It wasn’t hard to find them. You just headed past the sideshows, past the shed where three fat spuds had won first prize in the vege-growing competition and past the two fatheads manning the NZ First stall, toward the almighty roar of engines.
The noise, I soon discovered, was coming from a small, rough-as-guts racing track which, just 24 hours before, had been an innocent bit of lawn at the Clareville Showgrounds, the venue for this month’s Wairarapa A&P Show.
As I got closer, I could make out what was making such a hell of a racket. It was, quite unmistakably, ride-on mowers, and the mad buggers driving them were bombing down the small track’s straights and sliding around its corners like they were racing for the Formula 1 crown.
No lawn was being cut by these souped-up mowers, but grass was definitely being harmed as they raced for the chequered flag.
For a careful groundsman such as myself, it should have been a turf-related nightmare. Instead, as the four racers sprayed mud and reached speeds that my ordinary ride-on mower isn’t capable of, I couldn’t deny how thrilling it was. How was it even possible to go that fast on a ride-on?
As the race ended and the roar of their motors dropped below deafening, I wandered over to the pits and found a bloke in proper racing gear standing next to a pimped-out mower that looked like it might have had a chromed exhaust pipe.
Fearing he might think I was some sort of fey, vegan townie, I introduced myself as a fellow ride-on owner, and he introduced himself as Codey.
He and his brother Brady, it turned out, are stalwarts of the world-famous-in-Wairarapa Eketahuna Lawn Mower Racing Club, though they mostly race their powered-up ride-ons at a track on their dad’s property.
Up close, Codey’s machine was flash as, but he admitted it didn’t have many factory-made components in it. The ancient-looking dashboard and some metal bits in the chassis area were original parts and the 850cc motor was from a big ride-on mower, but he, a mechanical engineer, had hand-built the rest himself – and for only around $1500, he reckoned.
That’s not too bad, I said, before he went on to say that if the likes of me wanted to have such a machine built by the likes of him, it would likely cost more in the order of $5000.
That sort of dosh puts me right out of contention for becoming the next Liam Lawson at the Eke lawn-mower races.
I won’t be trying it at home either. As a by-the-book mower man, there is no chance of me contemplating sliding around corners and spraying mud all over Lush Places when next I climb aboard my now rather old, beaten-up and painfully slow John Deere.
Still, a bloke can dream.
It was, I believe, the 143rd year that the Wairarapa A&P Show has been held, and we could not help but wonder how many more years there might be to come.
The last time we attended, before the pandemic, the show had been what I’m sure it has been for all its long history: a bustling, buzzy event which brought people together from all around the region to celebrate rural life and eat lots of hot-dogs on a stick.
This year, there were still jokers chopping wood, sheep shearing, show jumping, fancy tractors for sale and blokes competing to build the fastest, straightest fence. But there also seemed to be many fewer exhibitors, competitors and even punters than five years ago, though it didn’t help that the weather was a bit shit, nor that neighbouring province Manawatū held its A&P show the same weekend.
We weren’t the only ones feeling things weren’t quite what they had been. As we began walking back to the carpark, a commentator in the cattle judging area ended things there by thanking the competitors, judges and visitors before adding that such events were the lifeblood of the region, “but they’re also dying”.
Such a terrible thought. What becomes of rural New Zealand if the A&P show goes the way of the moa?
