A million dollars’ worth of horses and harness, an historic wool waggon and three of the nation’s best teamsters captured global attention in setting a new Australian and world record for 62 horses in harness pulling a laden tablebtop wool waggon at The Good Old Days Festival.

NSW teamsters Bruce Bandy, Barellan, Steve Johnson, Lake Cargelligo, and Aleks Berzins, guided a team of pure and part bred Clydesdales, Australian Draught, Suffolk Punch, Shire and Percheron horses around the trotting track at Barellan showground on October 4 and 5.

The team measured 76m in length from leaders to drivers and used more than 500m of chain to connect to the historic Australian built Bennett tabletop waggon, weighing 3.8 tonnes and loaded with wool bales and owned by Ian Dahlenburg, Murramai, NSW.

The 32 bales of wool weighing 200kg each or 6.4 tonnes was contributed by the Flagg family, of Moobooldoool, NSW, to give a total weight of 10.2 tonnes.

Horses were contributed to the team by Aleks Berzins, Bruce Bandy, Steve Johnson, Allison Prentice, of Kamarah, Heather McFarlane, Barnawartha, and Jason Gavenlock, of Cowra.

Around a dozen helpers spent two hours harnessing the horses into spans of four then bringing out the spans and coupling them into place. A total of 15 spans were yoked together with two horses in the shafts.

The four leaders, Hank, Lady, Digger and Margaret, were guided by voice commands from Bruce Bandy.

The Guiness Book of Records hitch was set with a 50-horse team in Canada on August 13, 1995, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Navan Fair and took 13 Clydesdale horse owners and hundreds of volunteers.

The Australian record of 50 horses was set in in the mid 1980s at Carrara, Gold Coast, on Australia Day by Don Ross and Bluey Bunyan with a team comprising 12 spans of four abreast and two back in the shafts.

The Australian and world record team harnessed to a Bennett tabletop wool waggon at Barellan was part of The Good Old Days Festival on October 3-5, which expanded to three days this year to celebrate our pioneering heritage and was proudly sponsored by Bendigo Bank Narrandera & District.

“Over half of the team are registered Australian Draught Horses, five registered Shires, three registered Suffolk Punch, registered and unregistered Clydesdales and Percherons,” Aleks Berzins said.

“I only have one set of reins – the majority of the team other than the leaders are tied in, making all horses in the hands of the leaders. There are a couple of sets of reins, one into the body of the team and one into the shaft and pin. Everything else is at the peril of the leaders up the front wanting to get the chains tight and hold them in there.”

Collecting and repairing the mountain of harness was a mammoth and expensive job, while preparation of the horses took months beforehand.

“One day we had 40 horses going and I ran sums of costs involved, working with conservative figures of costs to buy the horses and harness, and we are well over $1 million for the team of 62,” Aleks said.

“We had never really thought about it but were rolling around with a million dollars on the ring there.

“To us it was important to do it right, to have the horses drive and work as a team. It was really important that we weren’t just trying to chase a number.”

Congratulatory messages from around the world included Sue Meggers, the daughter of the late Dick Sparrow, of Iowa, USA, and who single handedly drove a 48-horse hitch in the Cotton Bowl Parade in Texas, earning a spot in the Guiness Book of World Records.

Steven Johnson has been involved with the Good Old Days Festival since its inception and ranked 2025 as “quite special”.

As the record team moved off, there was a brief hiccup when a rein a became hooked under a spreader bar.

“We thought 'dear oh dear' but what we did do was made the crowd sit back and think 'can, or can’t they do this?' And it was yes, we can,” Mr Johnson said.

“Aleks got down and did a bit of tuning up but we got away all the same. They are a beautiful team and working really well.

“It’s been years of this work, and it all aligned this year so we could get together to do this. It’s been a great thrill to work and to be part of it with the best teamsters the country has got, it’s been a wonderful experience.”

Barellan Working Clydesdales president Bruce Bandy said the festival was unique in having all the draught animals – horses, bullocks, camels, mules, donkeys and goats – to be working in the one spot resulting in the greatest gathering of mixed species harness animals in the world.

“It is the teamster’s capital of Australia,” he said.

Always humble, Bruce was quietly pleased the horses had worked well as a single unit in the record-breaking team and it was a highlight of his life.

The Good Old Days Festival is proudly sponsored by Bendigo Bank Narrandera and District.