Peak Hill is the place to be at the end of May when the 2026 Golden Plough comes to town.

Hosted by the Western Branch of the Australian Draught Horse Stud Book Society, the event on the weekend of May 30-31 at the showgrounds will feature:

• Ladies, Junior, Novice and Veteran ploughing divisions;

• Horse‑led obstacle courses across three disciplines;

• Demonstrations, markets, food stalls and family activities; and

• The headline Golden Plough Championship.

If we wander down memory lane, we can reflect that ploughing competitions first became popular in the early 19th century and often formed the precursors to the modern agricultural shows that still exist today.

Australia's first recorded ploughing competitions date back to the early 1840s with various regional agricultural societies held around Australian proving highly popular.

These matches were seen at the time as crucial for improving agricultural techniques and testing new equipment; a similar role to which car racing has served the motor industry since the early 20th century.

These competitions were also designed to highlight and train farm workers in creating perfectly straight, consistent furrows, a difficult skill in driving horses through the hard ground of the new colony. These were major social events attracting hundreds, sometimes thousands, of spectators.

The matches often featured intense competition and were used to display improvements in plough technology, such as the famous stump-jump plough exhibited in 1878.

First held in 1976, The Golden Plough is now our premier showcase of horse‑drawn excellence with competitors required to guide two draught horses and a single furrow plough through the demanding eight‑run layout, judged on accuracy, depth, sharpness, width, and soil turn.