By Sheree Hoddinett
The roar of the crowd going wild. The gallop of horse hooves as they connect with the ground. The clanging of armour jostling as the competitors head towards each other. When you watch the power and force going into a jousting match, it’s hard not to think about the preparation behind it all. If anyone knows how much time and effort goes into becoming a well-accomplished jouster, it’s Luke Binks.
Luke has been involved in the sport of jousting now for just over 20 years. His love and passion for jousting also brought him to the Abbey Medieval Festival, where he is one of the competitors and also the coordinator of the jousting event. His foray into the world of jousting and all things medieval started from a young age.
“Well as a child, I was quite interested in medieval things,” Luke said. “When I started to learn about history in school and popular culture at the time, watching movies like Braveheart and Robin Hood sort of stemmed my interest and started me on a path of learning about the Middle Ages.
“Then when I was in my early teens, my family moved from Victoria to Queensland. I saw a re-enactment group for the first time doing some medieval living history and decided that I wanted to get involved with that. There was no jousting up here in Queensland at the time. But there was everything else you see at the festival, so armour, swords, foot combat and other things like that.”
It wasn’t until the early 2000’s that Luke had his first experience with jousting. He already had some armour from foot combat, but the rest was about acquiring a horse, learning to ride and maintaining balance while being suited up.
“It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be,” Luke said. “But as a determined young 20-year-old, you can almost make anything happen if you put enough effort into it.
“There’s a lot involved. To be able to manoeuvre your horse, let alone putting on 30 to 40 kilos of armour and restricting your vision to something that's like a slot in a post box, there's a big adjustment for actually getting used to that. But practice, practice fixes everything really.”
With a fully packed weekend of jousting for the festival, how much practice takes place in the lead up to the event?
“When I first started, I rode every day,” Luke said. “I was lucky enough to be working for myself at the time and could manage my day so I could take time off in the afternoon and do some stuff with my horse and then come back and work late into the evening so that I could accommodate that.
“These days I don't have to do as much. It's really about maintaining a skill level and keeping myself and my horses fit. But, ideally you want to be training at least three times a week. That's not always jousting, but some sort of training.”
While it may feel like the competitors are aiming for a kill in jousting, it is actually a sport and has evolved over time.
“It sort of evolved into a sport in the Middle Ages. It was their training exercise for a heavy cavalry charge,” Luke said. “So it actually started out from war games like militaries do today, where they would set out with small bands of people and do a mock battle and fight each other as training for war.
“Now that was incredibly dangerous of course, cause they didn't do a whole lot to mitigate the damage that could be caused apart from saying we shouldn't hurt each other. They were still using sharp weapons and they were still engaging in hand, hand combat.
“So over the years that became more and more refined and as it got more and more refined, it became more and more obvious that it's actually a good spectator sport.”
And what does it feel like to actually take a hit?
“It feels probably more akin to a football tackle than most people expect it to,” Luke said. “A lot of people will look at the lance and think of it in isolation and expect an isolated impact area. But when you're wearing a shield and you're wearing a full suit of armour and you get hit on that shield, which is the best place to hit, it actually disperses the impact across your whole upper body. So it's more like tackling somebody than it is actually getting poked with a sharp stick.
“Therefore, it doesn't necessarily hurt as much as it just gives a shock. But if it hits the wrong way, you can die like people have died doing this exactly the way we're doing it. That threat is real and it's one of the reasons that we have to have really strict entry conditions and strict training regimes because it is dangerous.”
When it’s competition time, what typically goes through the mind of someone ready to barrel towards another human atop a horse, lance in hand?
“I think the best way there is to joust, is to actually joust in almost a Zen state,” Luke said. “Where you are not caught up in any of the emotions or any of the activity that's going on around you.
“All you can do is focus on your target. Focus on doing what you do and what you've done a thousand times, doing it right and not think about your opponent, just hit your target. When you start to think about too much, it all becomes too much and it's very easy to be overwhelmed.
“There's always an element of nerves, I think sometimes more than others. It's a really big head game trying to make sure that you actually don't let those nerves rule you and that you can control your thoughts and control what you're working on.”
To find out more about the Abbey Medieval Festival and what you can expect across the two-day event (July 8-9), please visit www.abbeymedievalfestival.com
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