mgpcpastor's blog

Today was the public holiday for the Royal Queensland Exhibition, held at the Royal National Association Showgrounds. It’s other wise known as the Brisbane Exhibition, the Brisbane Show or more popularly still in the delightful informality of Brissie, ‘the Ekka’.
Simone wondered what to do on the ekka holiday. Ben wondered what the ekka was.

Well, this is what the ekka is to me.
Shows of this sort are a ‘city meets country’ event. Animals, produce and fine arts are judged. Businesses promote their products. Competitions are conducted and food and entertainment abound.
They are wonderful places for children. Especially children from earlier eras (like mine), I suppose. Entertainments were less common and far simpler and for those raised in the suburbs of the 60s and 70s elements of country life seemed relatively foreign, and the annual entertaiments of the Show seemed exotic.
Personally, memories of what I remember as the ‘Brisbane Show’ are happy times that seemed to evoke a normalicy of family life that was more strained and less evident at other times.
What can I remember?
August School holidays. In the days of a three term school year, the August holidays coincided with the Show.
Special trains that had to be diverted through Indooroopilly in the days before the Merivale bridge allowed trains to run from Wynnum into the city.
Being driven over the Storey Bridge and parking in the parklands across the road from the showgrounds.
Catching sight of the ferris wheel and other attractions in Side-show Alley over the wall that encircled the showgrounds.
Hundreds of people all crossing the road to the showground gates at the same time and waiting at the turnstiles to enter.
Having a mother determined that her children were going to see the various rural aspects of the Show before we indulged in sample bags (not ‘show bags’) and rides. (Perhaps her eldest child not knowing the difference between a pig and cow had something to do with this.) (I’d also have to wait until I was married before learning to be thankful that she seemed to have no interest in the Fine Arts Pavilion.)
So many types of poultry, birds, dogs, sheep, cattle, horses, cats and fish. So many.
My younger brother, then in his early teens at most, being asked by a matronly woman if he’d seen the Bird Pavillion. When he replied in the negative she said ‘Well don’t bother it’s terrible this year.’ or something to that effect.
The word ‘pavilion’. When else is it used any other time of year?
The disparities of Show life: the John Reid Wool Pavilion with sheep at one end and models displaying high woollen fashion at the other; the meat pavillion with yesterday’s prize winners in the ring being turned into sausages today (and every year the butcher allowing the skin to slip off the sausage machine squirting mince at the apprentice).
Food treats: Strawberry Icecreams with whipped cream and a strawberry at the bottom and on the top; waffles with cream in the middle of them; samples of cheese and yoghurt in the dairy pavillion. Flavoured milk in cartons punctured with some sort of a metal spike so a straw could be inserted.
The displays in the Agricultural pavililon. Fruit and vegetables arranged in artistic displays, demonstrating a pride not only in produce, but the places from which the produce had come. There were also half-pineapples with fruit-salad and cream to purchase and samples of honey to try.
The crush of people in the sample bag pavilion, especially in younger years when a lack of height and size made you feel like you were adrift in a sea of humanity. Sample bags at the time when they still had samples in them.
Buying a Licorice Bag for dad, because it had licorice and a Phantom comic.
Working out which sample bags offered the best value and the most desired items. (Later you would see if you could make the edible items last through September.)
Stuffing your bags full of every pamphlet and item which could be sampled, the overwhelming majority of which no child would ever have need of, or find interest in.
The chair lift (now gone) and the ride back across the show-grounds avoiding the inevitable bottle-neck at the under-pass under the rail-road tracks.
The wood-chop. How did the axemen get those planks to hold fast in the cuts they made in the vertical poles as they make two ascents in the tree-fell?
Learning over time that the games in Side-show Alley are not as easy as the spruikers make out, otherwise how would they stay in business?
‘Laughing Clowns’ is the best name of anything in Side-show Alley besides ‘The Ghost Train’. The mayhem that is (are) ‘Dodgem Cars’. Wondering if there will ever be a scarier ride than ‘The Wild Mouse’.
Watching the sheep dog trials and feeling aggrieved when the poor dog had that one surly sheep that wouldn’t do what it should have. (Surely one little bite wouldn’t have mattered.)
Staying for the evening events in the ring. Sitting in the outer on the cold concrete terraces. Shouting against the ring announcer as to which coloured fire work would fly the highest as they flew and exploded into wondrous fountains of light suspended in the air. (Choking on the smoke from the fireworks as they slowly drifted past the places where we were seated.)
The long journey home after the end of long and tiring day, surrounded by others who had shared the experience.

That is the Brisbane Show.
I know that if I ever attend another that it will be very different due to the passing years. But even if it were exactly the same it would still be a very different experience. Because the way you experience these events as a child remains a unique and indelible experience.

Update: How could I have forgotten catching goldfish at the Japanese Pearl Exhibition? All those poor goldfish in plastic bags tied up with rubber bands going home late at night on trains and in cars to uncertain futures.