IF you’re into gardening, don’t miss your chance to chat with Gardening Australia’s Costa Georgiadis at the Hawkesbury Show tomorrow (Saturday, April 21).
Costa will be taking time out from his busy TV filming schedule to attend the show, and punters will be able to catch him for a chat, a picture, and some gardening advice.
He’ll be at the Poultry Pavilion from 9.30-10.15am, the Agricultural Area/Vegetable Display from 10.30-11.15am, and the Crafts Pavilion from 11.30am-12.15pm. He’ll also be opening the show at 1pm in the Main Arena.
“People can come up, ask questions and have a photo. Tell the kids to come up and say hello and have a chat. I might even do Costa the Garden Gnome in the chicken pavilion!” he told the Gazette.
Costa is a huge fan of agricultural shows like the Hawkesbury Show, and recently arrived back from Toowoomba where he was a special guest at their annual show.
He said rural shows promote important connections for community, not only to our food and where it comes from, but to the skills.
“These granny and grandpa skills and activities were predominantly taken for granted but formed a weld between families and the people around them,” he said.
“When you have a family member who’s into chickens they build chicken lineage, and wonderful heritage of growing and understanding nature. Another uncle might be presenting a talk about bees.
“It’s easy to stand around today saying we’re building suburbs with no community and everyone’s behind high walls and alarm systems and fences, but we should knock all that out of the way by doing practical and fun things together. That’s what the show is about.”
He said it was important to get younger generations involved with the show, learning all they can from the “wonderful flag bearers before we lose them”.
“There are stewards in their seventies and eighties who have been doing it passionately for fifty or sixty years and we don’t want to lose all that information and all that valuable connectivity,” he said.
“The best part about the shows is that it breeds the value of volunteering and that we can’t get everything we want out of having more money. It comes down to that real precipice between value and values. Volunteering develops values - it’s the most valuable thing we can do. It’s humbling and it shares knowledge that you can’t necessarily get out of books and - most of all - the internet.
“We’re constantly searching for something and sometimes it’s right under our noses. If we just shift our perspective a little, just turn up and support the show, to keep it going. Right here in Sydney’s backyard we have one of the biggest and longest-running shows in the country.”
Costa said he was looking forward to meeting the stewards at the Hawkesbury Show, and said his most memorable time at the recent Toowoomba Show was meeting an 80-year-old steward named Charlie who won 45 prizes in the homegrown display.
“There’s so much community value in what these shows represent. So come along and get some of this history by osmosis. I just love meeting these champions who are sitting on their chair in the chicken hall [for example],” he said.