The Full Ekka Experience

The Ekka, or the Royal Queensland Show, is held every year in the middle of August at the RNA Showgrounds in Brisbane. This tradition has been alive for 130 years, albeit with different official names. The reason it is called “The Ekka” is probably because the show is an exhibition, and Australians really like to shorten any word with more than two syllables in it!

The closest thing I have ever seen in America to this humongous, 10-day long show is the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, where we have a huge carnival with plenty of food, games, and rides, along with livestock exhibitions and competitions. The Ekka, visible from the Inner City Bypass freeway and as far away from Mt. Coot-tha, has parades, equestrian, carnival rides & games, traditional foods as well as “international” foods, and other, more oddball things like woodchopping (which we sadly missed). Unfortunately, it costs to get in, which seemed a bit steep, since it was the same price as a ticket to the rodeo, but without any rodeo competition/country performers.

I have to say, I was more than a little sad when James told me he had too much uni work to go. It wouldn’t be much fun to go by myself—it’s definitely an experience best shared—but I refused to take him away from his work. So, I asked my friend Michelle in jest if she would like to go, and I was floored when she agreed! Apparently, after six years living in Brisbane, she had never gone, and plus, she thought it would be a great way to stop people from saying, “You’ve lived in Brisbane HOW LONG and you HAVEN’T BEEN TO THE EKKA?!”

We decided to go on the first Sunday of the Ekka and got there around 9.30, 30 minutes after opening, so we could beat the crowds. The crowds are obviously at their largest in the afternoon/evenings of the weekends, but also on Wednesday, when everyone in Brisbane and many people in the South East Queensland area get a public holiday in the form of “People’s Day.” This was definitely a good time to go, since by the time the crowds were really pouring in through the gates, we were exhausted and ready to go home.

Quick Tips:

The most important tip I can give you is bring enough money! Both Michelle and I were hit hard in the wallet because we wanted to have the “Full Ekka Experience”, since it was unlikely that neither of us would be visiting it again anytime soon. We both ran out of money at about the same time and proceeded to hunt for an ATM. Once we finally found a covered tent with a huge Bendigo Bank sign, we realized that one of the two machines was not working, and ended up having to wait 45 minutes in line to use the other one. The line really didn’t seem long enough to warrant 45 minutes of waiting, but we realized once we got to the machine that it was the slowest ATM ever created. Plus, neither of us were Bendigo Bank customers, so we both ended up paying fees for the money we withdrew. Therefore, I would definitely advise withdrawing - more than you possibly think you would need for the day, just in case.

Also, as I have mentioned above, there are definitely peak times for the Ekka. While some people might enjoy being part of a huge, frenzied crowd, I much preferred the beginning of our Ekka experience, where we could simply walk up to a vendor and buy food immediately. We could have done the same with rides and games as well. Later, there were much longer wait times for everything except the most expensive rides, like the ride that catapults you toward the earth at 5Gs.

Best Way To Get Around:

The Ekka definitely has public transportation completely covered. There are two buses—the 500 that runs from the city centre and the 600 that runs from Windsor—that run very frequently to and from the RNA Showgrounds in Bowen Hills. However, if you aren’t already in the city or nearby suburbs, the train is probably your best bet.

There is actually a special train line that is used solely for the Ekka, called the “Exhibition” Line. I thought this was just a temporary line and station until James told me otherwise—there is actually a real station for the showgrounds. During the Ekka, trains leave Roma St every fifteen minutes and go in a loop around Roma St-Central-Brunswick St-Exhibition (the train does NOT go through Bowen Hills). Exhibition is in Zone 1 and there are no extra charges for this line, unlike the other special line, for the airport.

There are also special express trains that run along all lines. I’m not sure on the exact schedule, but on the Ipswich line it seemed that there was one every thirty minutes or so during peak Ekka attendance times. This train stopped every stop until Milton, and then skipped all the city stations and went straight to the Ekka.

