IT’S the great challenge for community organisations: to find people willing to give their time.
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And it’s a challenge faced by the Bathurst Agricultural, Horticultural and Pastoral Association as it counts down to the city’s 150th agricultural show next year.
“Bathurst Show is in the same situation as most community groups and organisations that are administered on a voluntary basis,” recently returned association president Sam Farraway said this week.
“That is, that it's incredibly difficult [to get people to give their time].
“My personal view is that society is so fast-paced and so busy that it’s hard for families and individuals to give time and commitment.
“We face these same challenges.”
As well as it being the 150th show next year, the association will be celebrating the 25th anniversary since the annual event gained the “Royal” tag.
Mr Farraway, whose re-election will give him a seventh term as president, said he had focused not on reinvention during his time at the top but on reinvestment in what worked.
He said he and his executive had been determined to make the show worthy of the “Royal” title.
“There won't be any other shows that are given a ‘Royal’,” he said. “That’s quite a thing to hang on to.”
Mr Farraway knows the great unknown each year – and the element no-one can control – is the weather.
Society is so fast-paced and so busy that it's hard for families and individuals to give time.
- Bathurst AH and P president Sam Farraway
“In my time, over the past seven terms, we have had two weather-affected years,” he said.
“In one, it was basically snowing at the showground.
“In the other, we held the rain off to the Saturday night and then it bucketed down.”
But he said the hard work put in by the executive to reinvigorate the show paid off that year as people arrived in big numbers on the Friday night and Saturday morning.
“People knew the rain was coming and they still wanted to come to the show.”
He will no doubt be hoping for that same passion from the community next year for the 150th event.
“In a place like Bathurst, if you put the work in, and understand the community and what the community is about, the community will support you,” he said.
“We will do that again for the 150th show in 2018.”