The Canterbury Anniversary Day public holiday is known as Show Day in the region - the day the country comes to town.
One of the winners in the alpaca competition at the A & P Grounds on 12 November. Photo: RNZ / Rachel Graham
But for the second time since World War II, there was no A and P show on in Christchurch today.
The Agricultural Show grounds are normally a throng of people on Canterbury Anniversary Day, with about 60,000 people squeezing in to eat hot dogs, look at the best chickens in the district, and sit on a tractor they have no need for.
Today, the streets of the show grounds were empty, with the show cancelled due to Covid-19.
A few keys parts of the show went ahead, just with no members of the public there to see them.
Pagan Karauria travelled up from Alexandra to take part in the senior shearing and woolhandling event.
She said the lack of a crowd was not too much of an issue for her.
"When the crowd is in here at the Canterbury shears 'cause its the A and P show, it can take you nearly 10 minutes to get from the board and back down again squeezing through people.
"But in a shearing final, the atmosphere is amazing when there's heaps of people in the stadium. The finals, I have found, have been quite different when there's not a lot of noise in the background."
Other events underway today were the alpaca, sheep, and pig competitions.
Earlier in the week, they also put on indoor dog trials, a smaller version of the farmyard for school groups, and a dairy goat competition.
Anne Rogers, the conveyor of the alpaca section of the show, with two of the competitors. Photo: RNZ / Rachel Graham
Alpaca section convenor Anne Rogers said it was important to go ahead with the competitions even without spectators.
"What goes with the placings, if you listen to the judges, they are telling you why they put those animals up first.
"It's a really good learning tool for the exhibitors, they can hear what's going well with their animals and perhaps their breeding programme overall if they've entered a number of animals from their stud. "
Competitors travelled from Palmerston North and Blenheim to take part in the alpaca competition, and the pig competition also had a good turn out with similar numbers to past years.
The past president of the show, Chris Herbert, said the social opportunity for rural people was a very important part of the show.
"It's a social occasion for some of the exhibitors, it's their shop window, showing what they are doing with their genetics.
"But the social aspect of it is huge. There are people who have been coming to this show and catching up for 30 or 40 years, and it's the only week of the year they catch up with each other. They live at opposite ends of the island. So it's brilliant."
Gus McLachlan, 14, has a pig entered in the pig competition. Photo: RNZ / Rachel Graham
Canterbury A and P Association president Chris Harris said not being able to open to the public was a real blow, and they would now need to make use of the $1 million loan they had arranged with the Christchurch City Council as a safety net in case they had to cancel.
"It's a very big hit for us," Harris said. "That's why we got that loan from the council. It'll keep us a float, but we will be going backwards in debt. We will definitely be hoping for some very good shows in the future."
Harris said normally, the only thing they had to worry about was whether it was going to be too hot or too cold on Show Day, and he hopes next year that will be their biggest problem once more.
