Charters Towers: Showtime

After getting pretty well and settled in Charters and going into the 2nd week of august, we heard that Charters Towers was having their annual 'show' or fair. It's a great time for everyone in the municipality/county/shire or whatever to get together and see the newest developments in farming technology, some good rides, food and entertainment, and little showbags for the kids. Showbags by the way are little bags, as partially defined in it's name, and for an accurate description the second half of the word should state 'filled with a buncha crap so that parents spend 20 bucks for crying kids to have cheap plastic'... it's a big deal around here. Showbags are quite big (in this state atleast), that they are seemingly the main event in Brisbane's version of a show called the "EKKA". It's a very close rendition of the PNE back in Vancouver, but slightly smaller I think. However the CT fair was not even near the same scale of the previously mentioned events, although they did have some familiar rides like the Zipper ( shown), and dodg'em (bumper) cars. The scramber, and a version of the skyscraper were also at the fair. The main attraction of the night though wasn't the rides or even the riveting display of farm equipment that had all the scraggly men with beards turned on... no, instead it was the monster trucks. Two monster trucks had made a journey from the coast to put a little bit of excitement back into the boonies for all these folks out here, and made quite a show of the rarity what with fireworks and all. Overall it was a good night to experience a bit more of the Aussie traditions, not dissimilar to our own really, and to get better acquainted with our new community. Another bit of the show I forgot to mention was the display section. As with every fair, displays of local artwork and such were to be shown for the more casual of attendees to gander at, rather than take a risk on 'the zipper'. The schools each had a large section of the covered bays in which to showcase some of their young talent and the work they were accomplishing with the kids. One thing you have to understand is how many schools are actually present in a town of only 9000 people... many. There are three boarding schools that I know of: ASSG, BTC, and CCC. There are also Kindy centres, and a couple of state schools. Understandably, this breeds a sort of competitive feeling in Charters, and so when given a chance to show up another school, ASSG naturally made a big effort in gathering and assembling the best of what was accomplished in the past year. Fun as it was spending hours organizing the display in the best possible way, we unfortunately didn't win a prize for it; although some of the children's handwriting pieces brought home many 1st and 2nd prizes.