Royal Melbourne Show

Dan's not only modeling, but also styling all the models' hair

A few of the "real" professional models

Dan starts his strut down the runway

A snapshot of rides at the show

This is what prize winning cows look like. Huh?!


What style! Her ear is covering her blue eye shadow - a real looker!

Each year, the Royal Melbourne Show takes place at the horse racing fair grounds over an 11 day span. It's a county fair type event with rides, livestock, dog shows, fashion shows, vendor booths, fair food (cotton candy = fairy floss), and infamous showbags (described later).

As a finalist in the model competition, Dan walks the runway for the fashion show held at 1PM, 2PM, 3PM and 4PM daily. The 10 finalists follow about 20 professional models that cycle through several wardrobe changes. I accompanied Dan to the backstage model area Sunday morning. As his underpaid assistant, I worked wonders with the straightening iron. The hair style of the day was a puffed mane - yuck. The models were all very sweet and talkative, some of them eating ice cream, and others throwing away the bread from their sandwiches. They immediately assumed I was the next supermodel. I had to correct them; despite my good looks and obvious charm, I am simply committed to engineering. There were two stylists hired to do hair exclusively, but the models were lined up with special requests for Dan, despite the other two being available to work. It was sweet to see how much they really admired Dan and respected his styling skills. It was great to get an inside peak at what goes into putting on a fashion show, seemingly a whole lot of hurry up and wait.

Phill met me at the show around 12:30 and we toured around all the attractions, whizzing by most of it and stopping for the odd cow or singer or billboard. Phill and I were surprisingly fascinated with the livestock pavilion, the cow and goat showings in particular. It's so hard to understand what goes into the judging rationale for these things. We watched Dan walk the runway twice, at 2PM and 4PM. I did a little bit of hooting and hollering at the end of the show. The models smirked, as we had agreed before the show that I would be the audible cheerer.

A showbag is similar to a ready-made trick-or-treat bag filled with complete garbage and sold at bargain basement prices. The mile long lines of people waiting to enter the showbag pavilion were atrocious and enough to offset Phill and I. I'm sure we missed out by stopping by one of the smaller booths along the perimeter of the fair. I purchased a couple showbags including a Wild West themed showbag for Casey's birthday dinner. He's nicknamed Texas here, after the Texas Ranger. This enormous bag bursting with a cowboy hat, rainbow Indian headdress, spurs, four guns (one of which lit up and had sound effects), a pick up sticks type game, and other miscellaneous junk cost a whopping $12. It was amazing to see how much junk they stuffed into one showbag. Another $10 bag I bought for the primary chocolate lover and provider at work was filled with various chocolate lollies and a stuffed bear.