When I was a kid, every year, my folks would take me to Platt Fields' Flower Show, held at the park of the same name in Manchester. As I recall it would be held on the 3rd Friday and Saturday of July, usually a day or two after we had broken up from school for the summer holidays. It was a wonderful mix - primarily a forum for flower, fruit and vegetable growers to submit the results of their labours in a competitive environment, there was also a section for breeders of pigeons, doves and other birds, not to mention rabbits and other small livestock I can't remember at this stage. There was a gymkhana section where I recall seeing world class show jumpers such as Harvey Smith. Various home improvement companies would also exhibit and for all the kids there was a travelling fun fair with the usual rides.
If it rained, the whole site got churned up by the thousands of visitors becoming a horrible mud bath, but if the sun was shining then it would be a glorious afternoon out. I always loved it, my favourites being the various flower displays (living in a terraced house, we didn't have a garden) and the bee-making display. A local beekeeping society had a section of a hive under glass and it always fascinated me seeing the bees busily working away in this honeycomb and we were always on the lookout to spot the queen bee.
Such memories are so powerful that when I heard about the EKKA, I just had to go as it sounded like an Aussie version of something I enjoyed as a kid.
Originally called the Brisbane Exhibition, now formally called the Royal Queensland Show and usually shortened to Ekka, it's the annual agricultural show of Queensland. The Ekka has a history going back to 1876 and is based on the agricultural shows held in Britain in the 19th Century.
We decided to go on the Tuesday as that's the day, a friend of ours, Elaine and her husband, Paul, attend every year. So, bright and early (for me, LOL), we set off in the car around 8:45 towards Caboolture Railway Station. Parking at the station was a bit tricky, especially as it was a normal working day and the station has its fair share of commuters and this was exacerbated by the additional passengers going to the EKKA by rail. Anyway, Jubbly managed to get parked up. We found that the rail company were laying on additional trains for the exhibition - our train departed at 9:28 and, as the journey went on, it filled up rapidly.
We got into conversation with a couple about the EKKA and, amusingly enough it turned out that the man was Polish so the language switched for the rest of my conversation! He had emigrated from Poland in the early 1980s while the country was still under Communist rule. He already had a grown up family but his partner was his Indonesian bride of some two years, a lovely lady with a grown up family of her own as well - a fascinating story, for sure.
Conveniently, the train took us direct to the Exhibition Centre, arriving an hour later and we entered the show to be greeted by familiar themes - fast food stalls, fun fairs and the inevitable agricultural judging!
Rather than describing the themes in detail, it's easier for me to identify differences when compared to the Manchester Show. There was a big emphasis on judging of agricultural livestock, cattle and horses being prominent when we were around. Certainly no sections for amateur breeders, such as pigeon fanciers, but maybe that's not a big thing over here in Oz. The fun fair section was large with some massive, pretty daring rides, not that you'd catch me dead on anything like that, with my fear of heights!
There was a superb choice of food available to cater for a very wide range of tastes, indeed when we met up with Elaine and Paul to have lunch at the Gourmet Harvest, our table sported Indian, Greek and Thai cuisines! It was good to catch up with them, following the meet some ten days earlier.
Particularly enjoyable were the food and drink displays on show in the Woolworths Fresh Food Pavilion, allowing producers to showcase their wares to discerning customers, proving that not all food has to be mass packaged and sometimes quality is appreciated. There were food demonstrations going on throughout the day and we witnessed one which described the process of making a tasty risotto. I could have stayed there all day!
A fun part of the event was the Showbag Pavilion allowing visitors to purchase heavily discounted Showbag collections of products such as perfumeries and cosmetics, chocolate and nut snacks and, some ten thousand miles from home there was even a Manchester United showbag!
TV station Channel 9 had a building - they were running some live programmes from the show during the day, including the 6pm news magazine programme. We had a brief chat with their weather presenter, teasing him about the accuracy of the forecasts!
By around 3:30 we were seriously flagging despite having had a few pit stops and, even though we hadn't seen all the displays we were just too tired to continue. So, we made the return journey getting home thoroughly exhausted around 5:20pm.
A great day out at a great Queensland institution.
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We've had something similar here, too. It used to be called the Atlantic Winter Fair and is now something else, possibly the Nova Scotia Fall fair... livestock, lots of cows, bulls and horses. Various breeds of chickens, sheep, roosters, some rabbits and a few other odds and ends. The larger livestock are judged. Last time i went there was a big gekko lizard, a Llama and some turtles. I'm sure when i was a kid there was also bounty from the garden such as giant pumpkins. I think they had a children's petting zoo as well. There aren't any flowers but there is a show stadium where they have such things as horse teams hitched to buggies and wagons, or an exhibition of an ox team. You might seen dogs doing tricks. It's not likely on the scale of the Ekka but it was interesting to go to once in a long while.
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