Australia’s most experienced teamsters will attempt to break the world record of 50 horses in harness at the 2025 Good Old Days Festival in October. Photo: Kim Woods.
Getting a lot of horses to work well in harness is a lot like training a footy team, Steve Johnson reckons.
“Horses that are worked regularly together eventually form a bond and become a good team,” the 75-year-old Lake Cargelligo horseman says.
“That only happens if you train together long enough and often enough.”
And, like people, Steve says some horses are born leaders … while some “are bloody hopeless!”
“You get horses that are good leaders and others that just want to follow all day; the trick is to work out which job to put them in.”
But the one thing all the horses need for this type of work is a steady temperament, Steve insists.
He’ll be banking on that reliability next month when he joins fellow teamsters to break the world record of 50 horses in harness at the 2025 Good Old Days Festival at Barellan.
Together with Barellan Working Clydesdales president Bruce Bandy and Aleks Berzins (of Exeter), Steve will help create a mega team of more than 50 horses pulling a historic Bennett wagon loaded with wool bales during the event from 3 to 5 October.
The teamsters will bring their own Clydesdale, Australian Draught, Shire and Suffolk Punch horses for the record-breaking bid with additional horses to be supplied by committee member Allison Prentice.
Harnessing the giant team is expected to take over two hours at the Barellan Showgrounds with the horses harnessed in sections of four, before being all hitched together as 13 spans of four abreast and two in the shafts.
Putting that number of horses together in harness is “not as easy as it looks”, according to Steve.
He and his wife Jan, 77, have been busy training up a team of about 14 horses ahead of the festival, traversing the back roads around their property to prepare for the epic feat that lies ahead.
The couple, who have been married 54 years, breed, train and travel with their gentle-natured giant horses; indeed in 1995 they set off on a six-month holiday “out in the back country” with four horses hitched to a wagon.
“There weren’t so many big trucks on the road then,” Jan says. “We had no back-up vehicle and we lived off the land mainly, shooting pigeons, pigs and feral goats to eat and buying a few groceries along the way. It was quite an adventure.”
Neither Jan nor Steve were born into horsey families. Jan was a “city girl” while Steve grew up next door to a drover at Lake Cargelligo and was good mates with his son Pat.
“One time they asked if I wanted to come droving with them; they pulled their outfit with horses,” Steve says.
Steve Johnson, from Lake Cargelligo, with some of his team of horses that will take part in the 2025 Good Old Days Festival. Photo: Supplied
It would be the start of a 50-year affinity with these incredible animals.
“I just love it,” Steve says. “I’ve done a lot of training at schools and watched, listened and learned from the old masters.
“There’s been a lot of trial and error. I’ve made a few mistakes and then tried not to make them a second time.”
These days Steve admits he’s getting a little slower while his wing woman is starting to lose her eyesight.
In recent years they’ve enlisted the help of their son Kane, 49, and grandsons Tristan, 27, and Jaydn, 29, to help with training the youngsters and do some of the heavy lifting of the harness and equipment.
“Jaydn has been helping us train for Barellan. He brings the horses down from the paddock, they all get tied to the hitching rail and it takes about two hours to get all the gear on,” Steve says.
“Then we start putting them in the wagon and head off for a two-hour drive, come home and do everything in reverse.”
The Johnsons and their horses will get together with their fellow teamsters two weeks out from the festival to ensure the horses get used to each other and learn to work in formation as a team.
“A lot could go wrong,” Steve laughs when asked if there were any concerns about attempting to hitch together 50 giant horses in one go.
“I’m a bit older, so I’m a bit more focused on the safety side of things. I don’t know how I get myself tangled up in all these sorts of things …
“But Aleks said he wanted to break the Australian record, so here we are!”
“I just love it,” says Steve, who has spent 50 years breeding, training and travelling with these gentle giants. Photo: Supplied.
The Guinness 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, while the Australian record hitch of 48 horses was set in the mid-1980s at Carrara on the Gold Coast, on Australia Day.
The world record hitch at Barellan will be a highlight of the Good Old Days Festival, which celebrates Australia’s pioneering heritage and attracts up to 7000 visitors during the three-day spectacle.
The event will also see one of the nation’s biggest country music stars, James Blundell, take to the stage on Friday, 3 October, supported by the Outback Stockman, Lachie Cosser, from Longreach.
Barellan Working Clydesdales secretary Fiona Kibble says the festival has undergone rapid organic growth with the transition to a three-day format and visitors travelling from around Australia and internationally to attend.
“It is exciting times for not only the committee but for also 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,” she says.
The Good Old Days Festival will be held from Friday 3 October to Sunday 5 October. For online ticketing and more details go to the event’s website.
