Showtime set to shine, and you can be involved

BALLARAT Agricultural and Pastoral Society Executive Officer Lucy Quartermain has called for entries for the upcoming Ballarat Show.

The appeal follows last week’s launch of the event’s schedule, which includes all the categories and classes that people can enter, as well as snippets of information that’ll be showcased at this year’s show.

“The program has been uploaded to our web page and also to our Facebook site,” she said.

“So it’s ready and people can download the full schedule and the nominate system to enter, as well.

“People can also pick up copies from our office or we can email it out to them. There will also be copies dropped off throughout town.”

Ms Quartermain also said that some modifications were made to this year’s program.

“We have a massive dairy goat sponsorship that has come in for this year, so that will be massive for them.

“We have the young framer state challenge again and we also have the Australian title for the wood chopping,” she said.

The new showgrounds site at Mt Rowan will not be completed in time for this year’s event so all the horse competitions will be located at the Ballarat Polocrosse grounds.

“We are about two years off at the Mt Rowan site, at least,” Ms Quartermain said.

The site has technically still not been purchased, as the sale is conditional on receiving a permit, which the Society is still waiting on Executives are hopeful this will be completed by early 2019.

“As of this year everything is ready to go for the show here at the main site and at the polocrosse grounds,” Ms Quartermain said.

“It is being held on the 9th, 10th and 11th of November – the 9th being the family fun day and Ballarat’s public holiday.”

“This year will include the monster trucks across Friday and Saturday, Kryal Castle will be holding a jousting display on Friday, but I think our big thing is we are going to be giving back to the community and we will be running a drought angels sponsorship board – buy a star to get your name on the board and all that money will be going to help drought affected communities.”

Ballarat Agricultural and Pastoral Society President Geoff Fisken said that this year’s show would be focussed on bring the farm back to the show.

“We want to see people get a lot of free stuff,” he said.

“There is the stuff they buy and rides but we want to be able to showcase farm produce and get back to basics.”