The Tully Show

Michele: Today we went to the Tully Show. Tully is a large town 20 km from Mission Beach. It is the nearest large town... and by large town I mean that it has not only a hardware store but also a lawn bowling club. Tully also hosts the regional high school. The Tully Show is an annual 2-day agricultural fair. This is such a big deal that all the schools and grocery stores are closed today. The sugar cane plant in Tully was even closed. The tall stacks in the background of this pic are the sugar cane processing plant (note: uncharacteristic lack of steam coming from the plant).

The show covers a much larger spectrum than any US fair that I've attended. There was of course the midway with fast food, try your luck games and rides, such as Ferris wheel (pic above was taken from the top) and bumper cars. There was the tractor section and the petting zoo. However, the Tully show (and other Australian shows) also has horticultural competitions, fruit and vegetable competitions, they even have scrapbooking competitions (see facebook for photos of these http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2330635&id=9128001&l=7693463011). Robin's entry for flower decorated saucer filled with sand did not win any prizes but we thought it looked fabulous. Some of her classmates had awesome entries for the 'food made to look like things'.

We all had a great time at the show. First some sandwiches from the Girl Guides while watching 11 year-olds jump their horses and then the Ferris Wheel and the Hall of Mirrors. The highlight of the day were two shows at the grand stand. The first was a horse show where Guy McClean did tricks with his trained horses. He mentioned several times that he and his 4 horses are going to America soon to do shows there. All you Yanks, keep an eye out at your local rodeo for Guy McLean. The second show was a motorcycle jumping show. I caught a picture of one of the rider in the middle of his somersault in the air. The black bar at the top of the picture is the roof of the grandstand. Very impressive! We coasted to end of our day at the show with bumper cars, big slide, petting zoo and admiring stalks and bunches of competition-winning sugar cane and bananas.