Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
My wife Julie asked me this morning if I wanted to go to the Canberra Show. “No thanks” I replied politely. Julie knew that would be me my answer. And I knew that she knew that would be my answer because she then said “that’s what I told my mother yesterday when she asked me if you would be going”. Then Julie asked me if I had ever been to the Royal Easter Show in Sydney, or ‘the big one’ as she called it. “Yes” I said. “Several times when I was a kid, and a couple of times later on”. “Wow” said Julie.
And then the memories started coming back to me. The flashbacks. The first was one of the earliest. The family arrived at the Show at night, in the dark – no daylight savings back then. My parents pointed to a mysterious tent, plain and with a single sign on it (which I was too young to read). “That’s where you go if you get lost, the Lost Children’s Tent” said my father. I was mortified. Forget the Haunted House. Forget the Ghost Train. If I got lost I would have to spend the rest of my life in The Lost Children’s Tent. I couldn’t see what was inside the tent, and I wanted to make sure I never did. I tightened my grip on my mother’s hand, and all attempts to interest me in going on a ride, through a maze, or anything that required me to break contact with a parent, were rejected.
Some years later, and after I had gotten over that trauma and developed a better understanding of how The Lost Children’s Tent actually operated, I was able to see the appeal of sideshow alley and the rides. And I was that age when I believed I was ‘grown up’ so I insisted that I was indeed ready to go on a ride called ‘the wild mouse’ – basically a single seat mini roller coaster with some seriously sharp turns. I.Thought.I.Was.Going.To.Die. I had been brought up as an atheist but I made a promise to God that day that if I survived this horror I would become religious. Hell, I’ll even go to church on Sundays. I am a man of my word but, even though I did survive I didn’t keep that promise – one of very few that I haven’t.
Don’t get me wrong, the Easter Show is not all horror and near death experiences. A very fond and very early memory for me is riding home from the Easter Show in the back of the family car – an FJ Holden panel van. My parents in the front, and me and my two brothers in the back (seat belts were just a concept then). I was only four but I can vividly remember the sharing of the spoils from the show bag pavilion. In those days show bags were sample bags from confectionery manufactures and the like – Cadbury, Rowntree, et cetera – so you got a lot very little cost. And all product – no discount coupons or plastic trinkets. As well as being brought up atheist, we were also brought up as communists, so the spoils were divided equally between the three of us. Karl Marx would be very proud. My dad was.
Perhaps I will accompany my wife to the show this year