Come one come all!

Pumpkins big and small are on show at the

2008 Pumpkin Festival

  held in the small rural village
of Collector in southern
 New South Wales:


  There's so much to see and enjoy at the
festival including Clydesdale noses
to pat and young lambs to cuddle:


  There was a scarecrow competition:

For lunch there was pumpkin soup to nourish the heart:

While the Polka Pigs nourished the soul:

In Australia's Wild Colonial Days outlaw bushrangers
(made famous in poignant bush balads and poetry)
had a dark side that is remembered in Collector's
spacious cemetery that is located next to the old
Police Lockup seen at the end of this clip:



Organic produce was on offer at
Collector's Pumpkin Festival:



But an early-model Holden
and a display of much-loved
older cars were not for sale:


And neither was this two-horsepower
New Record mechanical drawsaw
for sale that settlers in 1920
used to fell and clear trees
to create new farms:



Inside the old church was a
display of pumpkin quilts
and this one took
First Prize:



We couldn't leave the festival without
taking a tiny peek at a display
of rural books for sale:

There were books for boys of all ages:

And books for married couples:

Which book did Graham buy?



Whether in the country or the big city,
most Aussie sheds start their long,
cluttered and theraputic lives
as a very simple affair:



  As the years go by some blokes
need a shed to think in:



Others need a shed to drink in:



Younger blokes need shed to practice in
(preferably with good sound-proofing):



Older blokes need a shed to make or repair
things in - this shed has an electric
welder and its own switchboard:



But above all, blokes need a shed for the
transmission (from one generation to
the next) of what Aboriginal folk
call Secret Men's Business:



"One generation goeth, and another generation
cometh; but the shed abideth for ever."

Except in retirement villages
and other places of shedless
desolation and futility.

---