I would definitely recommend public transport as opposed to parking at the site. I didn’t see much parking at all, and what little there was would be sold to you at a much higher premium than you would pay for the slightly longer and more crowded train ride. The only other option I can think of is what we did: Michelle’s husband dropped us off just outside the gates and then picked us up when we called. If you are doing this, just make sure you are ready to meet whoever is picking you up, because there is not much room for stopped cars on the side of the road here.

One of the most important aspects of the Ekka is the food you eat while you are there. Whilst overpriced, like all shows, it’s hard not to be tempted by some of the huge selection offered here—plus, it’s all part of the Ekka experience! It just wouldn’t be the same to take a packed lunch, even if it would be cheaper and slightly more filling!

One of the Ekka legends is the Strawberry Sundae. Essentially just a square of strawberry ice cream in a small cone with whipped cream and a strawberry on top, it’s a great $3 treat and something everyone has to try. I enjoyed it, although I didn’t see anything hugely different about it compared to other strawberry ice creams. The most difficult part about eating one was the strawberry on top—how do you eat around it so you can save the best for last?

Another food item you see everywhere around the Ekka is the Dagwood Dog. I was considering getting one, since I had never had a Dagwood Dog before, until I realized that it was just a corn dog. Both Michelle and later James were amazed by this revelation—apparently they had both heard of corn dogs in American movies but never had an idea as to what they were!

The place in the Ekka where we ended up eating the most was in the International Food Village. Here, there were (I think) around sixty different booths hawking food from around the world. The one that got my attention was the “Corn on the Cob and Lemonade” booth. Since when is corn on the cob an international food? I can understand lemonade, since if you asked for that in Australia (or, like my friend, on a flight to Australia), you’d get Sprite instead. Even though there were a lot more delectable choices on hand (churros for one), we opted for this “international” booth, mainly because I was craving lemonade, one of my favorite drinks that I had gone three months without, and Michelle wanted a taste of America while she was out with an American.

Michelle was very amused by what happened when we walked up to the booth. I simply started asking for what I wanted, and the guy behind the counter, who also had an American accent, cut in and asked “Oh, where are you from?” When I told him Texas, he started talking about how much he liked the southern accent. Michelle just thought it funny how excited he was to see another American!

The lemonade wasn’t the best I’d ever had, but it certainly hit the spot. The corn on the cob was roasted and buttery—the best way to have it!

As we enjoyed our international cuisine, we sat in the Village’s seating area, just in front of a little stage. This is where various performances had been going on during the day, including salsa and break dancing. Unfortunately, we didn’t get anything of the kind when we were watching—instead, we got the Granny Rapper. This 65-year-old lady was on the stage with her son rapping about the dilemmas of being a senior citizen. Needless to say, it was… interesting, and as soon as we finished our food we left.

Later, we went back to the Village to get a dessert, in the form of Dippin’ Dots. I was really surprised to see it, since it covers a relatively small area even in America. When we walked up and the people serving started explaining it, and I said that I had had it in America, they were absolutely fascinated. They wanted to know everything about Dippin’ Dots in America, and I didn’t have much I could tell them, other than the fact that they had a lot more flavors than I’ve ever seen before! As soon as we walked up and started talking, it seemed like a swarm descended on the booth, so we couldn’t talk for very long though.

Michelle got her favorite flavor, Cookies ‘n’ Cream, which was vanilla Dippin’ Dots with crumbled Oreo cookies, and I got a flavor I’d never tried before—Strawberry Cheesecake. It was definitely the best flavor I’ve ever had!

By this point, we were running out of money, so we didn’t get to taste any more of the flavors of the Ekka. We could have gone into the fresh food market or tasted any number of things throughout the International Pavilion, but I think we had a nice mix of both Aussie and American for the day!

When we first walked past the petting zoo, located in a large building near the International Food Village, we decided not to go in because of the large line. However, once we realized it was moving quite quickly, we jumped in line and were in the zoo within ten minutes. Really, who can resist small animals?

