Hey yo’all,
This is all about our day out (or day off from the build) to the Royal Show. What is the Royal Show I hear you all ask?! Well I think in its most simple terms you could describe it as an agricultural show. I say could, because I am certain that is how it started, and although that element is still very much the main theme, I have determined that the Royal Show is actually 4 shows in 1. I have never heard of anything like it in the UK, although I am guessing that in the US it might be similar to a State Fair.
First of all you have the agricultural part which brings in farmers from all over Western Australia to show off their various prized animals, which pretty much include Cows, Bulls, Sheep, Goats, Pigs, Dogs, Chickens, Turkeys, Ducks, Pigeons, a few Cats, and several other smaller showings such as Emus, Hamsters, Lamas, Snakes, etc.
For every possible category and sub-class they have awards and medals. I have to say though, that some of the “best of breed” animals were the weirdest and most ugly I have ever seen, especially in the pigeon arena, where I can’t even begin to describe what they looked like.
Each of these types of animals had their own huge warehouse size building, so you can imagine how many hundreds there were. As well as just purely showing off the various breeds, there were of course various additional events going on all the time such as the dog obstacle course, and sheep sheering.
Second to the agriculture part would have to be the fair ground. A pretty much standard run of the mill fair ground with all the vomit inducing rides, dodgems, shooting galleries, and various other forms of money spinning games. As with all of these things, you see loads of people walking around you with some sort of soft animal twice as big as they are, and you think, I have to get me one of these in order to have any kudos.
So after $15 at the rifle range, we had a small stuffed hippo. Sense nearly got the better of me, but then I decided to spend another $10 at the darts wall, and got a small stuffed dog. After the darts I managed to resist any further expenses on silly games, and yet as the day carried on, the yearning to get that enormous shark / snake / monkey kept coming back.
After the fair ground, the third part is the house / kitchen stalls. You know like the little cubicles that they have at the Ideal Home Exhibition. Unheard of companies trying to sell you the latest vegetable cutting utensil, or some sort of new wax for your floor that never needs cleaning. Yep, all those same companies appeared here with all their magical goods. I say magical because as we all know the items in question never work as well at home as they did in the demonstration. Not even close.
I must admit though that I did succumb to one purchase, which was a “magical” bench vice that could the job of 5 other bench vices! But wait, there’s more, they also threw in a drill mount worth $60 and soft wood grippers. Today only show offer of $260. Sigh, no hope for me. Luckily it was made out of cast aluminium so it wasn’t too heavy to carry around.
The last part of the show is something I have never heard of before, “show bags”. Essentially these are plastic bags with various bits inside them related to the promoter, which people buy. I have a feeling they started out many years ago as taster bags, and have evolved into a main attraction of the show. For example, there were Kit Kat show bags which had various different Kit Kats inside, as well as a few Promo items such as a baseball cap or t-shirt.
There must have been 50-100 show bag stalls, each one selling anything from 3 to 30 different show bags each. The show bags that I saw varied in price from $4 to $60. The $4 bag would just have a couple of small packets of sweets. There were some impressively large Lindt chocolate bags for $60, which supposedly contained about $120 worth of various chocolate.
In the show guide, there are at least a dozen pages showing you all the best show bags to go for, and what they contain. We bought a Cars the movie show bag as it had a VW Kombi soft toy, as well as Cars cards, Cars Rubiks cube, Cars yo-yo, Cars pens, Cars bat, Cars hacky sack, Cars mini rugby ball, etc. We also bought a $20 Lindt bag and a $40 Morish nuts bag.
As you can imagine at a show such as this, you do get a few strange folk. Of particular note was this man and his bull. The bull was impressive, not only in size, but also he just looked the part. You would not want to step into his field that is for sure. Anyway, the bull was minding his own business, when his owner from several stalls down pulled out an apple and started to approach the bull. Well the bull got very excited! The man cut the apple placed a section in his mouth and fed it to the bull, who loved it.
But that is not actually the “strange folk” bit, nope the “strange folk” title has to go to the woman in the crowd who saw the owner do this, and asked if she could have a go. The man gave her a cut piece of apple, and she tried to give it to the bull. The bull half got it, but then dropped it. So the apple is now covered in bull saliva and all the dirt and muck from the floor. So what does the woman do, yep, she picks it up and puts it back in her mouth. I think even the bull was surprised! Her boyfriend was definitely surprised as he shouted out “Yukk, I’m not kissing you tonight!”. The bull did not drop it the second time round.
On top of the main parts I have just described, there was also a museum area with old machinery, wood chopping competitions (I think this guy looks like Richard), a Japan area, and of course various armed forces recruitment huts. Oh and how could I forget all the food stands, it was impossible to walk more than 1 minute without passing another one. The Pluto Puppy (a hot dog on a stick dipped in batter and fried, and then dipped in Ketchup) was particularly tasty.
And that was the Royal Show. It was a fun day out, we saw a lot of things, although I think we were pretty tired and cranky by the end of it. I think I would go again, but probably not for a couple of years.
Oly
