This year we decided to take a booth at this famous country show and hopefully display the delights of Affinity Tours to a wider audience.
Setting up on the Thursday afternoon was a bit involved as there seemed to be no officials around and everybody was trying to unload and set up their stalls at the same town. There were long queues for vehicles, you had to dodge livestock being unloaded (lots of sheep!) and cars unloading were parked in the marked bays for the vendors. We found a smart car parked in ours and a woman lifting out plants one at a time. She obligingly said she would move but didn’t pick up her pace at all and at one stage stopped to find a nail file and attend to her manicure!
Obviously, we weren’t quite so concerned with our fingernails so once we had the clear space it didn’t take us too long to set up.
Kitty’s car was part of the display (to show people how comfortable it was to travel in) and we also set up a table with tea/coffee and the fixings for morning tea, including our latest camping acquisition, a coffee maker. There were a couple of comfortable chairs, lollies and a table spread out with tour details.
We purchased a powered site and became very popular, offering phone charging for random passerbys and our neighbours: in fact, we got on so well with the booth next to us that Kitty went off shopping with them!
Our neighbour directly across the way was the famous vet Rick Fenny, who looked after Red Dog. He was selling his books and it was a great opportunity for Kitty to catch up with him as she literally was his neighbour years ago and used to babysit all of his kids!
Speaking of shopping, Affinity Tours bought a brand new battery powered chainsaw for our 4wd trips. Great for wood cutting, both for fires and for cutting trees that have blocked the route. This was a carefully negotiated purchase, with Kitty only agreeing to it with the proviso that we would have as much wood collection, and hence campfires, as possible!
It was a hot couple of days; the asphalt radiated the heat up at us and the shade was not helpful in the way it kept moving. Still, we used the heat to our advantage as we had our car fridge filled with ice water and we performed a double act, whereby Kitty would say to passing heat flushed people, “Oh, you look hot! Have an ice cold bottle of water!” and once they came into the shade to drink it, Barry started talking about our company and our tours!
We asked people to enter a competition by putting down their email address so that we could add them to our mailing list and in return they could win a free tour (Mystery Weekend) or 10% off any other tour. The actual winner of this competition was F Pritchard from Kojonup.
Highlight of the weekend was Barry getting breathalised three times as we drove into town to find somewhere to eat, couldn’t find anywhere, did a lap and returned. The copper refused to take his word that he hadn’t downed a sneaky few since the five minutes ago she had last tested him!
So that was our couple of days at Wagin. We enjoyed the country feel, made new friends and reconnected with old ones and hopefully managed to spread our word a little wider!