Mary Mills’ farm is a well known pioneer farm in the Mudgee district, and as such it has its own old farming equipment and old horse drawn vehicles, along with others I have added to my collection over the years. Below are some of these more regular  horse drawn vehicles.

This was the late Clive McDonald’s wagon, which used to carry the hot ash from the Mudgee Hospital coal fired heaters.
 
They used to spread the ashes between the train station and the hospital.
 
Clive also used it to cart his hay when he was farming.
 
The wagon  has connections on the sides for bailers etc.
 
Clive gave the wagon to me about 1977 for $50. I use it now to cart bales of hay.

At right is a proper lucerne rake for short hay.
 
Mainly when they did the crop, and there was loose hay left, they would rake it up to feed the horses.
 
The lucerne rake put the hay into piles so you could come along with the wagon and pick it up.

The old spring cart at left was Roth’s old cart that carted the wine from Roth’s Winery (now Pratts Winery) to the bottle shop we all know in Market Street.
 
They used a spring cart because the wine was in bottles. The whole of the cart is cedar. It is now restored and I hope to one day use it in the Mudgee Show.

The inside of the cart

This is the one horse lucerne mower that Darryl James, from Lue Road, once owned.
 
He used to have a vegetable store on the Lue Road with an honesty box and we can all remember buying his pumpkins, squashes, zucchini, watermelons, corn, rockmelon.
 
He had the most amazing home grown vegetables, many of which you would not see in the grocer shop today.
 
Darryl used to use this mower to cut his weeds down before he ploughed them into the garden.

This old tip dray has been modified to become a super spreader.
 
Everything on an old farm has its uses. Nothing is discarded.
 
Old timers didn’t have the money to run out and buy a new tractor for this and a special machine for that.
 
They used what they had.

This is a 1923 four wheeled wagonette.
 
It was owned by Richard Ricket from Coonabarabran.
 
I paid $1500 for it about 12 years ago.
 
Now I use it for weddings and special occasions.
 
 It has stool seats for about eight people.