Like all petting zoos, they were selling food for the animals at a small cost. The kids were, as usual, going crazy over this, but we bypassed the counter, wanting only to see the baby animals, possibly take a few pictures, and then leave again.

Perhaps not buying food was not the best idea. None of the animals in the
zoo would pay attention to us at all. I attempted to take pictures with a ridiculous number of cows and goats, all to no avail. As soon as I would grab one and Michelle got in place with a camera, it would see a food-toting child and take off, often with my arms still around its neck. Even though I didn’t get a picture, the laughs were still worth it!

We saw plenty of the usual suspects; there were baby emus, piglets and goats that
elicited plenty of "aww"s. One of the goats was particularly adorable, since his fur was perfectly divided in half-the front half of his body was black & and the back half white. He was tiny too--so tiny that he couldn't reach over the top of the food trough so he instead jumped in!

My strongest memory of the petting zoo is that of the turkeys. These were real, American, plumped-up Thanksgiving dinner turkeys, and they were not very happy at all. One had escaped his wooden, fenced-in prison and was standing outside the cage of another, angrily gobbling at him. Every few seconds, one would attack, leading to a fury of pecking followed by a “licking” of wounds. The best part of the whole spectacle was not seeing both birds trying to defeather the other; rather, it was seeing the children and their parents’ reactions. The children would walk over and see the free turkey, flared feathers and all, and yell something along the lines of “Wow, Mum, look at that!” To this, the parents would invariably say, “Go pet the nice turkey!” Either they had been at the Ekka way too long and had just had enough of their children’s nagging to buy them everything, or they just really wanted to visit the hospital. One child was even petting the “nice turkey” when the other one attacked and started trying to yank out its gizzard!

Luckily, no children got hurt and an Ekka volunteer snuck in and placed the turkey back in his proper cage. However, this wasn’t before the turkeys made it one of the most interesting (and violent) visits to a petting zoo that I’d ever had!

There is certainly no lack of rides at the Ekka. They stretch for what seems like miles from the entrance, only broken up by the endless array of carnival games.

We didn't ride anything when we first arrived, although after seeing the crowds later, we realized this would have been the best time to go. However, we opted to explore the Showgrounds instead, and before long ended up at the complete opposite end of the show from the carnival. Luckily, there was a chairlift from the end of the International Food village straight back to the rides. Partly out of laziness, partly out of wanting to see the Ekka from the sky, and partly because Michelle wanted to conquer her fear of heights, we jumped on.

Getting a bird’s eye view of the Ekka cost us $5, and the ride lasted a few minutes—much longer than most of the rides there! The view at the beginning wasn’t particularly great—just a bunch of tents and the Granny Rapper, still going on about the terrors of being 65. However, once we went over the train station (which goes straight through the Showgrounds), the view got a lot better. On the right, we could see all the way to the woodchopping pavilion (although sadly, we couldn’t actually see the woodchopping) and in front of that, the main stadium where equestrian events were taking place. To our left was the Ekka carnival, with all the rides packed and going full tilt. We came very close to the $15 ride (the most expensive besides the Bungy Bullet); this was the one that sends you flying towards the ground at 5Gs! It was funny to see people fly past us screaming, but at the same time, I was really hoping no one would get sick!

Once we got back on the ground and celebrated Michelle being fairly calm for the entire ride, we started wandering, trying to find the one perfect ride to spend the remainder of our money on. Unfortunately, we didn’t find one, but we did see two rather amusing things in the process. The first had to do with the $15 ride. This ride wasn’t exactly booming, since not many people wanted to spend $15 for a short, nausea-inducing ride. It held four riders on each end, and at one point, only two riders got on and wanted to ride side-by-side. This meant that one of the workers had to jump on to balance it out, and the guy that got chosen to do so hopped on—with his mobile phone! He proceeded to text message throughout the entire ride, whilst spinning and hurtling towards the ground! It was amazing to see, since everyone else was screaming their lungs out and he was just calmly tapping away. The second rather amusing thing happened when we turned away from looking at that ride and began walking down one of the show alleys, only to see someone vomit on one of the rides closeby. It was a fast, spinning ride, which only contributed to its becoming a liquid projectile. I’d hate to be the unsuspecting Ekka-goer that it landed on!

