Barellan Working Clydesdales "The Good Old Days" Weekend

21/06/2026

Tips for groups camping together ⛺⛺⛺
If you are camping, you will generally be escorted to the Overflow area, to choose your own area, which will allow room for your whole group, especially if you are arriving at different times. We do not have the space to save spots for late arrivals in the showground.
If you’re camping as a group, you can join two or more adjacent campsites and use the internal area as you like, as long as the caravans can be easily driven out in an emergency.
However:
• Your site size is 10m x 10m (which includes your vehicles and caravan/tent etc). If you are in a group, there should be a minimum of 2m between you and your mates (for fire safety).
• Structures must still be 1 metre from the outer boundaries
• leave space between cooking areas and other structures
Volunteers will enforce this rule.

20/06/2026

19/06/2026

Our hugely popular Barellan Clydies fishing shirts will be back in the merchandise stall this year run by the ever capable Jeanette Overs. She is planning a few new additions this year on the merchandise line so keep a look out 👀.

19/06/2026

📣 Alert everyone! A total of 76 per cent of the camp oven tickets have been snapped up 😳 and its only June 19 👀 so if you were thinking about booking tickets get on your pony 🏇You will not only enjoy the two course meal (main course gluten, dairy and sugar free) but also our live entertainment will rock your socks off, Danny Phegan and the Longreach band. Get your tickets at www.barellanclydesdales.com.au

18/06/2026

Mark Porter continues his article on ploughing:
Normal Ploughing: Make sure that your furrows start and finish in line across the paddock [your ‘Ins and Outs’]. ‘Steering the plough’ involves guiding it along behind the horses, tilting it slightly left and right to grab more or less furrow-width, all the while trying to keep a straight and even furrow. It certainly helps if you have good soil moisture and steady walking horses! And a share that has been ‘set and sharpened’ by a blacksmith. Ploughing wears a bevel beneath the point and wing of the share, which makes the plough want to ride out of the ground. The point has to be ‘dumped up’, given a slight ‘kick down’ and ‘lead in’ to the land-side of the furrow; the bevel beneath the wing of the share has to be drawn down. These measures allow the plough-share to ‘bite’ into the soil sufficiently so that the sod flows up along the mouldboard and is turned over by it’s shape so that the grass and w**d cover is buried. You need to select a share to suit the size of your horses’ feet [we use them about 9” wide], so that the furrow-horse can walk along the furrows easily.
Clean Out: As you approach the adjacent land, you gradually DROP the depth-wheel again to minimise the gully you tend to get at the junction of two lands, called the ‘Clean-Out’. This is about 9” or two furrows wide. You aim to split the last piece of unploughed ground between the lands neatly in two, so that when you turn right at the end, you have just one furrow to plough. For this final cut, you actually RAISE the depth-wheel to avoid any ‘ducking and diving’ and to get a good ‘bite’ into the ground. If you want to do a really special job, you can then ‘close the book’ [ie. level out the gully] by ploughing two more furrows.

17/06/2026

The story continues on ploughing with Mark Porter. Pictured is Mark and his pair.
You now have two shallow furrows, with the sod of each thrown on top of unploughed ground, which you now need to plough. This is called ‘Backing-Up’.

3. Backing-Up: Raise the depth-wheel a little, and move the shackle along the horizontal rack 1-2 holes to the right of centre, and plough a furrow into the unploughed ground beneath one side of your ‘open book’ [you’re beginning to ‘close the book’]. Turn RIGHT again to ‘Back-Up’ the other side of unploughed ground under the second of the strike-out’s sods [completing the ‘closing of the book’]. To do this, you have to raise the depth-wheel again, nearly to the final desired ploughing depth [for us 4”]. You also need to move your shackle to the 4th hole to the right of centre on the horizontal rack, and walk the offside horse in the last clear furrow.

With the Strike-out and Backing-Up furrows, one must lean/weigh-down on the plough-handles at the end of each furrow [to stop the share digging in] while turning the horses. Once you have completed these initial furrows, then you can start ‘throwing the plough over’ [onto the mouldboard side] to let the horses drag it to the other side of the land. Now raise the depth-wheel to the full ploughing depth and adjust the shackle [and therefore the horses] along the horizontal rack as required. To be continued...

16/06/2026

The Good Old Days Festival is set to break records again in 2026 with the greatest number of camels pulling a laden wool wagon and a new 21st century Australian record for the largest working bullock team.

Organised by the Barellan Working Clydesdales committee, the Good Old Days Festival is the biggest tourism event in the Narrandera Shire contributing over $1 million to the regional economy and this year will be held on October 2-4 at the Barellan showground.

The festival drew global attention in 2025 for setting a new Australian record of 62 heavy horses pulling an Australian built Bennett wagon, weighing 10 tonnes, and laden with wool bales.

Visitors this year will experience a unique sight not seen in regional Australia for almost a century. Bullockies Phil Thomson, Ron McKinnon, Matt Stanford, Darcy Quinn and Joey Reedy will drive a large composite team of bullocks out to the Flagg family’s wool shed at Moombooldool, load up, and then drive along the stock routes to the Barellan showground.

