National Ploughing Championships to take place at Little Swanport

The Tasmanian Ploughing Association will host the National and Tasmania Championships at Little Swanport in the first week of July.

The state championships will take place on July 1 and 2, with the national titles happening on July 3 and 4.

Spectators are welcome at the free event to be held at the site of last year’s state titles - livestock and vineyard property Mayfield Estate, owned by the Dunbabin family.

Competitors will come from Victoria and New South Wales and for the first time to a Tasmanian event, from Western Australia.

They will be put to the test on their tractors using both two-furrow conventional ploughs and two-furrow reversible ploughs.

Last year’s national champion Adrain Tilling, from Victoria, will be defending his title with the Victorians tipped to be the strongest opponents.

TPA president Morgan Waters said that eight Tasmanians will be ploughing in the nationals with the winners going on to represent Australia at the world titles in Kenya in December 2027.

“We’ll be ploughing in a paddock that hasn’t been worked over before so it will be hard going,” Mr Waters said.

“We have our seasoned competitor in Rob Bayles competing, up-and-coming ploughman Daniel Gladwell will be looking to improve and his dad Peter, who has been involved in scrutineering at the Worlds, will be one of the judges.”

“Doc Perry from Cressy and Chris Williams from Upper Castra will contest the reversible ploughing.”

Also Mr Waters will also be putting his John Deere 230 to work in the conventional ploughing.

“Most competitors will have vintage tractors - a lot of Massey Ferguson 135s and the like that were traditionally used with two-furrow ploughs,” he said.

“As tractors got bigger the equipment got bigger and now you can find 12-furrow ploughs or even more commonly farmers will just rip and hoe to prepare ground for crops.

“Ploughing this way is a dying art form and judges will be looking for the best presentation with straightness and uniformity all-important.”

In a time before chemical spraying ploughmen were relied upon to fold the furrow evenly without gaps so that a good soil bed was created and no light could get in to make weeds grow.

Farmers still prefer a ploughed field when they want it to drain more efficiently and not dug in too deep.

The competition on each day will run from 10am to 2pm and food and refreshments are available.