All The Fun Of The Fair: The Huon Show 2018

I haven’t been able to visit the Huon Show for several years and this year I really wanted to go. I was considering catching the bus to Ranelagh where the show is held when Ally called me and said that she and Matt wanted to go too. Could they come and stay with me on Friday night? Of course, I said yes. Saturday morning came and the weather was bright.  We set off early to be sure of getting a park close to the Showgrounds. Ranelagh is just outside of Huonville so we were there in less than half an hour.

Alpaca at the Huon Show
I love Alpacas.

We all wanted to see the animals more than anything else and we spotted the Alpaca enclosure as soon as we came through the gate. There are several breeders in the area and some others had come from other parts of the state to show off their animals.

Kids and calves

I also particularly wanted to see the cows this year. The reason for that is that I have been reading about the issue of de-horning cows in “Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss”  this week. The Swiss are having a vote on whether this practice should be continued. I do see the odd cow near my house but I wanted to see if the practice was widespread in Tasmania. Well, I saw several breeds of cows, Jerseys, Herefords, Friesian etc and nary a horn between the lot of them I’m afraid. I decided to look it up and found in the RSPCA knowledge base a document that says that it is legal to de-horn cattle in every state and territory in Australia.

This has to be the largest cow I’ve ever seen.

https://kb.rspca.org.au/is-dehorning-of-cattle-legal_274.html

https://www.ava.com.au/policy/84-dehorning-cattle

There are some guidelines about what age and how this should be done and apparently it is recommended that a procedure called disbudding be used instead.  Disbudding is the removal of horns before they attach to the skull but I wish it wasn’t done at all. At least the Swiss cows get a referendum to support their cause.

Popular with the children.

We went to see the dog judging. It’s a small dog show compared to a city show but it’s always fun to see the dogs. I find dog show people are a breed of their own too.

Golden Retrievers in the judging ring.
Bedlington Terrier. I had to look this up.
A group of dogs with their owners.

On the main arena, the Tasmanian Light Horse Society was giving a demonstration of riding and training exercises that the troops would have done. Of course, we stopped to watch this for a while and to look at the Draught Horses in their pens nearby. There was some show jumping too but I had not brought my long lens so I could not photograph that well.

A riding demonstration in WWI uniform.
Two of the horses in the riding demonstration.
Meeting the horses
Draught Horse
The Draught horses were popular with the crowds too.

We saw goats and poultry but missed the sheep who were penned in an area of deep shade. Good for the sheep as it was warm but not very interesting to photograph.

When I saw this guy I just thought of ZZ Top
Feeding goat.
This bird was a prize winner and I think she knew it.
Wyandotte, an American breed.
I am not sure if this is another Wyandotte. They come in different colours

There was wood chopping, which I forgot to photograph and wood carving with a chainsaw. There were carnival rides, sideshows, and Showbags.  There were vintage machinery and farm equipment, handicrafts and afternoon teas.

To finish off here are a few more photos. WordPress is not letting me do galleries today or it could be this computer because I can usually do them on the laptop. The computer is seven years old so I forgive it.

Working on a carving.
Chainsaw carving of a wombat.
A Seahorse carved with a chainsaw.
Another restored vehicle from the vintage machinery club.
Not sure what this if for but it makes a lot of noise.
The Laughing Clowns game.
Lucky tickets at the sideshows.
A carnival worker
Lethal Weapon Ride
Energy Storm ride
I think the recorded voice in these things is the same one I remember from my teens.

 

Snapshot Sunday: Poultry in Motion

A chicken being judged at the Huon Show.

This was taken in the poultry hall at the Huon Show. I assume that this man is a judge and is examining the bird but when I saw him holding it I just had seconds to take the picture so I didn’t inquire.

There will be more pictures from the Huon Show in another post very soon.

AN AWFUL TERRIBLE HORRIBLE DAY AT WORDPRESS – Marilyn Armstrong

So WordPress is at it again giving us “improvements” that many of us don’t need and don’t want. It reminds me of my mother’s suspicion of any packet that said “New. Improved” at the supermarket. Whenever they did that to pet food the cats would not eat it.

Serendipity - Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth

I went to take a look at the brand spanking new format for WordPress.

WARNING: If you do that, you will NOT be able to go back to your old format. I think what they have done is eliminate all the old versions of the editor we used, so you can use the new one, or hope they don’t delete the old ones entirely and leave you with this mess.

Which is what I think is really going to happen.

Now, there are things about the “new new new new editor” that may — eventually, when they get the bugs fixed — be useful. But right now? You can’t even get a set of standard editing functions across the top of your page.

They also (apparently, unless it’s a bug) have a limited number of categories — AND they no longer offer you the option of picking up an…

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Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Lights

Put That Light Out!

