Gracie, a Clydesdale - light horse cross, is directed through the witches hats by Mr Gavin, carefully ensuring that the two logs being dragged behind her don’t hit the three witches hats, and that she also doesn’t step outside the square.

Welcome to the intriguing and fascinating world of log snigging, a sport that comes from days of old when draught horses were used to pull logs out of the scrub for the saw mills. 

A search on the internet for log snigging won’t bring up thousands of results, part of that reason could be that just like Darren Gavin, log sniggers are a traditional, earthy lot, not ones for sitting down at a computer designing websites, or updating their Facebook pages.

Indeed, so enthusiastic Mr Gavin and his wife Melinda are for all things horsepower, Mr Gavin evens ploughs his paddocks using his draught horses. 

One five acre paddock nearby took Mr Gavin months to cultivate, a job that if using machinery, would have been over and done with in quick time.

“With a tractor?” he laughed, “It would have taken about an hour and a half, maybe half a day, at the most.”

Both Mr and Mrs Gavin have been log snigging for 23 years, with Mrs Gavin having won first prize for the sport at the Royal Show in Sydney, and he said that training the horses is a test of patience, for them both.

“It’s a test of your horsemanship skills and the temperament of the horse,” he said, “If it’s going too fast or excited, you can’t get them to turn around because the chains are pulling up against their legs and they have to be patient and put up with everything.”

The Trunkey Creek Show is renown for its horse events, as well as it’s fine wool judging, and this year the horse section will be getting a boost with their inaugural Log Snig competition. The show is on Saturday October 8 at the Trunkey Creek Showground.