The Washington Post gave us the Watergate investigation that helped bring down US President Richard Nixon.
Four Corners on ABC-TV gave us The Moonlight State, which exposed corruption at the highest levels of Queensland politics and policing.
And as a cadet reporter for The Examiner, I exposed something fishy in the wine competition at a tiny show in northern Tasmania in the late 1970s.
I was reminded of this when I turned 68 recently.
I grew up adoring the Launceston Show in the 1960s.
Not only did it occupy the highest platform in my personal hierarchy of cultural integrity, but one year it even fell on my birthday.
This came with a public holiday.
It was very nice of all those people to come to my party in sideshow alley.
Of course, the show was an agricultural event where farmers paraded their prized animals. But I have to confess I found the accompanying smell a bit hard to take.
The nearest I got to livestock was visiting the cat pavilion.
I nearly made it to the dog pavilion one year, but I got waylaid by eating a Dagwood Dog en route and decided I’d never be able to look a scrumptious puppy in the eye again.
So I left the pens to the adults.
They also had the huge chocolate wheel, where you could win all manner of tacky prizes.
When I was very young and had to hold Mum or Dad’s hand lest I be lost in the crowds, I was forced to stand there for what seemed like hours.
The wheel was mounted on the tray of a truck, if my memory serves me correctly.
Every time the man on this stage spun the wheel, he’d cry, “Round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows.”
Again and again and again.
My pain would stop only if Mum took me to the homecraft pavilion or, much better, Dad took me to watch the woodchopping.
Fortunately, the day came when I was considered old enough to roam freely around Elphin Showgrounds.
My spending money was supposed to last all day but, in reality, was spent in 30 minutes.
The big problem was that I wanted to buy the best showbags before they sold out.
It was a very competitive market.
The Examiner showcased every showbag in advance, with prices and contents, so it was up to every kid to do their homework.
I reached PhD standards in research.
The best bag I ever bought contained a little green plastic commando attached to a parachute.
I can’t tell you how many times I watched him flutter down from a roof or treetop before giving any thought to how I was going to get down myself.
Even today, I’m not surprised when I see cyclists in the Tour de France angrily throw away the feed bag they’ve grabbed from a roadside soigneur.
It’s got nothing to do with whether it contains their favourite protein bar or drink.
I can see their disappointment when they peer into the bag and discover they haven’t got a little green commando attached to a parachute.
Alas, every boy has to grow up.
By 19 or 20, I found myself back at the show as a trainee journalist.
The Examiner always sent a large team of reporters to the Launceston Show.
The senior reporters got to write the major stories, the colour pieces and the newsy topics.
Being at the bottom of the food chain, I mainly typed up results for the smelly cattle and the even smellier pigs.
Homecrafts was a breath of fresh air.
Even though the results I had to type on a Remington were just as tedious.
- STRAWBERRY JAM WITH PIPS: Mrs L. Brown 1, Mrs P. Smith 2, Mrs K. Green 3.
- STRAWBERRY JAM WITHOUT PIPS: Mrs K. Green 1, Miss D. Brown 2, Mrs N. Smith 3.
Etc, etc, etc.
The good news was that the show ended.
The bad news was that the show infrastructure moved to the next town the following week, and another town the week after that. And so on, for weeks and weeks.
The newspaper didn’t deploy the same large team of journalists to these smaller shows.
Two or three reporters sufficed.
And still I was the junior.
I was assigned the occasional basic story, such as interviewing Miss Showgirl or the Champion Sow of Show, while trying not to get them mixed up.
But typing up tedious results remained my main task.
Until I went solo at the tiniest shows that warranted just one reporter.
I still had a mountain of results to type up.
But the stories were all mine. I was my own boss.
My Woodward and Bernstein moment came while I was typing up the results of the wine competition.
There were only two competitors across a bunch of categories, with one scooping up most of the ribbons.
But I did a double-take when I saw the name of the judge.
It was the same as that of the winning competitor.
Boldly, I sought him out and put questions to him.
He admitted he was the same person, adding that he thought his wines were mostly better.
ABSURDITY FOOTNOTE: Launceston still gets a gazetted public holiday for the Launceston Show, even though the show hasn’t been held since 2023. So much for my plans for another birthday party in sideshow alley.
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