Royal Adelaide Show: with Keith Conlon in the Adelaide City region of South Australia

The Royal Adelaide Show is on again from next Friday. It's the biggest event in South Australia each year by far, pro-rata it's Australia's best-attended show - at least 600 thousand of us will turn up over the week.

People travel up from Robe, down from Roxby and in from Ridgehaven - town and country combine at Wayville as they have for 80 years. But the Royal Adelaide Show is older than that - so where was it before?

Well, if you go back far enough to 1840 the show lasted about a day outside a pub in Grenfell Street.

But as our pioneer farmers and orchardists got better they began holding carnivals under marquees in the parklands. The show took up residence in the Botanic Park and the first exhibition hall was on the Botanic Gardens side of Frome Road.

A century ago it expanded over the road into what is now part of the University of Adelaide's grounds. Adelaide's two big shows - spring and autumn were combined - complete with all the traditional arena action that it still a vital part of the show program.

Of course, a show just isn't a show without prize livestock - but how did they get all the cattle, sheep and pigs to showgrounds right on the edge of the city? It was a question we posed to the show's Marketing Manager, Francene Connor.

"There was a train line that came through from Adelaide Railway Station, behind Government House and into the Exhibition Gardens. The livestock was loaded directly into the yards there." Francene told us.

Hard to imagine today, but the train really did go under King William Road to the show. It was a great location - just off North terrace but the University of Adelaide also had its eye on the valuable land… and it got it.

The Government offered the Show Society a big acreage of farm paddocks on Goodwood Road. So in the 1920s the big move was on and Francene reckons there were some anxious moments.

"This was out in the boonies it really was," she laughed, "It was farmland and for people in the city it was a long way to come. They were very concerned about whether people would actually come to the show if it was out here."

Back in 1925, five hundred men worked night and day to prepare the site for the Spring Show. And then they waited - would the people come?

They came all right - in droves and they've been coming ever since. The grandstands and livestock pavilions built 80 years ago are still packed out on a yearly basis. Look hard enough and you'll even find a remnant of the area's farming era out the back of the dairy pavilion. The old stone building built in 1896 is a real gem.

There are plenty more gems under Centennial Hall of all places. The basement is a labyrinth of records chronicling the state's agricultural and horticultural achievement right back to day one.

Want to know who won the title of champion chook in 1950? Archivist, Marilyn Ward can probably tell you. Organise a group tour and she'll prove that the magic of the show works on every generation.

The archives are safely preserved on shelves and bays installed by the Army when it commandeered the showgrounds during the World War Two years from 1940.

"World War Two the show stopped because there was just so much happening here," said Francene. "It was used as a mobilization centre and later as a demobilization centre. Something like a million people actually came through the showground."

Except for that hiatus, the Adelaide show has happily shared the site with several guest tenants - the balmy nights at the trots lasted for years, motorbike racing and stunt cars have come and gone and it was even home to the West Adelaide footy club for a while.

But my pick's still the Royal Show - especially when the chips are flying at the woodcutting. Arrange a visit to the archives and you'll even see an axe broken by world champion woodcutter, David Foster during a competition here years ago.

The Royal Adelaide Show kicks off on Friday September 2 and runs until the 10th. See you there.

"It's Showtime" Royal Adelaide Show
2 - 10 Sept
Info Line 8210 5211