The bullock team will be accompanied by a large team of camels pulling a wagon loaded with wool and driven by cameleers Rodney Sansom, Anna Bay, NSW, and Peter Hodge, Shepparton, Vic.

The spectacle will arrive at the Barellan showgrounds at lunch time on Thursday, October 1, with free entry for the public.

Across the Good Old Days Festival, the bullock drivers will set out to break the 21st century Australian record of 40 bullocks in harness achieved at the 2025 event.

The cameleers will also be gunning for a new Australian record of the largest number of camels pulling a laden Australian built wool wagon, eclipsing the existing record set in 2024 of 22 camels.

International guests at the festival will include Doug Baum and Valerie Crashaw, of the Texas Camel Corp, Waco, USA. Mr Baum will speak on the history of trekking with camels in the US during the Teamsters Q & A sessions and give masterclasses on packing camels.

Across the festival, the bullock drivers and their teams will be judged on their abilities and skills in the prestigious Teamsters Trophy, with the winner announced on Sunday afternoon. The goat teams and their handlers will be competing for the Little Teamsters Trophy.

Another program highlight will be the Tim Peel Perpetual Youth Award to encourage young people under the age of 30 to show initiative and leadership qualities in maintaining the nation’s heritage. Won last year by Forbes auctioneer, bullocky and bush poet, Joey Reedy, this award will be judged on Sunday, October 4.

Visitors will also be able to listen to masterclasses on side saddle equitation with Vanessa Wells, using pack horses with Brad Taylor, see a wheelwrighting display, compete in the gum leaf whistling and beard/moustache competition, or enter the competition for the best damper baked in a caravan across the festival week.

Around 650 meals will be served in the camp oven dinner under the stars on the Saturday night with live entertainment by Danny Phegan and the Longreach band. Live entertainment on the Friday night will feature Lachie Cossor and the Minor Profits.

Barellan Working Clydesdales secretary Fiona Kibble said the festival had undergone rapid organic growth and reached a point of maturity in 2025 with a new three-day format and global recognition.

“It is exciting times not only for the committee but also for Barellan and the Narrandera Shire to have such a unique, pioneering event – the only one of its kind in the world where visitors can see horses, camels, bullocks, donkeys, mules and goats all working in harness on-site,” Ms Kibble said.

“Always evolving, our program includes many tangible exciting experiences for all family members where they can see, hear, touch and taste our pioneer heritage.

“Our Friday program is quite different to the Saturday and Sunday events but our popular grand parade through the main street of Barellan remains.

“The not-for-profit event is run by volunteers and raises funds which are reinvested back into our community through new infrastructure.”

The Good Old Days Festival is proudly sponsored by Bendigo Bank Narrandera & District Community Branch.

All online ticketing is via www.barellanclydesdales.com.au

16/06/2026

Our local cafe has undergone a name change to the Top Dog so be sure to duck in for a coffee and snack while you are at the festival.

16/06/2026

On the Sunday, we will hold the Norma Zinglel Memorial Ploughing Competition. In a three part series, Mark Porter explains the principles of ploughing in NSW, Australia, with a pair of draught horses and a single-furrow mouldboard plough:

Ploughing varied between the UK and Australia, and even between states within Australia. The method described here was/is that used in NSW.

Due to the unevenness of the ground and the need to have more flexibility in manoeuvring the plough around obstacles in colonial Australia than in the UK, most ploughmen in the past dispensed with the UK’s furrow-wheel and retained one wheel on their ploughs: the land-wheel or ‘Depth-wheel’.

The procedure for ploughing a paddock in NSW is as follows:

1. Measure Up Your Lands: A good width for ploughing with a pair is one chain wide [22 yards]. From the edge of your paddock, step out half the width and peg [with a bit of white rag at the top] at the start, middle and opposite end. It helps to have an assistant when doing this.
2. Strike-out [‘Scratch-Furrow’]: adjust the depth-wheel on your plough to about half your desired ploughing depth [we like to plough about 4” deep for a cereal crop], so that a shallow trench will be cut. Adjust the shackle [connected to the swingle-bars of the horses’ chains] so that it is in the middle-hole on the horizontal rack of the plough. ‘Strike-out’ down the paddock with the horses, ‘ploughing in your pegs’ as straight as you can. At the end of this first furrow, turn LEFT [this is the only time that you will turn this way], drop the depth-wheel slightly and – with the shackle on the middle-hole on the horizontal rack once again – run the depth-wheel down the land-side of the first ‘scratch-furrow’ all the way to the end of the paddock [this is called ‘opening the book’]. Walk a horse either side of the scratch-furrow if you can. Turn RIGHT at the end of this furrow. To be continued...

16/06/2026

Here's a flashback to our fantastic whip cracker Emiliqua East - check out her demos and workshops at Barellan this year on October 2-4, 2026.