Sunday, August 12, 2012

Ekka

Every year in late winter in Australia, there is an agricultural exhibition in Brisbane, commonly known as "Ekka".  Ekka has been around since the 1870s and is a combination of agricultural, cookery, arts, crafts and a midway.  It is a lot like the Stampede in Calgary, but without the rodeo.

This is the first time that we have gone to the Ekka.  It is held at the RNA (Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland...you can see why they just call it RNA) showgrounds, the same place that it has been held since the first Ekka in 1876.  It has a permanent stables for all the livestock, plenty of room for rides and sideshows, a couple of good size pavillions for the arts & crafts and food fairs, and a cricket pitch that is used for showing livestock. 

Midway with rides

We lucked out with our first visit to the showgrounds, as we had beautiful weather and small crowds.  Every pavillion was full but we were still able to walk around and see all the displays.  We saw lots of handy-crafts and food displays, but our favourites were the livestock barns.  We saw lots of farm animals and the smells in the barns certainly brought back memories for JB of visiting her grandparents' farm in central Alberta when she was a little girl!

We certainly didn't understand everything that we saw, even though we have now been living here for almost two years.  Once again we saw a game with horrifying clown faces and there seemed to be a show that featured a man in long underwear and what appeared to be a walking water tower...or potentially some sort of animated barrel with spigot...we didn't ask.

Horrifying clowns!


Not a clue about this one

Ekka is pretty much what we expected: it is a county fair that blends city and country and seems to make everyone happy.  We will all have Wednesday off so that we can visit the fairgrounds if we wish, and the city gets a nice economical boost from all the tourism.  It gave us a nice glimpse of a different way of life (country) and we got see some animals.  What more could we want?

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