Despite the fairly dry summer across the Monaro, the Nimmitabel Show Society has launched the high country show season with a bang.
An impressively large crowd enjoyed relatively mild weather and a wide variety of attractions from vintage machinery to dancing girls – and boy!
The Alcock Family’s Greenland Merino Stud dominated the sheep sections, winning Supreme Merino Exhibit with one of their rams, as well as Champion Merino Ewe and showing the RAS Champion Skirting Fleece.
Speaking for the stud, Simon Pateman said the wins were very rewarding.
“To get top awards for our stock and their fleece says a lot about follow through with our breeding programs – it’s great,” he said.
A similar relationship could be seen in the cattle events, where Bemboka based Steve Robertson’s Bennooka Park Murray Greys turned out tops of the stud and commercial cattle judging.
His Bennooka Park Barbara was named the Supreme Champion Beef Exhibit in the stud cattle ring, while another of his animals also walked away with the Supreme Commercial Beast.
I like growing things and over the years have been pretty lucky at shows around the region.
- Hilton Reynolds
Another high flyer was Cooma’s Hilton Reynolds who won the Most Successful Fruit and Vegetable Exhibitor for the fourth year in a row.
Pleased with the achievement, Mr Reynolds had other good news to share.
“I like growing things and over the years have been pretty lucky at shows around the region,” he said.
“I don’t know, maybe the competition hasn’t been too hot, but over the last ten years, I’ve won Most Successful at Cooma Show eight times, Dalgety, six times and here, four times.
“Based on that I’ve been asked to be the South East region’s official Royal Agricultural Society (RAS) fruit and vegetable judge – I feel very honoured!”
Like some other shows about the place, the value of attracting youngsters to the business of showing and competing is something the Nimmitabel Show Society has worked on.
As a result of the quarantines associated with the 2007 equine influenza outbreak, the society put in place a strong program of gymkhana style events and to this day, continues to run them.
Along with that, child focused activities like the Bush Kids’ Challenge each year attracts young children and ‘tweens’ to a team event that runs alongside the senior Bushmen’s Challenge.
Skeety Evans is one of the organisers.
“Look, it’s a lot of fun for the kids,” he said. “We get their parents along too, so we win on all fronts!”
With the southeast region’s show season well and truly “on the march” from now until the end of March, the gauntlet has certainly been thrown down at Nimmitabel.
