An Oasis In The Big Dry, Nhill Show Goes On

The Age

Saturday October 21, 2006

By CHRIS JOHNSTON

THERE have been droughts here before and there will be again - sure as eggs - but the show must go on.

The day began before 8am with a lone rider taking her horse through routines on the desperately bare Nhill Showgrounds' oval, the brittle brown hay bales scattered around it matching the sad colour of the earth.

Despite hardships from drought, the Nhill Show has been abandoned only once since 1882 - in the 1940s, due to the war. Then, about 10 years back, it looked like it might disappear for good, dulled by apathy and consigned to history.

But it has survived. Thrived, even. Wimmera folk claim it is one of the best agricultural and pastoral shows in the state. Nhill, between Kaniva and Dimboola and halfway to Adelaide from Melbourne, has a population of only 2000 - and that's how many turned up on Thursday, maybe even a few more, despite the Big Dry.

In the wheat-belt town's glory days they'd get double that - 1920 was a huge year. Jimmy Sharman's boxing troupe was there, the Siamese Twins and the Fat Lady, the magicians in sideshow alley, the works.

Nhill specialises in getting extra entertainment in to keep itself interested. In 2000, the RAAF Roulettes did acrobatics. Last year there were helicopter rides. This year there was a "super-ute" simulator and fireworks among the usual jams and scones, horse events, livestock, farm machinery and homespun exhibitions.

"I got a real good feeling about it this year," said the secretary and treasurer of the local A&P Society, Wilma Grosser. "It just felt good, it felt positive."

And that, in the end, is its purpose. The Nhill Show, along with the others that have survived, is for morale.

No one will buy from the array of expensive farm equipment on offer, not in the midst of such a crippling drought when the fields are bare dust instead of green. Few in the Wimmera will even have a crop this harvest.

It's been a dry spring following a very dry winter after four years of dry. Many are still paying debts from the 2002 drought. So this was a wheat-belt show with no wheat to show off - the paltry cropping displays were only examples of what might have been. Many of the entries in the home industries shed - the jams, cakes and knitting - were the only ones in their categories, entered not for competition but to ensure the community had something to rally around.

"If you really look at it," said John Clark, a sheep farmer from Glenlee, north-east of Nhill, "no one gets anything concrete out of this, not for their farm or their wallet. Everything is just for the sake of it, for the show, to make sure there is a show."

Another Clark, Roger, a committee member and poultry steward from Telopea Downs, said it was a place for people to see each other and just talk - to share the grief of the drought, perhaps, but even hopeless talk is better than no talk.

"You see people here that you don't see all year," he said. "They all come out of the woodwork, they all postpone things and put the farm behind for a day."

Naturally, it was warm. Cloud cover vanished by mid-morning. This has been the pattern of things for too long. At the official opening, rural adviser Dr Bill Ryan stressed the need to make the best of "difficult times" and "tough conditions".

They had a showgirl quest - young locals doing twirls on stage. Afterwards, compere Sandra Lynch thanked the entrants and said: "Things like this make the show more interesting and give the girls something to look forward to."

At night, the exhibits packed away, the animals gone, there was music and drinking. The beer garden ran out of heavy beer and spirits by 8.30pm. When the celebratory fireworks sparked up from the oval, glowing above the showgrounds, a couple of thousand people stopped what they were doing to stare up at the sky. As they do often. Waiting for rain.

© 2006 The Age

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