Henty Field Days

Over the last few days the annual Henty Machinery Field Days (most people seem to shorten the name to Henty Field Days) has been on. For me it was the first time I had been to a ‘field days’ event anywhere, but I have been to a number of country town Agricultural Society Shows over the years. This year’s field days had around 800 exhibitors (according to their website), ranging from cottage craft industries to multi-national corporations. I think it is safe to say that it is ‘the’ event of the local calendar and I imagine it would have a good economic effect on the region.

When we arrived at Henty there was a long line of traffic north, south, east and west. We managed to park fairly close to the entrance (row 3), and when we left at around 3pm the casr were parked up to rows numbered in the 20’s. I don’t think I have ever seen so many cars for an event in the country, and that was only one of the 3 cars parks where visitors were parking.

The latest models of farm machinery was a bit of an eye-opener for me, the sheer variety of machinery available being a bit mind-boggling to me. I grew up on the edge of the ‘burbs so was not exposed to the variety of farming machinery when growing up. And even when I did live in country towns I didn’t move in farmer’s circles. The closest I came to most pieces of farm machinery was to see them in a paddock as I drove along the road.

The tractor above is a 2 axle model, with more than one rim / tyre on each side of the axles. I guess they do that for better weight distribution and better traction in wet paddocks? I am not sure of the exact purpose of the one below, but it obviously had such high clearance for a reason!

But the machine above was by no means the tallest thing on display. One of the taller things on display was the chutes shown below.

And there was a crane holding up some speakers used for announcements at the show that was maybe twice as tall again as the chutes shown above. But it wasn’t all new stuff on display. There was also some historical machinery on display as active exhibits. There was the wood cutter shown in the photo below, along with other historical machinery. Before we got close enough to see how it worked it through a belt, but we managed to see it working from a distance.

There was also sheep dog trials, which reminded me of the movie ‘Babe’. And there were other animals as well, sheep and cattle seemed to be the most common, with a small band of other animals such as Alpacas and some Alpaca cria (thats what pre-adult Alpacas are called).

We spent around 7 hours there all up, and by then the feet were starting to get a bit sore so we headed for home, about 20 kms away. it was certainly a most interesting day, and an event we are looking forward to next year.

Website: http://www.hmfd.com.au/