Small town spirit

In its 60th year, the Alpha Show is celebrating the spirit of a town that won't give up - one cake, one pony, one dodgem ride at a time.

- WORDS PHOTOGRAPHY by JESSICA HOWARD

A line is forming outside the Oliver Gallagher Pavilion at the Alpha Showgrounds in Central Western Queensland. Entries close at 11am, and there's no time to waste. A woman hands over a sculpture made from the sliced top of a watermelon. “It’s a turtle,” she offers, helpfully. Behind her, someone carries a Lego bulldozer; another cradles a bunch of flowers stuffed into a cowboy boot.

“It’s organised chaos,” laughs Catharine Bowyer, juggling an armful of crocheted blankets. It’s her first year as chief steward of the pavilion, and she’s been preparing for this moment for months.

Alpha is home to around 500 people on the edge of the outback, ringed by cattle stations and dirt roads that disappear into the horizon. Once a bustling railway and timber town, its fortunes faded as industries shut down and young people left in search of work. But the district has found ways to hold on, and the show is one of them.

“It’s a beautiful display of what our community is about,” says Juliet McConochie, who juggles the twin titles of secretary and treasurer of the show society, and seems to be everywhere at once: one moment in the office fielding calls, the next behind the bar.

“We don’t have as many opportunities as our city-based friends and if we don’t get involved in events, they just won’t exist,” she says. Her daughters spend most of the year learning remotely, but come show time, they throw themselves into everything – with entries in every pavilion class from arts and crafts to cooking and photography. They also pop up in the poultry shed, and in nearly every horse event too.