What an incredible day we had on Sunday for the Community Fair!

Despite the rain and windy conditions, nothing was going to dampen the St A's spirit!

We soldiered on despite the weather and had an amazing Fair with our wonderful community still coming out to support the day, we thank you all so much!

It was a wonderful fundraising opportunity for our school, with all proceeds going towards a new AV system for the hall. We are still a little short of reaching our goal, so if you would like to purchase any raffle tickets, this would help our efforts a lot!

We also wish to thank the phenomenal Fair Committee that worked tirelessly for 6 months to bring the Fair to life.

Lead by Lisa Vearing and Elise Redmond who worked so hard to ensure that everything ran smoothly and help guide the process we also thank -

Amy Cimino, Dave & Mariana Hawkins, Hayley Drew, Georgia Brock, Lukas Brock, Carla Harris, Irene Sanjaja, Carly Hammond, Erin Walton, El Drakos, Prue Weeding, Kym Cody, Jodie Rogut, Tess Harwood, Kara Hogan, Jess Hamp[ton, Lauren Ranalli, Lucy Kenshole, Nat Natoli, Caitlin Powell, Tess Roberts, Rebecca Slipais, Haidee Rowell, Kate Wilson, Camilla Irvine, Brittney Wilson and Tanie Stickland for their time and contribution!

Thank you to all the parent volunteers who also helped on stalls on the day to help with the flow of everything! We are so happy that all the children had a wonderful time at the various attractions and stalls. We know it will always be a Fair that they will remember!!

The Fair Report

By Eric.H

Everyone loves fairs and carnivals - heading there with your family and meeting your friends to spin around on the rides, try your luck at the carnival games and win some prizes. On Sunday 17th November, St Augustine’s hosted its first school fair, the weather did its best to rain us out but the community spirit was strong and the streets were crammed with cars, the rides were full of screaming children and many prizes were won!

But it can’t happen without volunteers to set up and run the activities so that everyone can have fun. Volunteers like my family have worked hard to iron out every detail of the fair under the guidance of Ms Martin. We made carnival games (the ring-toss and toilet paper toss) while other families made Lucky Jar Drop, baked goods and Bric a Brac.

St. Augustines had free dress days to collect lollies and chocolates for the prizes - free-dress days were hosted where you brought in a chocolate block or a jar of lollies or toys for the activities leading to the fair.

On Saturday morning 15th of November, my family and other volunteers helped set up the fair by setting up the tables and stalls. We heaved cushioned mats for the jumping castles and made signs showing which way the stores were that we were assigned to. My family got assigned the carnival games we made, and after we set up our stall we went to the neighboring stalls to help them with their activities and small decorations.

Helping for the fair would have been stupendously boring if my friends hadn’t been there, and when we had some free time we would talk, play and have fun. If we did a good job, some of the cheeky adults would reward us with lollies and sugary treats.

After the set up day, we got up quite early to help begin putting up the rides and setting up the big decorations and food for the stalls. The weather was predicted to rain for most of the day during the fair, so a nice lady went out to a store to buy a box of emergency plastic ponchos for the people without water repellant clothes. People started to arrive early and we were ready to serve them with entertainment, but my family and I woke up so early that we hadn’t had breakfast yet! Luckily for us though, a stall was selling egg and bacon rolls and sausages, so my dad and I went to buy some breakfast while my mum and brother operated our stall. Our Toilet-Toss game was getting a lot of attention compared to our other activity, Ring-Toss. I should have expected that though, because for some reason, kids love toilets and toilet paper.

Later in the day, a few of my good friends came and asked if I wanted to walk around with them. I wanted to go so I asked my mum and she said yes. I walked around for a moderately short period of time until it was just me and one of my friends. We went from stall to stall looking at what they were offering for our money until I came across a stall that was selling soft drinks and I bought one for me and one for my mum because she hadn’t had any breaks yet and I thought she deserved a bit of sugar for letting me go on a break. On my way back to the stall with my friend, we came over a mini basketball game, you needed six points to win a prize and every score was three points. One of the ladies running the stall said that the high score was twenty-two points, and I intended to get the new record. I paid the lady and got the new high score of thirty-three points! My friend tried it and only got twelve points but it showed on the scoreboard only three points, so he didn’t get a reward.

When I got back, we had a great deal of people play the Toilet-Toss game which I helped run. I exclaimed to the crowd about how the Toilet Toss was one dollar for five throws and declared that one toilet roll in the makeshift toilet would win a prize, and even if none went in, there were participation lollies. I would praise their easy shots at the toilet and magnify how great they were doing with their amount of skill. That went on for a while until it started to rain, we took it all under our marque while we waited for it to stop and when it did we set it back up, this went on for about two more times until an announcement over the loudspeakers announced that we were to bring all our stall stock and activities into our spacious hall. My mum and dad went out into the rain to help manoeuvre other peoples stalls and marque to shelter, so my brother and I had to run the stall by ourselves.

We did the same thing as we did before but louder because in the hall it was quite crowded and everyone was trying to speak over each other. My friend from before was here too helping out, and for some reason a kid from around grade two somehow butted in and was surprisingly helpful too. I felt like running the stall without parents or adults gave me a sense of responsibility, because I know if my parents left me with the stall they worked so hard for, it means they trust me. After the amusement fair had died down and people started leaving, we packed up the stall, cheekily gobbled down some hard earned lollies, and went to our cars.

As we were about to part ways, my friend asked me if I wanted to go on a ride. I had completely forgotten we even had the unlimited rides pass wristbands that my parents paid thirty dollars for each (including my brother). I agreed we should go on at least once on one and luckily the rides were still open because a few kids were still having a ride. There were two rides, one called The Twist which had metal girders coming out of one big one, and the smaller metal girders had seats attached to the ends of them. We hopped into a blue one and after everyone was settled into their seats, it started to move. Very slowly at first, but it started to pick up speed, next thing you know we were being flung around mildly, and as we went around and around we were getting used to the pattern and we started to make silly gestures and faces at the surrounding people like spiderman hands and goofy faces.

We rode that ride three times and the fun never ran out, until my dad came with my brother and told me I had to get off for the day. I hopped off and my brother said he wanted me to go on the Spinny Swings with him because he was too afraid to go on The Twist. As I’m a good brother I agreed and seated myself aboard a swing chair next to my brother. This ride was made for little kids so as it started to spin us around, I had to pick up my legs to avoid the bottom of my soles getting scratched up. A quarter of the way through, I started to feel quite woozy, then halfway through I was feeling really dizzy, so I asked the conductor to slow it down so that I could get off. He slowed it down so I could hop off, but I was parallel to the exit, so I had to unsteadily hobble to the exit around the amusement ride. My brother got to stay on for another ten minutes while I giddily stood against a fence. I asked my dad if I could go back on The Twist, but he disagreed and told me we were going to wait for my brother to finish up.

Finally, after my dad told my brother he had to get off, we walked back to the car, though I wouldn’t call what I was doing walking, I would call it shuffling unsteadily as my headache would not calm down. Even though I had a rough time at the end of the fair, the overall experience was delightfully enjoyable from seeing and playing with my friends to manning the stall with my brother. I recommend taking part in the school activities and volunteering your time so that others can have a good time.

Hi my name is Aalyiah Dann and I will be telling you about my time at the fair.

On the day I got to play the keyboard and I was really nervous playing in front of everyone!!!

My favorite part of the day was when I won a bunch of chocolates at the Chocolate Block challenge, and that was my time at the school fair!!!

Month at a Glance