What an amazing festival is The Good Old Days Festival held in Barellan on the long weekend in October each year. The festival celebrates our nation’s pioneer heritage and has the largest gathering of harness animals in Australia. These include the mighty workhorses, the Clydesdales, bullocks, camels, donkeys, mules and even goats.

Pioneering farming practices are on display with bullock and horse drawn ploughs, binders, wool wagon and a huge Mallee roller. The iconic Furphy water wagon is also on display.

Unpowered camping is available at the Barellan Showgrounds for $23 per night and Glamping Tents are also available.

There is a range of food options from BBQ’s to the various food vendor trucks. A variety of market stalls can also be found.

There was a grand parade, blacksmith talks and demonstrations, sheep dog demonstrations, talks by bullock drivers on how they train and use the bullock teams and you could even do a camel ride.

The highlight of the weekend was watching the successful world record attempt for the most number of horses harnessed together. The previous record was set in Canada with 50 horses. The practice run at this year’s Barellan festival had 54 however on the Saturday when it really counted the team went for broke and harnessed 64 horses. What a sight that was as the feet of 64 huge horses thundered past us.

We decided at the last minute to get the motorhome out and head out to Barellan to check out the festival. We arrived at Barellan Showgrounds late on the Thursday afternoon to find that all the camping inside the Showgrounds was already full but they had plenty of room in the overflow paddock. We found a good spot to camp and set off on foot to explore the displays. Our short walk from camp took us past the Glamping Tents and the brand new amenities block.

Friday was spent wandering the showgrounds watching the various shows and displays and finishing up with a show by James Blundell and Lachie Cosser on the main stage. We made use of the food vendors and the BBQ for dinner. There is a pub on site selling Barellan beer which we found to be quite good.

Saturday was more of the same however this day there were crowds of people. It was a huge crowd on the Saturday with most coming to see the world record attempt. I’ve heard since that 10,000 people attended the 2025 event.

We packed up and headed for home after two fabulous days.