Perth Royal Show 2009

We went to the Perth Royal Show on Friday after spending the whole of the week moving house. It was a good thing too as the weather was fantastic. The show is held annually for a week at the Claremont Showground and frankly I think that the showground seemed to have been built just for this show. We've been to the place a couple of times but this is the first time that I've seen all the shops opened. I've always thought that the shops that had closed down. The cost for the show is $24 but if you get if from IGA earlier on, it's $22. Can't remember the price for the kids but I can imagine a family of 4, it's going to set them back about $200 for the entrance, showbags, rides and food.


The Royal Show is just like a very big fun fair with attractions mainly for the family and their kids. My pupils kept telling me that they won't be going as it's very boring but when we were there, most of the people having fun were the kids and the teenagers. The main attraction seems to be the show bags and they are not free. They consists of mainly 'useless' things like cheap toys, sweets, chocolates and snacks but appeals to the kids as we do see many people leaving the place with bags and bags of these show bags. I do admit that there are some pretty good show bags like those for Lindt chocolates and those for magazines.


Besides the show bags, there are definitely a mix of things for everybody including a Heritage Trail whereby people can see how people in old Australia used to live and also a hall to showcase the different areas of Western Australia. My! the hoot of the steam train was loud! Wife almost jumped when it sounded.


There's also cooking and produce competition whereby people will send in cakes, wines, produces to be judged and the one that impressed me the most is the icing/cake competition. It's amazing to see what they can come up with with icing. They looked so real like! The flower below is made from icing and they are all edible. So are the shoes and bags...


Besides the competition, they also have acrobatic and clown shows throughout the day and there's also a wood chopping competition and what amazes me is that they have a state team for that and there's competition for interstates. I wonder whether they have a national team of woodchoppers?

The other major attraction is definitely the animals. Children nowadays don't really come in contact with farm animals unless they are in the country and this is definitely one way of introducing them to the different animals. The children were not the only ones that were overjoyed at the opportunity to hold and touch the cute baby animals. Wife's eyes lit up like a kid in candy land. She got to pat all the animals and held a rabbit for a long while. They even rear alpacas too and I learnt that there are 2 different types that they rear for their wool. Without their wool, they are actually very skinny.


But I guess the main attraction for the teenagers will be the rides and games stall and they are everywhere. It's definitely not cheap as each ride is about $9 and I doubt that they will just take only a ride or 2 if they are going to be there the whole day. As for my wife, she will never be caught up in some of those rides as she might just puke into those people in front of her during the ride.


There's fireworks at 8pm but frankly by 4, I was already a bit tired lugging my camera and all the showbags that we bought (I never said that I was immuned to 'useless' toys and snacks but in my defence we bought the magazine bags and food bags).