Royal Adelaide Show could include traffic light system, with wider aisles, pre-booked tickets also mooted under COVID-safe plan
After a year off, the Royal Adelaide Show will return. Here’s the changes being planned to get up to 50,000 people through the gates each day.
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The Royal Adelaide Show hopes to welcome up to 50,000 people at once in September, with organisers working on COVID-19 measures including a potential “traffic light” system.
Used at Sydney’s Royal Easter Show, a phone app and digital displays identified venues as green for low capacity, orange for nearing capacity and red for full.
Royal Adelaide Show general manager Michelle Hocking said Adelaide Show organisers were considering using the system as they worked with SA Health to plan the event.
“Not every pavilion requires it, it is just the big pavilions, so for us that would be your Showbag Pavilion and the pavilions like Goyder and Jubilee,” she said.
“We’ve met with the company that produced that technology and we’re working through the finer details with that. It’s an expensive option but if we have to do it we’ll do it.”
The show’s COVID-safe plan will be submitted in coming weeks.
All tickets for the event, from September 4-12, will be pre-sold.
Ms Hocking said, where possible, South Australian performers would be used to avoid any risk if state borders closed.
The New Zealand wood choppers will be absent, along with international judges who usually come along for wine competitions and dog and rabbit shows.
Work is still being done to determine how the Taste SA pavilion will offer tastings.
Ms Hocking was among a contingent of organisers who attended Sydney’s Easter Show.
“It made you feel so much more positive that in the middle of a pandemic we can still deliver the biggest community event on the state’s calendar,” she said.
“I’m really excited and confident that we can deliver a brilliant show. A third of the state’s population comes to this event and everyone has some ownership of it. It’s such a part of SA’s fabric.”
Last year, the Royal Adelaide Show was cancelled for just the fifth time in its 181-year history. It was also cancelled during both world wars, the Victorian Gold Rush in the 1850s and the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic.
This year, pavilion floor plans are under review to maximise social distancing.
Aisles will be at least 3m wide, meaning fewer exhibitors are expected, and in some very busy areas, such as the Showbag Pavilion, entry and exit points will be introduced.
“Most competitions are now open for entry and entry numbers at this stage are on par with previous years,” Ms Hocking said.
About 50,000–80,000 people usually attend each day, and last year, the cancellation dealt a blow to farmers and rural organisations.
That included the SA Country Women’s Association, which usually raises more than $50,000 during the event for charitable causes.
Show organisers last year replaced the much-loved event with the Show at Home online.
Urrbrae Agricultural High School has been involved with the show since 1932, and, this year, Year 11 friends Annie and Kody will be helping out.
“I’ll be with the cattle and sheep this year, showing them, preparing them and making them look good, so they hopefully win some ribbons,” Annie said.
michelle.etheridge@news.com.au
Finally, it’s smiles all round
The jams are made, the cattle ready and the carriages are about to be added to the Ferris wheel – the Royal Adelaide Show is back and participants are thrilled.
Those involved in the popular event, from September 4-21, are confident it will emulate the success of the Sydney Royal Easter Show.
Trent Woodall, who comes from a long line of show-ride operators, said the Sydney show was “the best show anyone has ever done” – but he was confident Adelaide’s would be equally as good.
“Hundreds of thousands of people came and they spent,” Mr Woodall said.
“I have never seen happier queues in my life.”
Mr Woodall, who runs the Ferris wheel and several other rides, said the Adelaide show was his favourite, partly because his grandparents used to run the chairlift. He said the COVID-19 pandemic had made it more expensive to operate his business, but the start of this year had proven that would be offset by people’s willingness to spend more at events.
Beef cattle section committee member Jock Gosse said it was “wonderful” that the show was returning, and giving people a much-needed dose of “normality”. Mr Gosse, who has been involved in the Royal Adelaide Show his entire life, said the industry had been encouraged by the success of the Sydney show. He said many small businesses relied on the event, which was why last year’s decision to cancel it early on was for the best.
“The decision was made before people started too much preparation and spending a heap of money getting ready for the show,” Mr Gosse said.
The show is the biggest fundraising event on the South Australian Country Women’s Association’s calendar, raising about $50,000 each year.
President Roslyn Schumann said members were “really, really pleased” this year’s event was going ahead and that they could continue their 70-year tradition of serving up cuppas and scones.
“I think it will be a great joy for many of our members because, for a lot of them, it is an annual outing to come to Adelaide and work at the show,” Mrs Schumann said.
“It’s been a great effort to think that things will go back to looking a little more normal … the planning is in full swing.”
The CWA had managed to recoup much of the money lost from last year’s show cancellation, thanks to a generous public who had supported trading tables and pop-up shops.
“When … people were able to get out and do a few more things, (it) was a boon time for us,” Mrs Schumann said.
Doubling down with bags of joy
It’s show time – and, this year, that means double the fun for Bedford employees.
The 600 supported workers, who live with a range of disabilities, will continue a Royal Adelaide Show tradition, packing between 200,000 and 300,000 showbags. This year, they will then put together another 200,000 bags for the Royal Melbourne Show.
A Bedford spokesman said the “really critical” work would provide a large number of opportunities to the Panorama-based employees from June through to the Royal Adelaide Show in September.
“Every year, we pack around 200,000 showbags for the Adelaide Show, and when (it) was cancelled in 2020 due to … COVID-19, it was a devastating blow for our clients,” the spokesman said.
“When we found the show would go on (this year), they were not only excited about packing showbags, but about job prospects as well.”
Employee Tess Rogers, 23, said she found packing showbags “really interesting”.
She liked working at Bedford because she had “lots of friends”.
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