Working our Duneske Clydesdale team of three , just before the 2023 Gatton heavy horse field days.

This all started as an idea after seeing a lovely old show dray saddle for sale on Facebook about four years ago. It had been made in Scotland in 1920 for a clydesdale breeder in West Australia, and featured solid nickel scotch-thistle ornamentation, as well as thistle-shaped cover strips. The panel underneath was no good but the saddle was too unique to not try and resurrect into something nice and to remake a set of harness to match it! So we bought it.

It had damaged and missing facepiece studs around the edge, so we made 40 new ones from 16mm solid nickel rod, polished them and soldered legs on the back. Peter Castles, a retired saddler and friend in Toowoomba made new panels for it last month, matching the original valances (side ornamentation).

About 18 months ago I made up a set of scotch-pattern winkers to go with the saddle, and managed to get the last 4 nickel thistles from a supplier in UK (Thanks Phil Goodchild!) - we put 2 on the winkers, and 2 on the hip strap ornaments. I also sewed a thistle motif on each eyeblock, just because...

Last November we were fortunate to be able to buy this big tipdray from Sharon & Bill Clarke of Kempsey. It was ferried home in stages by three different friends, and suddenly the saddle had a vehicle!

I'd found several old photos of tipdrays in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide that had horses with much ornamentation to the harness, even in a work environment, so set about duplicating that, including making a housen and saddle cloth with fringed edging - as per the old photos.

Most evenings in April were spent designing and sewing up breeching, hip and loin straps and the belly band. We had a few nice big shield buckles, and so modified some new stainless steel round 'cart' buckles into a shield shape to match where needed.

I had collected a few thistle-themed horse brasses over the years, so nickel-plated five of them, using two in the forehead drop, one on the breast-drop or martingale, and two on the housen which we made up in late March. The rest of the ornamentation features tapering oval-heart-shield decorations to match our other harness I'd made a few years earlier.

Looking at the old photos, plumes were common too, so we made them up - starting with brass sockets from UK, but then turning and polishing solid stainless steel sockets in-house.
The more you think about things, the more solutions start to present themselves! (Thanks to Tim Peel for an idea or two also and plume assistance!)

This dray was built around 1923 for the Grafton City Council and had a bit of size to it - it's not the common one-third of a cubic yard drays one usually finds, and it had loops under the shaft tips for a pair of leaders to be hooked to, with spreader bars.

So after a bit more thinking, I decided some leader harness - spider style- would be in order, but many old sets were made for horses a bit smaller than ours, so a few moments with some dees and baling twine and knots, and I had the basis for what measurements were needed to suit OUR Clydesdale mares.

Rather than being a common fixed length spider, and with plain buckles and loops, I decided to press up some box loops with a die I'd been lent, and to make the straps adjustable, and make it a showy set. Also I have an old copy of the Australasian Saddler & Harnessmaker trade journal from 1909 and saw this idea to use two dees atop the rump, instead of just one, so put we two in, and inserted fitting for a terret to go in the gap between them. This can contain reins, plumes or a bell when ready.

The original old leader trace chains are 11 feet long, with two extra-big links 4 feet back from the trace hook end. Those are for a spreader bar, so I made up two from some old spotted gum timber we had.

The two leader housen I'd made two years ago along with the leader winkers - to a home-made pattern with extra-wide vision and a 45 degree kick out from the cheeks to the eyeblocks. The ornamentation of oval-shield-heart I repeated from the forehead drop to the breast drop and across the housen, except I made a big D for Duneske and tapped and threaded some 3/16" brass screws into the back, and nickel-plated it and fitted them in the middle.

All that was left was a test-fit and test-drive, which happened on Thursday 17th March. We had a bit of tweaking of strap lengths, and a little more refinement of a few parts is needed one day in the future, but essentially it all worked and fitted well - as this video shows!

The Gatton heavy horse field days, in their 44th year, was coming up two days later, and Pearl ended up winning the Single horse in harness class, pulling the tip dray, while this team of three won the Mulitple horses in harness class. :)

All up it was a fun and worthwhile project, and the crowd liked seeing something a bit different or less common, which was still historically correct in Australia, and was a bit flashy!