Walkers and riders are welcome to participate alongside representatives from local thoroughbred studs, the Australian Stockhorse Society, polo, polocrosse, dressage, show jumping, eventing, campdrafting, pony club, racing, heavy horse, police and show horse groups.

The Bickham Beersheba rally will take place from midday to 1pm and some high profile speakers have been organised.

Walkers and riders are to assemble at White Park by 11.30am. Speeches and the rally will finish by 1pm.

Katrina Partridge from Arrowfield Stud is on the organising committee and said the ride was to protect the Australian Horse Capital and its water and so far the response has been good.

“It’s been quite astonishing, the news is spreading like wildfire,” she said.

At 3pm on October 31, 1917 the Australian Light Horse looked across to the fortified defences of Beersheba in Egypt.

They had not had access to water for 36 hours and had to secure the wells at Beersheba to survive.

Against all odds, the Australians performed the last great successful cavalry charge in history. The wells were secured. It proved a turning point in the war and a pivotal moment in history and was noted as both an example and symbol of what a young nation could achieve with determined, intelligent leadership, courage and daring, against huge odds in war or any other major challenge in peacetime.

One of the members of the Light Horse was Max Wright from Bickham, Blandford. He rode a horse given to him and bred by his neighbour Fred Haydon. Fred’s brothers Guy and Barney also fought and rode horses bred at Blandford.

During the charge and while jumping an enemy trench, Lieutenant Guy Haydon’s mount Midnight was shot from

underneath him, with the bullet that killed his mare going through his saddle and lodging near his spine.

He recovered and the bullet was removed days later at a Cairo hospital and he sent it back to his mother at Bloomfield as a Christmas present.