AgFest ...
It is autumn in the Huon Valley and Cath and I have just managed to pop down for a few days. I have seen fall in New England and Canada and marvelled at the colours of the leaves, but autumn down the Huon is very different although no less beautiful. Instead of a backdrop of autumnal colours covering the landscape, the main colour is still the mystic green of the eucalypts with their prominent silver branches. I have heard this milieu described as eerie before but to me it is just the colour of Australia. As you enter the valley you start to get a smattering of autumnal glory as you run into the poplar, birch and beech trees with their yellow leaves, the vines in different colours of gold and red, the apple and cherry trees, the former still heavy with fruit in some instances and the latter already golden, and finally the glorious maple trees with their bright red leaves.
Autumn in Tasmania can mean only one thing … AgFest, the iconic agricultural event which, amazingly, is organised by Rural Youth volunteers aged between 15 and 30 years. The event has grown from humble beginnings in 1983 with 111 exhibiters and 9,000 attendees to more than 700 exhibitors and 63,000 attendees in 2019. After having to cancel the event in 2020, this year it returned with great rural sigh of relief but with ticket sales limited to 10,000 per day to allow social distancing and a Covid-safe event. It is an absolutely essential visit for snagging bargains on `must haves', like tractors, combine harvesters and other amazing machines whose purpose is way beyond my limited agricultural understanding. Needless to say, every day was completely sold out.
This was our third attendance at Agfest and we have certainly learned a lot. In our first year as complete newbies, we pitched up in city clothes and wandered around being completely ignored. We soon realised there were a few rules to be followed.
1. Wear your Blundstones – Tasmania’s premier boot – with pride. It immediately marks you out as someone in the know and to be taken seriously. Even better, make sure said boots are well cleaned on entry by the crowd offering free boot cleaning using beeswax (unavailable this year due to Covid).
2. Wear appropriate headgear. If an Akubra is not your style then perhaps a tasteful tweed Peaky Blinder will do the trick.
3. A check shirt and moleskin trousers can go a long way to easing you into a conversation about ag drains or irrigation methods.
4. Mutter the word “mate” repeatedly in conversation. I find that “Too right, mate!” works particularly well when you are completely out of your depth discussing the merits of heavy gauge fencing wire in preventing unwanted intrusions by wombats.
Armed with this knowledge, we spent a very pleasant day walking around in bright autumn sunshine sampling all the wares AgFest had to offer. We chatted to stall keepers, ate incredibly tender Angus steak sandwiches, watched in amazement the astonishing sheep herding instincts of Kelpies, bemoaned the lack of Belted Galloways and Highland cattle on display, and bought plenty of warm socks! Our main major item of interest was a log splitter that can connect to the hydraulic system on our tractor. We eventually ran the exhibit down and found that the firm is based pretty close to where we live, so after watching few logs being split (as one does) we wandered off realising that we probably had to do some research on the correct size of splitter for our particular hydraulic system before splashing out.
We left the paddock exhausted but content and already starting to plan next year’s visit …
Don’t mess with the pesky blinders
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