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14 August, 2025
Horses played a critical role in Shire’s farming sector
LONG-time Douglas Shire resident Joe Anich recently made a presentation to the Douglas Shire Historical Society about the history of people working with horses in the area before agriculture was mechanised.
As a young man, Mr Anich helped on his family’s farm at Cassowary using horses in the cane fields until the late 1950s.
According to Mr Anich, there were 11 heavy Clydesdale horses on the farm, used for ploughing, bumping ground and hauling wagons of cut cane to the rail line.
Lighter horses were used for planting, grubbing and weeding, known as scarifying. On other properties, different types of horses were used for pulling sulkies and for riding.
“Sleds were made by cutting a Y-shaped fork from a tree and pulling it behind a horse for carrying cane tops, which were then dried and stored for horse feed during the slack season,” Mr Anich said.
Horses would have stopped being used on the farms sooner but because machinery was hard to secure in the war years they continued to be used.
The farm where Mr Anich grew up also had its farm truck requisitioned, so his family had to use a horse to get to town.
Historical society member Mary Fapani remembers horses being ridden to school.
“On one occasion, a horse got out of the school paddock and ate everyone’s lunch,” she said.
Mr Anich said that for every 100 acres on a farm, between 25 to 30 acres were horse paddocks. The night paddock was closest to the stalls and feed shed and spelling paddocks were further away and gave the horses rotated rest time.
Wives, wanting to give their husbands more time to sleep, got up at 4am to feed the horses with cane tops put through a chaff cutter. This was known as chop-chop and was mixed with pollard and molasses.
With the horses came other issues.
“Bandicoots lived in the stacked cane tops and ate the spilled horse feed. They grew fat and some families enjoyed eating them,” Mr Anich said.
“Pythons also lived in the tops, eating the bandicoots.”
The biggest snake Joe’s family caught was apparently 7.3 metres long.
The last horse bought for the Anich farm cost 400 pounds. This was compared to the cost of a tractor which apparently in 1939, was 430 pounds.
My Anich believes the main reasons for changing to machinery was that numbers of available farm workers diminished, especially after World War II.
Read More: Port Douglas
