Northern wins the District Exhibit Competition at Sydney Royal 2023

Peter Barratt, Inverell, has been involved with the Northern District committee for 47 years.

These days he is more involved in collecting and preparing the produce for judging rather than working on the display.

Mr Barratt described winning the overall competition as "a real buzz".

"It will be a bigger buzz for me when my family arrive this afternoon because they keep me going and support me through this," Mr Barratt said.

Two growers in Glen Innes, Brian Winter and Karen Fletcher, plus Mr Barratt, grew pumpkins for this year's show.

"We have a wide variety of marrows, squash, pumpkins, grammas, melons, stock grammas, stock pumpkins, and some smaller produce," he said.

They held working bees at Tenterfield constructing the back wall, grasses, making the chaff, and the hay bales, before heading to Sydney, where they spent 10 days setting up the display.

"We are really grateful for all the help we get from our committee and from our helpers here in Sydney," Mr Barratt said.

"Half of our helpers live in Sydney, they're not from our area."

Mr Barratt said they had a good group of growers whom they sourced produce from each year.

"Our really good grain came from North Star, Cropper Creek and Inverell this year," he said.

"All over the state, things have been variable.

"We collect a lot of our grain west of Inverell. But we didn't get any good grain west of Moree due to the flooding.

"On the coast, they had trouble with the cool summer, where things did not come along as quickly as they should have.

"But there are always parts of your area where you can find produce each year, even in extenuating circumstances, as we have had for the last three or four years."

Southern District's co-designers Margaret Fitzpatrick and her daughter Emma Lipscomb, Currawang, have combined to win the display award on two occasions.

Mrs Liscomb has helped out with the competition since she was only three years old.

The pair had been working on the display design for six months.

"The theme is about our dogs and all the jobs and wondrous things they can do," she said.

Ken Hewitt, Grabben Gullen, has been involved with the Southern District committee for 35 years.

Mr Hewitt manages the collection of produce and arranges to get it to Sydney.

"There are always hiccups; it's never straightforward," he said.

"Sometimes you get produce here, and you think it's good, but when it arrives, it isn't. It varies a lot.

"It has rained a lot, and we have had too much cold weather. So nothing grew and then it came out hot. We needed the sun earlier to get it up to full productivity."

It is the first time they were unable to source pumpkins from the South Coast.

The biggest pumpkin in the Southern District display was 220 kilograms, and was grown at Gundagai.

"This year, our pumpkins are from Gundagai, there are only a few of them, but they have filled in," he said.

"You have different produce grown in different areas, so if one collapses like it did this year on the South Coast, we have another area to back us up."

Mrs Lipscomb said being flexible with the design was all part of the process.

"We were going to have the middle deck spilling with pumpkins, but because of the season, the growers have had trouble with rot in the pumpkins and pumpkins not being able to last," she said.

"We have to improvise and put on a beautiful display no matter what produce we have."

The Southern Exhibit also won the 'Battered Beer Can', which is awarded at the wool judging.

It had been a long 27 years since they had won the prize.

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