On grand final day, few sights are as immediately recognisable along Melbourne’s Swanston Street as a line of bay and chestnut horses moving calmly through a crowd of 100,000 footy fans. But the Victoria Police Mounted Branch — headquartered at Werribee Park — does considerably more than stand at attention for the cameras.
This is an explainer on how the unit actually works: where it deploys, what its officers and horses are trained to do, and why mounted policing remains a genuine operational asset in a city that has embraced CCTV, drones, and body-worn cameras.
A brief history of the branch #
Victoria Police said in a statement published on its website that the Mounted Branch is one of the oldest specialist units in Victorian policing, with origins dating to the colonial-era mounted constabulary of the 1850s. The modern incarnation is based at the Attwood Mounted Branch facility and at Werribee Park, where the horses are stabled, trained, and prepared for deployment across the state.
The branch is staffed by sworn police officers who apply to transfer in and then undergo an extensive equestrian and operational training program. Victoria Police has said that not all applicants have a riding background on entry — some officers learn to ride from scratch once accepted into the unit.
What crowd control on horseback actually looks like #
The branch’s most visible role is crowd management at major events — AFL matches at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Marvel Stadium, the Australian Open, New Year’s Eve celebrations on the Yarra, and protest gatherings in the CBD.
Victoria Police has stated that mounted officers provide a significant tactical advantage in dense crowds because horses give officers an elevated sightline, allow rapid movement through pedestrian areas that vehicles cannot safely enter, and create a physical presence that research has consistently linked to de-escalation rather than confrontation.
The horses used in these deployments are not standard riding horses. Victoria Police said each animal undergoes extensive desensitisation training — exposure to crowd noise, flares, smoke, balloons, drums, and sudden movement — before it is considered operationally ready. The process can take more than a year. Officers describe working with their assigned horses as a partnership built on trust and repetition: the horse must read its rider’s cues under conditions that would unsettle most animals.
During protests or public order events, mounted officers typically operate in pairs or small lines, positioning themselves at the edge of a crowd or along a designated route. Victoria Police said the horses are trained to move laterally — a technique called shouldering — which allows a line of horses to gently redirect pedestrian movement without physical force from officers. It is understood this technique is preferred in situations where a crowd is moving in an unintended direction rather than acting aggressively.
Search-and-rescue: the terrain advantage #
Beyond the city, the Mounted Branch plays a meaningful role in search-and-rescue operations — particularly in terrain that is inaccessible to vehicles and difficult to cover quickly on foot.
Victoria Police said mounted officers have been deployed to searches in the Dandenong Ranges, the You Yangs, and along the Werribee River corridor, where dense scrub and uneven ground make a horse a faster and more practical search platform than a four-wheel drive or a foot team. Officers on horseback can cover several kilometres of rough terrain per hour while maintaining a search pattern, and the horse’s own senses — particularly its sense of smell and its reaction to unusual stimuli — can occasionally alert riders to areas of interest.
Werribee Park, which sits on the western fringe of Melbourne, serves as both a training ground and a practical deployment base for searches in the city’s south-western growth corridor. Victoria Police has described the park’s mix of grassland, river frontage, and light woodland as an ideal environment for training horses and riders in conditions that mirror real search scenarios.
Ceremonial duties — more than just show #
The Mounted Branch’s ceremonial duties are perhaps its most publicly recognised function, even if they represent a relatively small proportion of actual deployment hours. Officers and horses participate in state funerals, vice-regal escorts, Anzac Day marches, and official welcomes for visiting heads of state.
Victoria Police has said that ceremonial work is not purely symbolic — it maintains a high standard of precision riding and horse-handling that reinforces the skills used in operational deployments. An officer who can maintain a perfectly dressed line in a formal escort procession has, by definition, developed the horse control and spatial awareness needed in a crowd management situation.
The branch typically selects grey or black horses for ceremonial work, though Victoria Police said coat colour is secondary to temperament and trainability when horses are assessed for entry into the unit.
Regional deployments and bushfire recovery #
It is understood the Mounted Branch has also been called on in regional Victoria during and after bushfire events — not for firefighting, obviously, but for community reassurance patrols, access-track assessments in areas still closed to vehicles, and welfare checks in isolated properties.
Sources with knowledge of the unit’s operations have told VCN that horses are uniquely suited to post-fire terrain because they can navigate ash-covered ground that may conceal hazards for vehicles, and because communities in rural Victoria often respond positively to a familiar, non-threatening form of police presence during a period of significant stress.
The branch has also assisted in flood recovery operations in north-eastern Victoria, where mounted officers conducted riverbank patrols and assisted with livestock checks in areas still partially inundated.
Training, welfare, and the horse-officer bond #
Victoria Police said each horse in the Mounted Branch is individually assessed for health and welfare throughout its working life, and that horses are retired from operational duties when veterinary assessments indicate it is appropriate — typically in their mid-to-late teens, depending on the individual animal. Retired horses are rehomed through a formal process; Victoria Police said it maintains contact with owners of retired horses where possible.
The welfare dimension is taken seriously within the unit, and officers who work with the branch consistently point to the relationship with their horse as one of the most distinctive aspects of the role. Unlike a patrol car or a dog-handler partnership, a mounted officer and horse spend years developing a working language that is almost entirely non-verbal — shifts in weight, leg pressure, and rein contact that communicate instruction without visible cue to an observer on the ground.
New horses entering the branch come from a range of sources, including thoroughbred studs, warmblood breeders, and private donations. Victoria Police said the breed is less important than the individual horse’s temperament: calm, curious, and recoverable — meaning the horse can be startled but returns quickly to a settled state — are the traits the unit looks for above all else.
A unit that earns its keep #
In an era of tight policing budgets and pressure to demonstrate measurable outcomes, the Mounted Branch’s continued existence is sometimes questioned in policy circles. Victoria Police said the unit’s value is most clearly demonstrated during large-scale events and in terrain-specific operations where no other resource achieves the same result at comparable cost.
The horses, in short, are not relics. They are a specialist capability — one that happens to be approximately 170 years old, and one that Melbourne, it turns out, still needs.
If you have information about any police-related matter in Victoria, you can contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or submit a report at www.crimestoppersvic.com.au. Reports can be made anonymously.
