Children. We’ve missed children on this trip (apart from the nine year-olds in the Junior Dorm, of course.) But the Esk Show is all about children and things to delight them.
It suits us very well and they’re all over the Esk Caravan Park campground, where we have set up for the next two nights.
‘There’s nothing like a lad with a younger sister,’ observes John, in the morning as he watches a couple of youngsters at play. ‘He’s just persuaded her to hold two balloons in her mouth while he throws a boomerang at her.’
We turn our attention back to dyslexic Weet-bix – the Australian near-equivalent of the UK’s Weetabix – and munch a satisfactory breakfast in the predictable rain. An ABC headline reinforces the point; ‘Gales, showers and snow heading for South East Australia.’ Some places that we’ve passed through have had the wettest May ‘since at least the 1800’s’, it says. And an unseasonal soaking is due to arrive in Northern and central Australia including the Simpson, where we’ve just been, from later next week. I’m looking for any excuse to defray my ‘land of endless sunshine’ claim.
Before Esk we’d stopped on the Bunya Mountains for a coffee, with its distinctive Bunya pines. Long steep windy climb up and descents on the way down. The brakes on Peter start pulling to the right. Its losing oil from a gearbox or transfer box breather tube. Nothing we can really do at this stage; we’ll nurse it on the way home, and put it on the list for a longer look.
Esk, when we get there, more than lives up to expectations. Neat lawns, clean streets, Saturday market in full flow, mostly selling honey and beads.
The Brisbane Valley Rail trail leads directly to the Showgrounds; we claim a seniors discount (based on physical, rather than mental, age) and enter wonderland.
There is an inexhaustible supply of inappropriate food for 60 year-olds; ice-cream cones with chocolate flakes, Dagwood dogs – A Queensland speciality of a battered deep-fried sausage on a stick, oven-fired pizzas and more. There’s the usual round of horse events, pet animal pens, competitive vegetable competitions, best cake and so on. Aerial display teams soar overhead, trailing smoke on their way to a practice event. But for us the real attractions are the timbersports competitions.
We are spoilt for choice. Chainsaw racing starts us off – slicing seven fenceposts out of an unliftable log, splitting the logs and levering the posts apart all done in about a minute and a half.
Makes my winter Sunday morning effort of chopping the week’s firewood look quite pathetic.
Wood chopping follows. With those axes, honed in Mount Doom, it is an awesome spectacle. The competitions go and go.
Heats, more heats, standing block, underhand, double saw. They are handicap events, the better you are, the later you start; seconds counted out by the timekeeper.
The speed and force of the axe-wielders impresses us all. They don’t all look supermen, largely because they are not all men. We see the 2025 Australian Women’s final in this show. But they are all pretty strong. Even the young 13-year old, Archie – a late finisher – gets big applause from the onlookers.
And lawnmower racing! Stripped down, only slightly modified ride-ons power round the grass track sliding and bumping round corners, at speeds of up to 40 kilometres an hour. This is a Somerset and Lockyer Valley special. I cruise the pits, wondering how I can slip our trusty Greenfield mower away to make the necessary modifications. Who needs Land Rovers when you can race these?! To misquote the Wind in the Willows, ‘Horrid little camoflage-coloured cars! Poop! Poop!’
But there’s more. The Junior Dorm have been banging on about the lack of satellites in previous nights and how dinosaurs must have eaten them – and we see proof! Roaming the grounds is a real live dinosaur, fresh from its meal. Great to see them so far from their friends in Winton. We even catch a small one at feeding time. Heedless of the danger of yet another thing that can kill you, the Junior Dorm pose for photos.
Their smaller relatives are here too. We gingerly investigate the raptor cages with their occupants waiting, ready to pounce.
Some have prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd: ‘Winning chicken, ‘Runner up and ‘Highly commended’.
The Junior Dorm invents the prizes for the lesser creatures. 4th prize; Parmigiane. 5th prize; Schnitzel. 6th prize; Nuggets.
We take a break for lunch to find local pies, served by a hassled lady who shouts a lot, and removes the box of paper napkins when I try to take more than my allotted four. My pie is billed as ‘chunky’ but there are bits in it that are beyond chunky. The Esk Grand Hotel gets a visit during the afternoon as we head back to our camp.
Last night my contribution to cooking was to grate tinned cheese. A bit like grating grease, it left considerable residue on the grater and many other places. Success! Because tonight my services were not required. We spend the evening after supper recounting the quips of comedians now of dubious acceptability; Frankie Howerd, Blackadder, Eddie Izzard, Monty Python.
What ISN’T of dubious acceptability is the work that our four supported charities do to help improve the lives of disadvantaged children and veterans still suffering from the effects of their service. Mates4Mates and Combat Stress do tremendous work for the veteran community in both Australia and the UK. The Smith Familyand Onside do the same for the future generation of both our countries. So, if you haven’t already please share the link to this story or our gofundme page and encourage others to contribute.
I see promise in the chainsaw and axe competitions…
Maybe they could become additional SES qualifications?