In March 1899 a detachment of 106 soldiers from the New South Wales Lancers lined Sydney's Circular Quay before they embarked in SS Nineveh and steamed to England, where they would become the first formed body of troops from Australia to train with the British Army regulars in Britain. Although something of a military milestone in itself, the trip was only a consolation prize to some in the regiment; they had instead been hoping to get a contingent away for active service against Britain's enemies on India's North-West Frontier, but had been foiled largely by an uncooperative colonial government – military adventurism was not to everyone's taste. It was no accident that one of Australia's colonial mounted regiments was enthusiastic, organised and, perhaps, competent enough to consider such an endeavour. By 1899 the Australian colonies maintained a substantial number of men in cavalry, mounted rifle and mounted infantry units, which within a few years, and after a war in South Africa, would be organised into the Australian Light Horse. These units, often called corps in the parlance of the period, had largely been raised since 1885, but most of them could point to a series of colonial predecessors, imperial exemplars and other influences as part of their past. The light horse was not created from nothing, and in order to understand the mounted arm that was established after Australia's Federation it is necessary to examine its predecessors.

The first body of mounted troops raised in any Australian colony was the Governor's Body Guard. Created in Sydney in 1803 by Governor Ralph Darling, made up initially of well-behaved convicts (with just 14 members in 1810) and dressed in dragoon uniform, the guard's chief value lay in getting messages and information around the colony. One of its members, Thomas Andlesack, played a key role in apprehending the leaders of the Irish convict uprising at Castle Hill in 1804, but otherwise its history was militarily uneventful, being made part of the Mounted Police in 1840, then disbanded in 1860.