Toowoomba Royal, Goombungee-Haden, Dalby Shows working together to boost entrant, volunteer numbers for cooking, cake decorating

Scones, slices and cakes are the “stable foundations” of all country agricultural shows — now three societies are building a movement they believe will safeguard them into the future.

Celebrating a successful stewarding workshop ahead of the Toowoomba, Goombungee-Haden and Dalby Shows are (from left) Brittany Perkins-Ehrich and Loretta Voll.

Loretta Voll has won prizes at agricultural shows for recipes, for preserves and baked goods her own mother created decades ago.

To her, the baking and cookery section is not just a collection of scones, cakes and slices — it’s a celebration of what makes small towns great.

“It’s the history of our community — our forebears brought their recipes forward, these have been handed down for generations,” she said.

Ms Voll, who is the head of cooking for the Goombungee-Haden Show, is part of a group of chief stewards from three agricultural shows revolutionising the way they recruit volunteers and incentive entries for baking and cake decorating in 2025.

Loretta Voll, chief cooking steward at the Goombungee-Haden Show, celebrates a successful stewarding workshop ahead of show season.

This year, Toowoomba, Goombungee-Haden and Dalby will all work with the same criteria and schedule for most of their cooking sections, with four other shows interested in jumping on board in 12 months’ time.

The undertaking has also introduced and upskilled 43 new stewards to assist the chiefs across the three shows, a vital volunteering source that is needed for ag shows to function by helping participants, checking that entries meet the criteria and scribing the entire exercise.

Ms Voll said the revamp meant any steward could assist with any of the three shows, because all events were being run in the same way.

Celebrating a successful stewarding workshop ahead of the Toowoomba, Goombungee-Haden and Dalby Shows are (from left) new stewards Deborah Murphy and Pauline Prior with Toowoomba cooking chief steward May Gossow.

“The stewarding will be the same over all shows — some shows may still have a manual system and others have a computer system but they will still steward in the same way,” she said.

“There will be more volunteers that will be willing to travel to our rural communities and those smaller shows are able to ring me and I can help them out by finding stewards.

“It is critically important for all shows across Queensland, because without volunteers we’re unable to get our shows up and running and present our show day for the community.

“It is one of the biggest volunteer movements across the whole of Queensland – from catering through to stewarding in all sections, right through to the gatekeepers.”

Ms Voll said the move, done with the help colleagues May Gossow (Toowoomba) and Brittney Perkins-Ehrich (Dalby), was made to address the dwindling numbers of volunteers that shows could draw on to keep running.

“Over the years, due to work commitments, families having to work off farms, people have less time to help with shows,” she said.

“The amount of volunteers we have before show day (had dropped), and we have to work around people’s jobs and families.”

Ms Voll said she wanted to safeguard the future of ag shows across Queensland, hoping more would jump on board once they saw the benefits of working together.

The move to streamline and modernise how ag shows managed volunteers and entrants was sparked by legendary Toowoomba cake-maker and decorator Mary Reid, who helped organise the workshops to upskill new stewards.

Ms Reid said the baking skills on display at a local ag show were the building blocks of all cooking — and some she believed was worth preserving.

Mary Reid.

“I was making coconut ice from when I was nine or 10, and I was focusing on making them perfect from when I was 10 and 12,” she said.

“They’re the stable foundations that we build upon — those recipes haven’t changed, it’s about getting those basics right with the kids now in the shows.”

Ms Reid said she believed show societies across Queensland needed to embrace collaboration or risk an uncertain future.

“There’s a certain sense of ambivalence about this, because unless they try to protect it (it won’t work in the future),” she said.

“The (results) will speak for themselves — as these stewards come in and see the strength of the network, they’ll go away feeling proud they were part of something.

“(The other shows) don’t know what they don’t know.”

Anyone wanting to get involved with stewarding for any of the three shows can contact Ms Voll on [e-mail].