World Record Set in Barellan as 62 Heavy Horses Pull Historic Wool Waggon
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At the Good Old Days Festival, a team of 62 draught horses pulled a fully laden wool waggon—recreating a near-lost feat of coordination, endurance, and rural heritage.
By Atlas Editorial Team
24 March 2026 • Barellan, NSW, Australia
The Long Chain of Strength
In the heart of the Riverina, under a pale Australian sun that bleaches both sky and spirit, sixty-two heavy horses were harnessed to a single waggon. Not wagon—but waggon, spelled as the pioneers once did, with a double consonant that clings to the age of timber, rope, and toil. The old spelling survives among those who refuse to let the dust of modernity erase the dignity of their labour.
At the Good Old Days Festival in Barellan, New South Wales, the Barellan Working Clydesdales Incorporated assembled a sight unseen in the modern world: fifteen spans of four horses abreast, with two in the shafts — a living chain of 62 giants stretching seventy-six meters from the leaders to the drivers. Five hundred meters of chain bound them together, not in captivity but in purpose.
A Waggon Built for the Weight of History
The Bennett tabletop wool waggon, built generations ago by James and George Bennett of St Mary’s, NSW, and now owned by Ian Dahlenburg of Murramai, creaked beneath its monumental load: 32 bales of Merino wool, each weighing 200 kg, supplied by the Flagg family of Moobooldool. Together, waggon and cargo weighed 10,200 kg — a testament not to machinery, but to endurance.
The horses came from across the plains — contributed by Aleks Berzins, Bruce Bandy, Steve Johnson, Jason Gavenlock, Allison Prentice, and Heather McFarlane. Their breeds read like a litany of strength: Australian Draught, Clydesdale, Suffolk Punch, Percheron, and Shire. At the front strode the leaders — Hank, Lady, Digger, and Margaret — who obeyed not the whip but the human voice, guided across two full laps of the 800-metre trotting track at the Barellan Showgrounds.
A Living Contract Between Man and Animal
At the waggon’s helm stood Aleks Berzins, Bruce Bandy, and Steve Johnson, the drivers who trusted voice over rope; Shane Carroll manned the brake, bearing the weight of ten tonnes of motion. Around them drifted the red dust — the very dust that once fed the lungs of pioneers hauling grain and wool before the arrival of steel and fuel.
In our century of screens and simulation, this scene borders on the primeval. There were no engines, no algorithms — only the dialogue between creature and man, the chorus of hooves and chain in perfect unison. The crowd, thousands strong, stood in reverent awe. They were not witnessing sport, but ceremony — the re-enactment of the contract upon which Australia was built: that toil and trust, bound together, can move even mountains.
For Atlas World Records, this is more than a numerical triumph. It is a monument of heritage, an elegy to cooperation in an age of isolation.
The record now stands in time:
Largest Team of Heavy Horses Hitched to Pull a laden (Bennett) wool Waggon — 62 Horses, Barellan, New South Wales, Australia, October 4–5, 2025 Verified by Atlas World Records
The dust has settled, the horses rest, and the voices of their drivers fade into the heat shimmer of the plains. But somewhere, in the silence between hoofbeats, the land remembers — and whispers back that for a moment, we were magnificent.
Record discovery courtesy of ABC News Australia. 🔗
Certified by Atlas World Records on 17 October 2025