Now the warm weather has arrived it has brought with it the start of the country show season. It seems the smaller the town, the more peculiar the focus of the show, so Saturday saw us at the Karuah Wood and Oyster Show! A bizarre mix, I'm sure you will agree, but all the more fascinating for it. Karuah is a small town about forty minutes from us which the old Pacific Highway used to pass through causing a huge bottleneck but bringing plenty of business to the shops and cafes of Karuah. Ten years ago, the new Pacific Highway was built which bypasses the town and, although it is undoubtedly more pleasant to live there, the closed down shops and cafes tell the story of how this little town's economy must have suffered. So the show is pretty important to them each year.
The two main events were the woodchopping competition, which went on all day, and the oyster eating contest. The oyster company running the eating competition have been doing it for years but have not yet realised there is a major flaw in the organisation of the contest. They have a big stall selling oysters at $9 for half a dozen but the competition that runs alongside is against the clock, not a bunch of people racing at the same time. So, if you were unscrupulous you could just pay your $1 entry fee to the contest, you would get a plate of 12 oysters and as long as you ate them a bit sharpish, the organisers wouldn't notice you were just in it for a cheap feast.
Back to the woodchopping. We saw this at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney but because this was a much smaller affair, we could see the contestants getting ready. There was much polishing of axes but then they put on chain mail socks! I must admit I had wondered why there were not more accidents as the competitors stand on the log and chop between their two feet and the winner is the one who's log falls in half first.
The wood chopping fraternity take it all very seriously and it is quite alarming to see how young some of the axemen are, in fact there was a junior competition and some of the boys looked as young as 12. However they all seem to know each other and have fun, I have included a picture of wood chopping humour on one chap's t-shirt.
There was another type of wood chopping going on too with the Tae Kwan Do display. I find martial arts demonstrations terribly dull but this one was livened up considerably by one very fat exponent splitting his trousers.
Of course there was a stall selling that Australian staple, Showbags. Bags of varying prices pre packed with rubbish plastic toys and sweets which are a major feature of every show or festival and even some markets.
Back to the hard slog on the garden now, which is starting to look a bit like the beginnings of a garden at last. The drainage is now in place on the final two terraces and I have even managed to get some veggies planted.

The wildlife is waking up and getting more exciting, we hear koalas grunting at night and this possum turned up on our balcony a couple of evenings ago driving Monty crazy.
We have promised ourselves a day exploring each week and tomorrow we plan to go to Forster, I am quite excited because I have heard a lot about how beautiful it is there.