Real Show Food: What the Exhibitors Eat
With 800 exhibitors staying each night, and with many more coming onto the site each day to work with their animals or compete in Show events, feeding the humans is as big a job as feeding the animals. If you are from the bush, chip on a stick, a turkey leg or a dagwood dog is just as tempting as for any city slicker. But after a 14 day Show, and add in a few days to bump in and pack up, the joy of eating Show food is replaced with a yearning for the tucker they cook back home.
Marie Lindley: Southern District
The exhibitors and competitors on site form into little communities within the big Show community. The blokes who look after the woodchop competition, who spend all day wrestling with logs, and cleaning up the stumps afterwards, bring their own cook with them. So every morning, not long after dawn, the smell of fresh sizzling bacon and eggs wafts out of the woodchop pavilion.
Then there is one family of pig breeders, who bring down a side of home cured bacon, supplemented with fresh eggs from the poultry display at the Show. Instant, fresh, bacon and eggs for breakast.
The hearty and home cooked is a recurring theme. Where it is practical, people prepare their own food in communal kitchens in the pavilions, or put something together in the walkways between the animal stalls.
A popular place to chow down is the Cattleman’s Cafe in the Munro Pavilion. Its not open to the public, but it’s very popular among exhibitors. The cafe does 500 meals a day in a mess hall style. It’s traditional home style cooking. Roast of the day, lamb cutlets, shepherds pie, heaps of vegetables and salads. While it has its temptations of chips and hash browns, it is a healthy, wholesome place to eat. John Collins, the cafe’s manager (and part time Elvis impersonator) says the country kids are very polite.
Cattleman's Cafe
“When they grab their meal they come past and tip their hat to the kitchen ladies,” he says. The cafe operates on a voucher system, so parents can make sure their teenagers on site are well fed, without the temptation to spend their meal money on something else.
The District Exhibits, the massive displays of fruit and vegetables in the Woolworths Fresh Food Dome, require the people who plan and put them together, to be on site for three weeks. Each district (SE Qld, Northern, Central, Western and Southern) brings in its own cooking gear and one of the team is nominated as chief cook. Most of the produce is brought in from the home district, giving the menu for each district team (or court as they are known) a unique flavour. Lesley Dabelstein from the South East Queensland district owns an avocado farm in the Glass House Mountains. For her crew, it’s wholesome porridge for breakfast every morning.
Lesley Dabelstein: South East Queensland
Lorette Walmsley, from Grenfell and the Western district exhibit, says it’s the men’s job to cook breakfast. And the breakfast menu includes tomatoes cooked in balsamic vinegar and sugar. Yum.
Margaret Crowell from Tamworth (Central District) says she never co0ks the same thing twice. She gives her stove a work out; if there is a main meal in the oven, there is a pudding on the stove. There are scones, pikelets, raisin bread, all home made. Margaret makes home made chocolate custard and meringue pie.
Marie Johns from Richmond Hill in the Northern District says she regularly cooks for 24 people, but this often swells to 40 people. Like all the district exhibit cooks, the focus is on traditional baked dinners and plenty of vegetables. Marie has a chest freezer at the back of the exhibit so she can keep plenty of produce from home on hand.
Marie Lindley from Gundagai says the cooking duties at the Southern exhibit are shared around. It’s always hot meals: “I feed these people to keep them working”.
When you talk to the people in the horse pavilions, the sheep and goat pavilions, the woodchop arena or anywhere around the grounds, it is the same story. The Show becomes a series of communities where people come together, cook a meal and enjoy each other’s company. And being able to cook on site, or use the cattleman’s cafe, helps keep the cost down for people travelling a long way from home to entertain and educate the rest of us.
If you want to see more about life around the Show, check out this video narrated by Goliath, the world’s smallest strong man. Goliath picks up some nutrition tips from Fonzy, Australia’s tallest steer. Got any food secrets from the Show ? Comment and lets us know.
