Anne-Marie Primmer & Ann Marston

Ann Marston and Anne-Marie Primmer are no strangers to the Royal Melbourne Show. Both women are award-winning competitors in cooking and preserving, and each has inspired the other over the years.

Ann Marston first competed at the Royal Melbourne Show in 1985 with a fruit cake entered as a memorial to her mother. Anne-Marie Primmer began competing at the Whittlesea Agricultural Show. Like Ann, Anne-Marie was encouraged by her mother, who convinced her to enter her nut loaf, and much to her surprise, she won. Anne-Marie continued to compete locally before building up the confidence to enter the Royal Melbourne Show.

To me, the Royal Show was the epitome … I took my humble nut loaf off to the Royal Show and I was blessed to win and that set me on a journey of entering for over 40 years.

When Ann first began competing in the Royal Melbourne Show, all competitors had to bring in their items on the one day. ‘And you’d queue up rain, hail or shine outside number two pavilion’, she recalls, ‘they’d mark your entries off and they’d take it away and it would all be put on the bench ready for judging’. Today, the process is more staggered with each category having different days for competitors to drop off their entries.

For Anne-Marie, preparing more than eighty entries for the Show each year takes months. Her efforts have made her a familiar name at the Show and she has won the prestigious McRobert Memorial Award for the most successful cookery exhibit a remarkable thirteen times.

Ann retired from competing in 1992. After completing the judge’s exam, she began judging regional shows, and in 1993 was invited to become an RASV judge. It is a role she takes very seriously, keen above all else to encourage competitors. Judges at the Show work in a voluntary capacity, but for many like Ann, it is a passion rather than a job.

Because you have that interest in cookery or preserves or craft, you get to see some beautiful things and it’s a privilege, it’s an absolute privilege not only to see but then to have tasted and touched. So it’s a win-win situation.

When reflecting on what makes a good judge, Ann says above all a judge needs to be fair, to know her craft and to always be improving her knowledge.

Like many of the competitors and judges at the Royal Melbourne Show, Ann and Anne-Marie are driven by a passion for their craft. Winning is a nice bonus, but for each of them it is the knowledge and skills they gain, as well as the ability to encourage and inspire others that really drives them.

‘I’d like to encourage people not to be afraid to enter the Show’, says Anne-Marie. ‘To be part of contributing, to succeeding, to learning. It’s not a big deal but gee it can enhance your life.’ For Ann:

It’s a pleasant pastime. Let’s put it that way. As long as you don’t get terribly serious. If you don’t win, well you try harder or you find out what was wrong. Or you go to the showcase and you look at what was first prize and you can usually judge then why yours is different … And if you’re any sort of a baker, that will tell you where you have gone wrong and so next year you come back with a better example.