At first the assignment seems so simple as to barely qualify as a challenge: take a child to the Ekka for a day while spending less than $200. Until we buy tickets – with the added pre-purchase of the show’s iconic strawberry sundaes – for $60.
We’re still to negotiate that churning sea of plastic toys and sugary treats that is showbag pavilion. Yet to brave the flashing lights and high-pitched screams of sideshow alley.
This is the point at which one may well ask: is the Ekka still worth it?
Like Vegemite, the Brisbane Exhibition (as it was once known) splits locals firmly into two camps: those who avoid it like some variant of the plague you may catch among the throngs at the historic showgrounds, and those who mark days off the calendar as if the first Friday of August were 25 December.
For many that is because, like Christmas, the Royal Queensland Show has roots that run deeper than its modern, hyper-commercial incarnation. The agricultural show turns 150 this year and its core mission remains: bringing the country to the city.
This more wholesome side of the show is largely free.
This is the second year I’ve taken my daughter Maxie to the Ekka. We catch the bus there (50 cents) and arrive before gates open.
If your child has recently turned five, you may be tempted to book them a free entry online for those four and under. I have it on good authority that this is a terrible idea, because you will probably be required to confirm their age upon entry.
First ask yourself: have you met a five-year-old who, upon hearing their age given as four, would not insist upon correcting the record? Then: is $27.95 the price you would put upon your dignity?
Forewarned, Maxie and I find less dodgy ways to cut costs. We pack enough sandwiches and snacks to last a week in the wilderness. She wears butterfly wings, a rainbow hair extension and bejewels herself with a sticker to the forehead so that she feels festive without having to try to win a costume from a carnival game.
By noon, we have seen venomous snakes handled, goats milked, sheep sheared and a fluffy highland cow having its coat blow-dried – and we’re yet to spend a cent inside.
We need downtime if we are going to last for the fireworks and so we find some grass near the showjumping. Maxie nicks Dad’s notebook to draw the horses.
After a picnic lunch we hit the animal nursery. Two cups of feed for $5 buys 40 minutes of petting adorable kid goats and dodging greedy big sheep. Later comes every dad’s favourite: the woodchop.
By early afternoon, the crush of the crowds and the glorious winter sunshine start to take their toll and our discipline wavers.
With the first treat the dam wall of the budget begins to buckle. It turns out Maxie does not like the deep-fried potato spiral on a stick (only $10!). The smallest sized fairy floss ($9) is so enormous only a fraction of the bag gets eaten. Parental patience is wearing thin.
Now we are joined by Maxie’s school-age cousins and their parents. The sun starts to set and we enter sideshow alley. I pay for us all to share a gondola on the ferris wheel ($50) and a few turns on Maxie’s favourite ride from last year: the giant slippery dip ($20).
They shout us seats on the pirate-themed log ride – and Maxie’s mind is blown. In our sensory overload, I feel like a gambler in a den of pokies.
With the promise of a Jelly Belly showbag ($10) and hot chips ($8) we escape and head for the main arena.
Over the next two hours we are treated to a parade of everything from penny farthings to hot rods, camel-drawn wagons to robot dogs that round up real sheep. Dirt bikers do backflips and V8 utes shower the crowd in dirt and petrol fumes as they roar around the track in a display of synchronised hooning.
There are flags and there is pageantry, but the patriotism is softened by moments of silliness and the absurd. A frisky goat mounts another as a bugle plays the Last Post. A second-generation human cannonball from the US descends into a cannon his father built. And then he explodes into the night and you stop sniggering and gasp as time seems to stop and Earth lose its gravity, for just a moment, while the showman glides through the air, transcendent.
Amid the bluster of fireworks, I crunch the numbers and realise that we are still $27 within budget and regret we didn’t do one last log ride – or eat a proper hot meal.
We’ll do that next year.
This, I think, as we stagger home, is the magic of the Ekka. In a place so self consciously trying to shed its reputation as a big country town, and so busy remaking itself into a world city, it is a nice thing to have a few humble traditions.
