AS a young market gardener in the 1950s and 1960s, Max Marriott found that the family's Clydesdales had a significant advantage over their mechanised competitor - the tractor - when ploughing the fields. The Clydesdales simply never got bogged.
They could pull a plough through boggy fields without needing to be towed out, and were well suited to preparing wet ground for sowing spuds.
But, as the houses crept closer to the family's market garden at Bentleigh, Mr Marriott swapped the farmland surrounded by suburbia for the river flats of northeast Victoria near Benalla. And, though he swapped market gardening for cattle farming, the Clydesdales went with him to the northeast.
Now, the 74-year-old jokes that he is in retirement, but in reality it seems he does plenty of farming, as well as plenty of work maintaining the "Clydeys". And on the farm where he lives with wife Kristin, an equine vet, there are quite a few Clydesdales to maintain, about 70 of them.
This year the Marriotts will bring 10 of the horses to Melbourne to compete at the Royal Melbourne Show, the centenary show for Clydesdales. And it will be a family affair, with almost one family member for each Clydesdale including Max and Kristin, Max's son Andrew, daughter-in-law Jane and grandchildren Claire (18), Mark (14) and Adam (11), plus friends and helpers.
As he sits at the table and looks across a picturesque lagoon bathed in sunshine near his Benalla house, Mr Marriott describes the characteristics he wants his Clydesdales to exhibit for the judges.
"We don't want them wild and stupid, but when they go in the show ring they've got to be 'Look at me'. They've got to go in and kick up their feet and look as though they're real peacocks, you know," he says.
"Adam was like that today, you should have seen him - oh he was a million dollars.
"You don't want them walking along with their heads down, they've got to have their heads in the air and kick up their feet."
This year in the Harness Clydesdales section a team of four of the Marriotts' horses will pull a lorry owned by the family since the war years. It will be pulled by the four Ps - Pride, Phillip, Prince and Peter.
Andrew Marriott, who lives near his father, says that at show time all attention moves from the farm to the Clydesdales.
"The farm stops for a couple of weeks in September, just to go to Melbourne show," he says.
The family's mature Clydesdale are towering animals, and can weigh close to one tonne. But a well-handled Clydesdale can be a good-natured and friendly horse, Dr Marriott says.
"They're still horses, they still need to be broken in. They need to be well handled when they're foals. And, with 99 per cent of them, if you handle them quietly and kindly as a foal and spend lots of time with them they're very friendly and they love company. So the more time you spend with them they just end up being really good-natured," she says.
"But if they're not well-handled, if they kick you, you stay kicked," she says.
The Marriotts have been taking Clydesdales to the Royal Melbourne Show since 1946.
Clydesdale events start on Saturday September 27.
