When I first arrived in Perth, WA in 2004 and had reason to visit the Claremont Showgrounds, I was amazed at the size of this small enclave of buildings. It seemed like a well kept ghost village. There was a ferris wheel and a chairlift that goes all around the huge perimeter of the showgrounds, mostly unused for 90% of the year, I thought what a colossal waste. Sitting on 32 acres of prime land and home to The Royal Show for a week in October. Since then I believe it has opened up much more to concerts, events and markets. Also it is now home to the Covid Vaccination Clinic.

On the last day of The Royal Show the whole family visited. For me it was only the second time I had been to a show and for Lachie and Rosie their very first.

It wasn’t as busy and crowded as I thought it would be, although there were still small queues for the mini rides for Lachie. It was quite funny really, five adults all standing around waiting for Lachie to hop on a ride and shout and cheer him on while he passed slowly by. After lining up for one ride and getting to the front, he declined to board a truck wanting to wait for the black truck to become vacant, it was worth the wait just to see his face.

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I ended up buying far too many tokens thinking Lachie would want to go on all the rides but he was more interested in the animals.

At first I thought most of the owls on display were stuffed! They never moved a muscle or blinked an eye.

A wonderful array of animals

With so many animals to see it was hard to choose a favourite. There was baby chick holding, kitten cuddling, pig patting and goat stroking. The queues for the kittens and baby chicks were far too long for a three year old to wait his turn so we had to miss those out.

We walked down side show alley and purchased a show bag for Lachie, Laurence tried his hand at shooting hoops and managed to win a prize for Lachie on the rifle range, what a great shot.

After a few hours of walking around we were all in need of a stiff drink and food. We found a bench outside and enjoyed cocktails, wine, beer and a few tacos. Rosie was getting fractious by now and it was time to leave. The noise levels were well beyond my capacity by now and I needed to get back also for a lie down. But it was a great day out, to be repeated again in another ten years – maybe!