Then we went through the big hall filled with chooks and big clear vats filled with trout and eels and things.
And there were dogs and there were dainty little lambs.
We had not gone to the country... the country had come to us.
For we were in the great showgrounds just down the road from downtown Hastings yet when we spread the rug out for the picnic we might as well have been deep in the heartlands.
For there were great horse trailers scattered about and more farmers with tweed jackets and hats wandering about talking about the weather and stuff like that.
The show was exciting, and like anything on a large scale which draws lots and lots of people when you are small everything just seems to be so much bigger.
We even quite enjoyed seeing the big harvesters and tractors and disc harrow ploughing things up close, because once again, when you're little everything is awesomely big.
They fired one great brute of a machine (of some sort) up at one stage and we stood there gaping in wonder as the diesel smoke erupted from the great exhaust chimney and the ground fair shook with the soundwaves.
"All they need is a gun," dad would have said as he thought back to the tanks he steered through Italy in early 1945.
The one socially important thing about the show was it's ability to teach one the virtues of patience, because standing in a queue, or in a slow-moving throng of humanity passing through the exhibition halls, was all part of the... show.
Especially when it came to stepping aboard the great ferris wheel, which one of the kids at school was adamant it was really called a "fear us wheel".
I suspect he also thought the head-turning line-up of happy clowns were real... and accordingly ruined one after feeding it a gooey clump of candy floss.
Of course the sideshows were what made the show very special, for little kids... and not so little ones for that matter.
I do recall one year when the spring winds emerged with real venom and they had to close the ferris wheel down.
We'd been on it earlier and while stationary, and at the top while those in the carriage at the bottom were assisted out, the whole thing seemed to be moving ever so slightly sideways and back again.
That kind of made it just a little more exciting and there was no extra charge.
Everyone went to the show, and in those early days as we did not have a car our uncle and aunty would pick us all up and take us there.
And on the way home, after a day in the heat and often gusting winds, and well fuelled with aunty's fruit cake and a hot dog on a stick and a wad of candy floss, we would verge close to nodding off.
And of course once we got home we would spread out all the brochures from Massey Ferguson and Ford and other outfits which used the show to highlight and potentially see their wares.
And hey, if they were giving stuff away, you simply took everything going.
Ahh it is a grand and historic tradition, the show.
And it has morphed into a more widescale collection of trades, exhibits and entertainment which blends the town and country nicely.
It was always a great favourite... more so given it coincided with Labour Day so we all got four days off from school.
I wonder... do they still have a ghost train?
