelligent and needed to be treated with kindness and patience. Agnes claimed that in some cases, within just 25 minutes after catching a wild horse, she could teach it to lead, mouth (breaking in the bit and bridle in the horse’s mouth) and pick up its legs. The secret, Agnes said, was to “get hold of a horse’s heart”.
“If man had the same temperament as a horse, there would be fewer divorces in the world, and far more marital amity,” Agnes Hyland, Daily News, 1914.
Agnes and her educated ponies became the star act in Hyland's Circus, which had made its way to WA in 1905. In those days it was hard to find performers, so the whole family was involved in circus life as trick riders, tumblers, acrobats, trapeze artists, jugglers, wire walkers, clowns, and musicians.
Agnes’s equestrian abilities earned her a trip to London in 1911 as part of a riding and shooting show called ‘Wild Australia’. She performed at Crystal Palace for the coronation of King George V and travelled the world with The Barnum and Bailey Circus.
Despite six of Agnes's siblings becoming blind due to a congenital disease known as Leber's Disease, the show went on and they continued to perform. Their lives "continually travelling, travel, travel, travel" with the circus.
In 1911, the Hyland family moved to Broome and ran the Star Hotel. On the vacant block next door, they built a stage where they hosted a small circus when the boats came, and the block later became a picture show with a regular income.
Even when Agnes's father disappeared in the bush outside of Broome, the circus carried on. In 1914, his body was discovered, suggesting that he had become lost and after exhausting all the resources at a bushman's command, ended his life with a bullet to avoid the tortures of famishing. The circus split apart after this, and the family went off to pursue different careers.
Agnes married and lived in Yarloop, then later ran a store near Cue. She became well known all over the Murchison, and when she died in 1939, was remembered as not only a renowned horsewoman but a sure friend of many a prospector short of food or cash.
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