“It’s a stationary hay baler and it’s around 90 years old,” he said.

“It was half buried in a creek bed near Shannon’s Flat and looked like it had been there for years.

“I went back and dug it out with a Bobcat.”

When he strapped it into a trailer and took it home, it would be three days of hard work to get it up and running again.

“It has a little petrol engine in the back there and the gears are the mechanics which drives it all,” he said.

“You have special blocks of wood with grooves in them which you put in the chute, then you shovel the hay in and finish it off with another block of wood – the grooves in the wood make it easy for you to string the bale together.

“In those days they used to wire the bales together.”

The machine, which once would have been extremely common in a farmyard shed, seemed foreign to passers-by.

“We made up four bales this morning,” Mr Holmesby said.

“The people just love it. There’s been a lot of interest with its noise and big moving gears. There are so many different moving parts, everyone stops to have a look.

“It’s the best machine here.”

The Shoalhaven Vintage Machine Club also made a bale-making demonstration in the main arena on Saturday.