The Barellan Working Clydesdales is an event in the small town of Barellan near Narranderra which attracts thousand of people to view how our ancestors lived in yesteryear under the power of Heavy Horse.
Barellan has 328 residents and among those are some pretty motivated and determined people who have a “can do” attitude to getting things done. Boorowa local Troy Cross has the same attitude and he has to keep it up as he shods a couple of dozen horses with hooves the size of dinner plates.
Barellan Working Clydesdales started in 2010 – a year after the Barellan Centenary when a street parade of vintage farm machinery, horses and bullocks proved a hit with the 3000 visitors.
The momentum carried through to a local committee forming to hold a one-off educational, heritage event in 2010. The event was funded with $1000 donated by the Barellan War Memorial Club, a $2500 loan from the Barellan Progress Association and $700 from a street stall. A team of 17 draught horses harnessed to a wool wagon weighing 3.5 tonnes was a huge hit with the crowd. The event was slated for 2011 with the added attraction of Ron McKinnon and Phillip Thomson with a 12 bullock team, an important element of early farming practices.
By 2014, visitor numbers had blown out to over 5000 from all over Australia and the committee was drawing on over a dozen community and sporting organisations for assistance with staging the event. The committee wanted to keep the heritage farming theme throughout and engaged a blacksmith and whip maker, and in 2015, an old booth was relocated and renovated by volunteers for a new scone kitchen.
The horse team was increased to 26 horses in 2015 for the grand parade, setting an Australian record for the most horses to pull a wool wagon in the modern era.
The camp oven dinners on Saturday night have grown from feeding 120 to 650 in 2019.
The inaugural Furphy Festival was held in 2018 with static displays of this Australian icon plus re-barrelling of Furphy water carts.
The combination of horse, bullock, camel, donkey and mule teams can only be seen in Barellan in this format and nowhere else in Australia.
The Good Old Days Festival is now regarded as one of the greatest showcases of harnessed animals in the world.
Troy has been a big part of the iconic festival for a few years and was asked back to provide his skills again.
He said, “It’s my fourth year going to the Barellan Working Clydesdales at the Good Old Days Festival.
“Myself and Tom Ings (my offsider from Binalong) shod the big heavy horse team over three days. He would go around and trim them all and then I would prep the shoes, forge the shoes and burn the shoe on and nail them on and then he would finish them off.
“We did a full day out at Lake Cargelligo for Steve Johnson and at Barellan we did Bruce Bandy’s and at Exeter in the Southern Highlands we did Alex Berzins.
“The heavy horse team were done two weeks before the event because they go on a big 100km drive around the back of Barellan. It’s about 20kms a day over a week. The horses pull the wagons with all the gear in them and they finish in Barellan the day before the big event.
Troy and Tom combined to do over 140 hooves, a big job.
“On the day I do display shoeing. I’ve usually got blacksmiths there forging and making shoes and I usually have one horse that I shoe a front and a back one day and a front and a back the next day.
“Unfortunately this year the blacksmith couldn’t make it, so I was it. I used bought shoes, but I did do a little bit of blacksmithing.
“I shod one full horse on the Saturday and another on the Sunday.
“It’s a demonstration to show everyone how hot shoeing is done the old traditional way.
“It was three days of shoeing and I reckon it would be a world record or up there with it. Doing five is a big day, but we were doing nine hour days, but I don’t mind, they are big gentle giants.