Horse Drawn Vehicles
The best explanation I can come up with for this collection is that my Grandfathers were farmers during this era. My parents sometimes tell me stories of using these types of machinery and vehicles on their parents' farms. My Grandfather on the maternal side had a property at Cattle Creek via Willow Tree in north-western New South Wales. My paternal Grandfather farmed at Dooralong on the Central Coast of New South Wales. My great Grandparents farmed up in the Tamworth district. Great Grandpa came out from England to set up the farm, and great Grandma followed him over a few years later with the children.
The sulky : this sulky came from a property at Eastern Creek in Sydney. I restored the vehicle as best I could with advice from a coach-builder/wheelwright. When my Grandmother was due to give birth to my father, my Grandfather hitched the horse up to his sulky and drove her to the hospital at Wyong. He went home and returned a week later to pick her up with his new son. How times have changed!?!?
The table-top waggon : I bought this wreck from a farm at Nangus on the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales. It cost me 2 cartons of beer! It was brought to the property by the farmer's father back in about 1920. It hauled bags of wheat to a nearby rail siding with a 14 horse team. It held a record for the weight carried on it at some stage. It took my Father and I two trips to bring this waggon home using the ute and big box trailer - that is a story in itself! It's about 18feet long when it isn't broken in half. The rear wheels stand about 5' 10" high. I weighed an iron tyre from one of the front wheels, without any woodwork in it, and it came in at 106kg, or 15 stone!!! I was smart enough to unload the trailer by myself and fall over dropping one of the wheels on my leg. I was lucky enough to get away with a bruise! I swear, I am indestructible!
The Junee trip! I bought an awful lot of farm machinery from a property at Junee, near Nangus. So much, in fact, that I had to hire a semi-trailer to bring it back on! And it still didn't all fit! The spring cart was used by the lady's father as far back as 1910 when he went to school on it - it was used as recently as the centenary celebrations for Junee. Thus far, the only piece I have restored is the fertiliser distributor - I figure I have the rest of my life to do the rest of them, so what's the hurry?
These other pieces have been picked up here and there around the country.
The branding iron above was my Grandfather's.
