Way back in March 1977 I quit high school half way through term 1 of my final year 12 and began my career into the Lapidary - Gem - Mineral - Fossil - Jewellery Making - etc industry that was very much a hobby based experience. People of all ages and walks of life took up various arms of what was collectively called the "Lapidarist". Whether or not they joined a club or set themselves up in a home workshop environment, most of these hobbyists had their own equipment and hand tools at home anyway. They could not wait until the next week to start - or finish that piece of "art" they were working on.
So in this year, not having anything better to do, I went along to my first Gemboree as an official representative of Greg's Showcase. The weather was not so kind to us and on the way, I remember especially as we drove closer to Gundagai, the heavens opened up and it gushed down as we drove along. We only had a Holden Sedan at the time and towed a trailer at the back. Although we had a strong canvas tarpolin covering the trailer, many of the boxes still got wet and had to be dried out when we reached our destination.
I don't quite remember where we stayed on the way down there - it was a long time ago now. However I remember that we left bright and early the following morning and reached Shepparton around mid-morning. We would be staying in a hired caravan during our stay for the Gemboree, however we had very little in the way of cooking utensils, and no food so we stopped on the way at a great supermarket that seemed to have everything we needed, including a cast iron set of fry pans which we purchased, even though we would only need one of them. We still have them in our cupboard today.
Finally we were allowed access to the caravan and wasted no time in putting our bags in, unpacking and stocking the cupboards with our clothes, food, and extras that we had brought along. We were both hungry and Greg made a good home style bacon and eggs brunch for us before we would get started with the setting up of the stall.
The hall was massive - a Town Hall I think - it was beautiful - polished wood floors, beautiful creme coloured walls, and the atmosphere was electric with people coming and going on their way - setting up showcases, stalls, taking photographs, writing out labels, and in general - busying themselves for the big long weekend event over Easter.
For us however, we would not be situated in the big hall itself, we would be in the annexe portion of the hall. I helped Greg to bring in some of the boxes, though for most of them, he brought them in and we unpacked them together to lay them out on the table that was given to us. It was a long day of setting everything up just right to have the minerals and fossils showing at their best. We had many of our mail order customers coming to this event whom we had not met personally so it would be a special event to finally meet up with them.
