Brisbane Ekka

August 15, 2010 at 03:50PM     Travel Australia Brisbane Queensland

Vegetable art and a vegetable man
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.

Champion bananas at the Australian Banana Championship
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.

Wood-chopping contest
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.

A newborn lamb stretching his legs
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?