ProRodeo Sports News - Feb. 21, 2020

Thomas wound up at a Christian-based, agricultural boarding school that was a 35,000-acre working ranch. It was the students’ job to keep the ranch going. There were crops and livestock to take care of. Students learned how to manage the land, how to mix chemicals, how to sell cattle and be marketable. Thomas paid attention. “At the school they had troubled, last-chance kids, and I guess I started out as one of those,” he said. “I had never been around horses, but I had a gut feeling fromGod I needed to be around them. … I had a gift with horses from the start, and I knew that’s what I wanted to do. “I wasn’t born or raised in a cowboy family or in a ranch family. At boarding school, I met kids whose parents owned cattle stations up north and had childhoods that weren’t too bad.” When he could, on extended weekends or vacations from school, Thomas would catch a bus or a plane up to the Kimberly, a deserted part of northeastern Australia. He’d work alongside grown men at those cattle stations, catching and taming wild cattle and horses to sell, pulling his weight, watching, learning, often failing. But he didn’t stop. “They’d yell at me, beat me up,” he said. “I was treated like an adult when I was way too immature to handle the role I was given. I had social issues. I didn’t have a father figure or a home base. I made a lot of mistakes, and it took me a long time to grow up.” And home still wasn’t home. “Everybody wants a home to go home to,” he said. “I tried to go back a time or two (to Perth), and it was as ugly as ever. I made a decision: this isn’t the life for me. I have to be around wild horses, cattle.” RODEO LIFE While working at the cattle stations, Thomas found organized rodeo. Kind of. “We would have five local rodeos a year when we weren’t gathering big herds of wild cattle,” he said. “I would go to these bush rodeos that would last a week. I entered all the events and ended up doing well.” Because of that success, he and a friend, Brett Pocock, jumped in a car and pointed it east, headed for the bigger rodeos of eastern Australia. He did well enough and saved enough money from earnings both as a cowboy and as a ranch hand up and down the eastern seaboard that by 2012 he was ready for the big time: North America. Thomas landed in Canada and rodeoed there for a year in bareback riding and saddle bronc riding. He and his fiancée, a fellow Australian, flew to Australia during the Christmas break for a visit before returning to Canada where they would make a home together. But when their plane headed back to North America, only Thomas was on the flight. His fiancée wasn’t coming. “We (Thomas and his fiancée) had booked a one-way flight to Denver in 2013,” Thomas said. “She took off on me with someone else. … So I was stuck in the U.S. and had been there less than 24 hours. J.R. (Vezain) was the only person I knew in the U.S., and I had met him twice.” Thomas made it to the Denver Coliseum but never competed. He didn’t understand the process of entering and qualifying for rodeos. “Here was my big debut in the U.S. and I wasn’t even entered in any of the rodeos,” he laughed. After sleeping in stock cars and on hotel room floors, Thomas hitchhiked his way to Casper, Wyo., where he could sleep on a friend’s couch. There, Vezain picked him up. Thomas was finally CONTINUED ON PAGE 50

Photo courtesy Anthony Thomas

Thomas working in his native Australia.

Robby Freeman photo Thomas sets up his rigging before his ride at the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, Feb. 16.

ProRodeo Sports News 2/21/2020

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