After winning the 2017 district exhibits competition for the first time since entering in 1905, The South East Queensland have now gone back to back.
The Queensland court scraped in with a narrow margin of just 0.25 points points ahead of the Northern district. Queensland had a total of 10,700.14, Northern 10.699.90, and in third was Southern on 10,686.35.
Arthur johns, from Richmond Hill, who is from the Northern district court, said this second win by South East Queensland will certainly help stoke the friendly rivalry.
“Col Dabbelsteine (from the South East Queensland court) and I are the greatest of mates and I always say ‘as long as one of us can win it and take it north, I’m happy’,” Mr Johns said.
The South East Queensland court encapsulated Australian produce on the global markets with a racing theme where the first horse past the winner’s post, Australia, was the one to back.
A centre piece for the court was a lathe made wooden cup about metre tall, which Mr Dabbelsteine said was made at Blackbutt in Queensland.
Mr Dabbelsteine said a key criteria of the competition was to have a good representation of the product the court had entered to be judged (ie. the various produce from across the region) on the display.
Some features in the Queensland exhibit were bunya nuts, eggs, cucurbits, cotton and chaff.
The horses in the display were made almost entirely (all except the jockey’s silks) of grains and oilseeds, including canola, millet, safflower, lentils, oats, wheat and mungbean.
He said the flowers around the edge of the race track were made of cotton lint and the hedge, sorghum heads.
Mr Dabbelsteine said key to their design was making sure the court had no dead space across the deck.
Northern’s theme was “Australia’s future energy” with wind and solar key features in the design, while Southern’s theme was “coming home from the war”.
Mr Johns said the Northern region had a tough season, especially through summer and into autumn, the hot, dry weather ruining a lot of the cucurbits, such as pumpkins and melons, as well as its soft grasses.
Mr Johns said he barely got any grain out of the Croppa Creek, North Star, Bellata area where the Northern district usually gets its entries.
A lot of South East Queensland had similar seasonal issues.
However, it got over the line with high point scores for foods (667.56 points), grain (2393.09), stock fodder (1180.58), and its effective display (1456.50).
