Vaccines cause Show shuffle

COVID-19 vaccination and marshal plans taking place at the Claremont Showground will disrupt competitions and venues for the Perth Royal Show this year, but show organisers are hopeful the show will go on from September 25-October 2.

Royal Agricultural Society of WA competitions and education manager Natalie Raynor said the WA Department of Health would use two venues — the Tom Wilding pavilion and the Lou Giglia Dairy pavilion — for its vaccine rollout during the Show, which normally attracts about 400,000 people across the eight-day event.

WA Premier Mark McGowan announced on July 22 walk-in COVID-19 jabs would be offered to Perth Royal Show punters — part of multiple vaccine rollout changes being made as thousands of new Pfizer doses arrive in WA.

Ms Raynor said the alpacas, pigs and dairy goats usually on display at the Tom Wilding pavilion would be re-located, with alpacas and dairy goats to be displayed at the Jim Horwood pavilion, while pigs would be in the Silver Jubilee pavilion, where the animal nursery is set to be re-located.

The Lou Giglia Dairy pavilion will sit outside the footprint of the Show this year and will be closed to the general public.

“We are creating an outside farm area to re-locate our milking station, and we did offer the dairy industry the opportunity to put up some marquees at that site to have their stallholders there, but they decided to turn down that offer because they didn’t want to be outdoors,” Ms Raynor said.

WAFarmers dairy council president Ian Noakes said he was disappointed dairy products would not be promoted to the general public this year.

“The dairy pavilion is an excellent venue to connect with the public and offer our dairy promotional products,” he said.

Ms Raynor said there would be no prime lamb competition at the Jim Horwood pavilion because of difficulty securing an abattoir to process the sheep, but the beef cattle on-the-hoof and on-the-hook competitions would continue as normal.

She said sheep competition entries (Merino, British and Australasian breeds) would be closed off on August 22.

“The sheep dog competition will take place at the main arena for all eight days,” she said. “Pigeons and poultry will be re-located to the old animal nursery. The animal nursery will be relocated to the Silver Jubilee, as one of the biggest attractions of the Show.”

Ms Raynor said horse showjumping and horses in action would continue at the main arena.