Candlelight

I took these the other evening when I had lit some candles at home. It was quite tricky to get a good photo but I think I got it with these apart from the burnt match which I dropped because it was about to burn my fingers.

A double wick candle.
Tea light candle.

City Lights

Old style lamps outside the Treasury building in Murray St, Hobart at dusk and street lights in George St, Sydney taken as we walked back to our hotel from dinner.

An old-style street lamp outside Hobart’s Treasury Building.
George Street Sydney at night, taken on my smart phone
Lights on the water in Darwin.

Christmas Lights

Yes, it is that time again when people start to put out their decorations. These are from last year though.

Christmas decorations outside my friend Karen’s house last Christmas

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Flowing Water

Flowing Water

These first two photos are from our New Zealand cruise and were taken onboard Explorer of the Seas. Most of the larger RCI ships have a wave simulator like this one. No, I did not try it.

The FlowRider surf simulator on Explorer of the Seas.

After escorting us out of Wellington harbour the pilot-boat did some exuberant “donuts” to say goodbye. The water was such a brilliant colour in Wellington that I left a tiny bit of the colour in the photo.

The Pilot boat in Wellington farewelled us with water “donuts”.

This next one was taken on a dull rainy day and I only desaturated it a little bit. It was taken on the Gordon River cruise that David and I did with Gillian and Bruce in 2012. The wake is that colour because of tannin in the water.

Wake from our cruise boat on the Gordon River

This last one was taken on my phone one day when I was in Hobart and I had some fun playing with it in Picasa.

Fountain in Franklin Square, Hobart.

 

RDP: Birthday

Celebrating Life

Age is a tricky subject for a lot of people. An older relative of mine once had a complete meltdown because she was turning fifty. Naomi and I were teenagers and we felt very embarrassed and uncomfortable to see an adult acting that way.

Birthdays for me are like markers on the road of life and I like to acknowledge them no matter how many I have. I don’t mean I want a big party or lots of presents although of course presents are nice. I just don’t want it to be “just another day”. Naomi and I usually plan some little outing or at least cook a special meal at home to celebrate our birthdays. Sometimes life intervenes and things don’t work out like the year that Naomi had a car problem on the way to our lunch get together and had to cancel at the last minute or the very sad year that my mother in law died or the one where David was in hospital but three or four  sad ones out of sixty plus is not so bad.

My birthday treat for 2018, a trip on the Huon onboard Yukon.

Up until we moved to Tasmania my birthday often fell on a holiday. School holidays were in May and there was a Public Holiday around that time as well so even when I was working I often had it free. Strangely enough, after we moved away,  that South Australian Public Holiday was moved from May to March.

My friend Gillian and I are exactly two weeks apart in age and we started a habit of celebrating our milestone birthdays, zeros and fives, together, especially after we moved to different states.

David, Gillian and Bruce, West Coast Wilderness Railway 2012
Gillian and I with her assistance dog Dusty who got camera-shy. Photo by Bruce Laughton

One year David and I drove to Canberra for Gillian’s birthday, next time Gillian and her husband Bruce came to Tasmania and we all went to Strahan on the west coast for the weekend. Last year it was my turn again and I went to spend the weekend in Melbourne with them.

I have never consciously thought about it but I guess I see birthdays as a time to celebrate life.

Glass given to me by my friends at the Op Shop for my birthday last year.

 

RDP: Past

A Sense of Time and Place

I’ve always found history very interesting. I remember as a young child being taught about how the Romans invaded Britain. I understood that modern-day buildings could be built on top of older ones but at seven my ideas of archeology were a bit sketchy. When we found some bricks in the back garden I thought that perhaps there was a Roman house underneath and this was the chimney sticking out.
Billingsgate roman house London: Remains of the Roman house at Billingsgate; 2nd to 3rd century AD. Photo by Udimu.

Still, despite that misconception, or perhaps because of it, I became interested in the way people lived in the past and particularly in the places they lived. A few years ago I came across the British TV program “Time Team” and even though the episodes were some years old I enjoyed every one. In another life, I might have been an archaeologist.

Although I was born in England I’ve spent the majority of my life in Australia where the history of European settlement only goes back a couple of hundred years. When I first went back to England for a visit I was taken to see Lincoln Cathedral, a church built more than 900 years ago. No building in Australia is that old. I’ve also been to York, one of my favourite places because of its old city walls and narrow streets. and its links with the Vikings.

In some places, I feel the past very strongly. I’ve stood on the Great Wall of China marveled at the length of it and wondered again how men could build things like this without computers and machinery.

Closer to home I once sat with Naomi in the grounds of the old prison complex at Port Arthur and at dusk as the day trippers leave you really get a sense of how lonely and isolated the convicts who lived there must have felt.

Port Arthur photo by Naomi

What a shame it would be if everything old was torn down and we didn’t have the opportunity to experience the feeling of times past in our towns and cities.