Yesterday we had worked for 14 days in a row, needless to say that we have been extremely tired most of the time, especially since we also work almost ten hours a day. Fruit picking is a tough and demanding job but we sure enjoy it. Where else do you have your office outdoors in the sunshine and rain?
After work we went straight to the hostel to shower and then we drove a few minutes to Warren District Agricultural Show here in Manjimup. It is quite a big festival down here in the South West. They had a horse riding competition, a cute carnival, live music, motocross shows and one big exhibit hall.
This is a yearly event and it keeps quite a few people occupied, because they work hard in order to prepare something good and out of the ordinary for the exhibit hall. What you can show is your locally grown fruits, vegetables, plants and flowers. You can also show your skills at cooking, painting, sewing, photographing. All of the above are also judged which encourage people to get better and better at what they are doing.
Our friend Shirley at the local video store told me about this show a couple of weeks ago and encouraged me to enter a selection of my photographs. The night before the photos had to be delivered, me and my lovely Jenny were sitting up late working on them. I had gotten them printed the day before but we had to fix some sort of frame around all of them, which ended up being very amusing. I’ll upload pictures of me on Facebook, sitting on the cement floor with a piece of wood and a sharp knife, trying to get the correct size for the frames.
When we came to the exhibit hall I was a bit nervous but we stayed occupied looking at all these beautiful pictures. Imagine the surprised look on my face when I found out that two of my photographs had received second prize in Landscape / Seascape and Monochrome – my two favourite classes!
I’m feeling so proud. Not only because of the prizes but also because I saw people point on my photos to both discuss and compliment them.
Later on when I collected them, the lady working told me about the Monochrome class. There were only two judges and they loved one picture each. They came absolutely nowhere in their discussions so in the end they decided to just flip a coin. Just thought I would let you know about what’s been going on. Now however, it is definitely time to sleep.
Have fun and stay happy!
The picture above is also a tribute to Nellie. Look at the license plate. She loves to scare people, especially me and Jenny. Walks up to us, hides her face behind her hands and pulls them quickly away screaming “boooh”. Another funny thing with the picture is the beautiful awesome Swedish Volvo.