"About 1883-85 a smart young Aboriginal age 20 years, from Queensland dropped in at Coonabarabran and secured the onerous duty as police tracker - no sinecure in those rugged days of horse and cattle duffing.

He was dropped from a Queensland droving outfit on the border, and being on a walk-about gradually found his way to the Castlereagh River. So Billy settled down for a good job, not too much to do, except for looking after the police horses with the occasional tracking of sheep and stock raiders, at which he was adept. This was until a settler out Gowang way in the Warrumbungle Mountains was arrested in the Coolah district for horse stealing.

Two horses were seized by the Coonabarabran police and held in the police home yard for safety. One had a mal-formed half hoof. As the trial of the suspect was to be held in Mudgee some months ahead, a parsimonious department head ordered-against the Sergeant's advice that the horses be placed on agistment in the police paddock to save feeding expenses. The locallity was a mile away, and every morning for about a week Billy inspected them.

One May morning Billy came galloping back with the news, "Both horses gone, fence post split and rails removed. Two fellows riding and leading two horses are travelling along the river bed, making towards the Warrumbungle Mountains."

The Sergeant and the mounted constable, following Billy were hot on the tracks in the river bed and in the sandy country , making towards the hard, stony ground of the foothills. Some of the locals also followed the police party from curiosity.

For about an hour progress was slowed by Billy repeatedly getting down from his horse to examine the tracks for the malformed hoof prints. The white men would see very little only blurred marks that had been made by brumbies and scrub cattle that infested the country. Eventually, Bill rode straight ahead, towards the distant Warrumbungles, not even bothering to inspect any tracks until the Sergeant said, "Billy, you still on the tracks?" "Orright, Sergeant," said Billy cheerfully and confidentially, "pretty soon find 'em now but too late, him dead."

Then Billy pointed to a smoke high in the range and said, "Him there all right, big fire, luck if we find anything to show." Sure enough, when the fire was reached there was little left to identify the stolen horses, only the charred remains of a malformed hoof and shod hooves. The rest was a calcined heap of bones and timber ends, the case against the settler collapsed.

On the returned journey the Sergeant said to Billy - "You clever tracker. We couldn't see any tracks in the rocky country." To this Billy replied: "Oh! that's all right I couldn't either. I followed the crows flying one way all day, and when I saw the smoke I knew what they were going to do."