Rather than going on a ride, we decided to play a game—we told ourselves that at least we might get a prize out of it! We wandered around, looking for a fun-looking game with good prizes, but we just ended up playing the one with the best marketing. It was the game where you have to toss a ball into a tilted bucket, but if it bounces out, you lose. The man working there told us that he’d give us a special deal—rather than each of us getting two out of four balls in to get a small prize, three balls for a medium prize, and four balls for a massive Simba toy, he’d let us combine our scores. So, we only had to get 2 out of 8 balls in for a small prize instead. This sounded pretty good, and Michelle got her practice shot in, so we paid our ridiculous $10 each and had a go.

I went first, and managed to get two balls out of my four in, only to watch them bounce right back out again. Then, it was Michelle’s turn; she pulled through, getting two out of her four in. I should have just paid and let her go twice! We got a little stuffed polar bear (which happens to be the mascot for my favorite Australian drink, Bundaberg Rum), which Michelle let me have, even though I didn’t do much to help her win it!

After this, we left the rides area for the Showbag Pavilion. James was incredulous when I later told him that we hadn’t been on a ride at the Ekka, but we had a blast without them. Who needs being sick after going on a dizzying ride when you can go win Bundy Bears or buy giant fluffy hats instead?

When the Courier-Mail came out the weekend before the beginning of the Ekka, I was confused. What were these "show bags" that everyone was poring over, and why were they such a big deal?

I soon learned that Showbags are one of the reasons to go to the Ekka. Ranging from $2 to $60, these bags are put together by many of the most popular companies in Australia. This includes what seems to be every candy and toy company known to man, along with all the major alcohol breweries (for the parents). The most famous of all these bags is the $2 Bertie Beetle bag. This contains three or four Bertie Beetles (Nestle chocolate that is kind of like an American Krackel bar) along with lollipops and little useless do-dads, like "Genius at work" door hangers; the bag doesn't seem terribly special until you realize BBs aren't available anywhere else!

Showbags are best bought at the end of your Ekka visit so you don't have to worry about where to put them when doing other activities, like rides. However, we couldn't wait this long after seeing all the cool things people had acquired in the Showbag Pavilion.

The Pavilion was massive and absolutely swarming with people. Toys and candy logos jumped out at us from every booth, and people often ran into us with their arms full of stuffed bags. Fortunately, the layout is designed so that the cheapest bags are in front, so we didn't even bother tempting ourselves with more expensive gear from places like Bundaberg Rum; we were happy with anything $10 and under.

We quickly found what we entered the Pavilion in search of--big fuzzy hats. We had seen lots of people wearing these and knew our Ekka experience would not be complete until we had them ourselves. We had a choice between red, blue, pink, and purple at a reasonable price of $7 apiece. I got blue and Michelle got red, and we proudly sported them for the rest of the day.

Along with Bertie Beetles, of which I was required to buy at least 3 bags (I ended up getting 4 because they had a buy-three-get-one-free deal), I decided on a "Wonderful World of Wonka" bag. It had all of my favorite candies and was perfect for me - so much so that later, James actually guessed the exact bag that I bought. It had 2 packs of Gobstoppers, 2 packs of Nerds, a Nerds Rope, Oompas, and other assorted Wonka goodies, all for $10 ($15 if you wanted a funky purple fuzzy hat with it). I also bought James a $6 Freddo (Cadbury chocolate) bag, complete with plastic mug. I was later told that it was impressive to make it out of the Pavilion with only two big bags and a hat!

Michelle was absolutely in heaven once she found the showbags for all things sour. The Ultimate Sour Warheads Bag, sour sherbet, she had it all. It was amazing how many sour things she found!

