On Saturday afternoon Bec and I took ourselves off to enjoy the family fun on offer at the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Community Fair.

After struggling to understand the complex height requirement for The Sizzler (and why Betty Boop was involved), we decided to play some sideshow games. We had seen a small child with a plush banana toy, complete with seedy grin and sunglasses, so we went off in pursuit of a couple to call our own.

We found a darts game with the coveted banana toy prizes so I tried my hand at hitting the balloons with a bunch of darts. Behind each balloon was a number, to get the banana I had to get something like 30 points.

My low scoring performance was not at all helped by questionable advice from the carnies, or by my serious game face:

In the end all I won was a stupid lei. At least the carnies let me have my photo taken with one of the bananas.

After that Bec spotted another game with the bananas. Throwing aside all regard for occupational or public health and safety, this game involved throwing a hard ball at a bunch of glass beer bottles. After bartering the glass game carnie down to $6 for three balls each Bec started us off.

Throw that ball Bec.

Again it was much harder than it looked.

Thankfully the carnie took pity on us, giving us extra turns and eventually feeling so bad for our dismal throwing skills that he gave us a banana each anyway!

SUCCESS! Bec celebrated with some shooting, which she was alarmingly skilled at…

After all the excitement of the sideshow games we went off to look at some more traditional show displays, like the prize winning preserves:

And poultry:

We then picked a ride to go on. At $10 a ticket we wanted to make sure we got a good one. We decided the SuperBowl ride was the perfect measure of both scary fun and structural integrity.

Plus you get to sit in a giant American football helmet!

Bec and I cackled like witches for most of the ride, it was hilariously fun spinning around and being thrown about. Then she went a bit quiet towards the end and I was worried breakfast might be repeated…

But Bec was fine, so we celebrated with a couple of deep fried hot dogs on sticks, get a load of how excited I am:

They were disgustingly delicious. I wish I had one right now.

After that we picked up our Bertie Beetle showbags, an Aussie classic. Bec told me we had to get them right at the very end so we didn’t end up carrying them around all afternoon. This brought back scarring memories of missing out on the Groovy Inflatables show bag at the Royal Melbourne Show circa 1999 by following the same logic.

Luckily that didn’t happen again.

Relieved I said hello to a couple of alpacas on the way out.

A very fun afternoon that brought back lots of childhood memories, not all of which were traumatic and involved missing out on the best show bag .