Yesterday I attended the Ekka, which is Australian for "exhibition", in particular the Brisbane Exhibition, the annual agricultural show. I believe it's similar to the CNE ("The Ex") in Toronto, although I've never been to The Ex so I can't say for certain.
The Ekka is... odd. It's a big deal in town—and indeed wherever it is as the show travels around the country—as there will be a public holiday one of the days that the show is in town.
For a city boy like me, the agricultural aspects are quirky but cute. There are competitions for everything you can imagine, agriculturally. The picture at the start of the blog is of a vegetable art display (it didn't win the competition, but I thought it was good). There are horse competitions, cattle (before) competitions, cattle (after) competitions (for "before" and "after" pictures, see the gallery), banana competitions, chicken competitions, and many others.
There was also a wood-chopping competition. It featured a variety of events—pairs crosscut sawing, the 300mm underhand, the tree climb, and so on—with apparently $65,000 in prizes up for grabs.
There were also lots of cute barnyard animals on display: sheep, goats, ducklings, chickens, and puppies (I wanted to take one home with me!). There were also newborn lambs, just a few hours old, and already learning how their legs worked. The little fella in the picture at right was born earlier in the day, as far as I know.
And of course no fair or exhibition would be complete without terribly unhealthy deep fried dough and other tasty treats. I was disappointed that I couldn't find any funnel cakes, but we did have some warm jam-filled donuts. The Ekka returns every year, but perhaps I will skip it next year, unless of course I have trained for the wood-chopping competition. Think I can chop through a 300mm log in less than 19 chops?