We left the pavilion completely satisfied with our finds, which was good, since we had plenty of time to enjoy them when waiting in line for an ATM for 45 minutes! Even better than that was getting home and emptying the contents of the bags onto the floor like little kids (all the while, wearing our giant fuzzy hats)!

For some reason, the SE Queensland Ekka public holiday ("People's Day) is on a Wednesday. Many families use this day for going to the Ekka, but it is rare that you will see young adults there. This is because the Doomben racecourses host "Young Peoples Day", which is essentially just a good excuse for uni students and young professionals to get both dressed up and drunk.

I had only had a couple drinks when we hopped on the train, which is possibly why I didn't find the trip nearly as enjoyable as many of the people there. The ride into the city was painstakingly slow. We first had to wait in line for thirty minutes solely to get tickets, since the electronic ticket machines were broken; then we had to wait another fifteen minutes for the train because they were running on a Sunday/public holiday/many many fewer trains timetable. When we got off that train, packed with both race- and Ekka-goers, we realized we had missed the Doomben train by a minute, meaning we had twenty-nine more to wait in Central station. We all wondered whose stupid idea it was to run less trains on the public holiday designed to get people out to local events.

When we finally got off at Ascot station, the course looked like the last thing it needed was another drunken mob of students. There was a huge line outside, which included people we knew that arrived an hour before us. Luckily, we avoided waiting in this line for too long because the waiting throngs became so huge that they stopped charging admission. Apparently, so many people were trying to get through the gates that it was becoming dangerous to stop and hand your money over for a ticket, since you could get crushed.

Since we had member’s stand tickets ($17.50 but very worth it), we navigated towards the eastern end of the stands when we finally made it inside. Unfortunately, this was when I turned around to look where James’ friend was and turned back to find that James had completely disappeared. Not knowing where to turn, I waited and eventually went with his friend to find his other friends. I didn’t want to abandon James, but since it was impossible to call anyone (the network was jammed and no one could get through), it took me an hour to get in touch with James and find a place to meet. I wasn’t happy at all at having to stand on tables in an attempt to find him, but we finally found each other.

It was then that James actually tried to get into the member’s stand for the first time. As I mentioned before, everyone was dressed up—women in dresses and guys in suits. James had worn a tie the previous year, but this year had decided that it was only a pain and there was no point. Unfortunately, the member’s stand security did not agree, and pointed to the dress code sign, which said strictly no men without a tie. Not wanting to waste his ticket, we tried to search for other ways in, and were eventually directed to a “gift shop”, which had one tie left for the ridiculous price of $20. It was a wonderful sunflower print that fell apart shortly after getting into the stands.

Even with all the effort it took to actually get into the members stand, it was very worth it. We could see the packed crowd, barely moving at all, and his friends later said that it took upwards of thirty minutes to get a beer and even more for a woman to go to the bathroom. Our lines were five minutes at most for alcohol and I had three girls waiting in front of me for the toilet! It was definitely a good investment.

I had a lot more fun from then on. We even got to see the last of eight horse races, which James decided to bet on. Before doing so, he came over to me and asked which horse he should pick, Step Right In or Scattergun. Both had fairly high odds, but I told him to go with Step Right In…so of course, he chose Scattergun. I decided this was a good time to start making fun of his horse—why not, when he wouldn’t listen to me?—to which he told me that I can’t make fun of anyone until I had a bet as well. So, I quickly put down a $10 bet on Step Right In and watched the race.

A horse named My Son Day got first, but more importantly, Step Right In got third! This meant that I got $11 (wahoo, a $1 return!) while James lost all of his, since we didn’t even see Scattergun come in. It served him right for asking me for advice and then not listening to it!

In the end, I enjoyed my day at the races, even though I didn’t consume very much alcohol at all. The only problem was getting there—it’s definitely a good idea to leave early, so you can see more than 1 of the races!