A great tradition is being chipped away

CHANGE is inevitable, but some things shouldn’t be tampered with. The annual bringing of the country to city is one of them, writes Margaret Wenham.

THE late comedian George Carlin said, “Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it.”

And he had a point because change is all around us, all the time.

There’s good change and bad change, anticipated change and the unexpected.

There’s big picture stuff and there’s the local, right down to personal change.

And, of course, change I might think is terrific, you might think is terrible and vice versa.

Like, for example, if you’re not a Collingwood supporter and you’re contemplating the Pies sitting at No. 2 on the AFL ladder as Round 17 approaches. This startlingly good change of form and fortune for the Maggies will be a source of irritation for you if you support any of the other 17 teams in the comp but it’s giving me warm, tingly feelings. (Though because I just said that out loud they’ll now, immediately, slump to 13th where they finished last year and I’ll change back to feeling cold and numb again.)

Sometimes change gives you mixed feelings. Like when your kids all finally move out and suddenly you’re not driving to three different footy grounds on a Sunday, where you’re required to time-keep, goal umpire and serve in the canteen. And you’re not doing 12 large loads of washing a week (including pegging out a minimum of 21 pairs of jocks) and spending the equivalent of Tasmania’s GDP on food every Saturday. And there’s no more having to send strongly worded letters threatening to report Telstra to the Telecommunications Ombudsman because one of the bros visited a porn site which cunningly uploaded a Trojan ISP resulting in a phone/internet bill blow out. And you’re no longer shouting the house down because you discovered one of the others built a horticulture “hot box” in the shed (quite clever actually, using a timer disconnected from the extractor fan in the storeroom, his bedside light and a whole roll of alfoil) where he was attempting a bit of DIY cultivation.

It’s a nice change when they move out, right? Well … yes … but it’s so quiet, so ordered and boring really, and now you really should make that very big and daunting change — downsizing.

There’s good change and bad change, anticipated change and the unexpected. (Illustration: Brett Lethbridge)

I can’t face the downsize just yet, but a good change I have made recently is not driving to work every day.

Catching public transport from where I live involves quite a bit of leg work. And so it is I’ve found myself a couple of times a week walking past Brisbane’s old RNA showgrounds which is currently swarming with construction equipment and tradies trying to get finished all the most recent structural changes scheduled for completion in time for this year’s Ekka — part of the giant, very expensive 15-year “make over” of the place.

Here’s an interesting rub though: Fact sheet/2018 (available on the RNA’s website) about this “history in the making” facelift, studiously avoids the word change. Instead, it’s peppered with “transformation”, “rejuvenation”, “revitalisation” and “regeneration” as it seeks to spin the historical site’s overhaul which involves 5ha of the 22ha area being sold off for a couple of billion dollars’ worth of glittering new residential, commercial and retail developments, and a whole lot of the old exhibition and animal buildings and sheds biting the dust.

Fact Sheet/2018 assures us that all the “updated state-of-the art” Ekka facilities already built or in the pipeline means Brisbane’s will be “one of the only Royal Shows in the country to maintain its country and city links”. So that’s all right then. Nothing changes … or does it?

Victor the Old English is ready for his Ekka close-up. (Pic: Mark Calleja)

Because, the way I see it, the Ekka — all city shows — work two ways. Yes they bring the country to the city but they also transport the city to the country. So one of this city slicker-with-a-country-bent’s most favourite things to do at the Brisbane show as a child (and even now in my near dotage) was and is to spend hours wandering through the old sheds housing the livestock, where the aged timber buildings with their stalls and loose boxes are infused with the cologne of the country: the warm smell of the beasts, mingling with the aroma of manure and the sweet, nutty scents of straw, hay, grain feed and molasses. And there, among the rich-red Herefords and towering Friesians, sleek thoroughbreds and well-rumped quarter horses, the country folk loiter — leaning comfortably up against the old timbers, their Akubras pushed back swapping yarns with someone else who’s trucked their top stock in from out west or up north, or prone on a thick bed of straw, Akubras pulled down, as they snatch forty winks.

But never mind Fact Sheet/2018, this peculiarly evocative and vital Ekka experience is destined for the knacker’s yard. This year, the new Large Animal Pavillion, designed to double as a multistorey Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital car park outside of Ekka and other special event weeks, will be partially open for business and will smartly house in concreted comfort, about 350 beef and 200 dairy cattle, goats and poultry.

Now this, my fellow Royal Show aficionados, is not the sort of change I’ll easily and willingly embrace (and I understand a good few farmers are sceptical too).

The only thing that might make this change palatable — actually it won’t, but at least it’ll be calling a spade a spade — is if they abandon all pretence and call it the new RBWH Cow Park.

And then let’s hope on the concrete and armco ramps in and out there’s no nasty nose to tail cow crashes.

Margaret Wenham is a Courier-Mail columnist.