Glen Pate

Glen Pate has a long family history connected to the Royal Melbourne Show. His great-grandfather, Willie Matheson, began breeding and importing Clydesdales to Australia in the early 1900s. Willie’s daughter, Alma Pate, became a Clydesdale breeder and a prolific exhibitor at the Show. Glen remembers that Alma, his grandmother, ‘loved the Royal Melbourne Show. She was like me, she lived for the Royal Melbourne Show in those days’.

For many years, Alma was the only female exhibitor showing Clydesdales at the Show. ‘She had great respect for all the other exhibitors’, recalls Glen, ‘but they showed her great respect too’. The family’s passion for Clydesdales continued with Glen. With his father helping Alma with stewarding, Glen was exposed to life at the Show from an early age.

In my time as a child I remember it was a great social thing for ten days – the Clydesdales had to be here for the Show for that time – and we got to know people we only saw once a year, but we formed great relationships in that time that went on, they still go on today.

Glen got a job working with the Carlton and United Breweries Clydesdales, and became heavily involved in the Royal Melbourne Show. The ten days spent on-site during the Show were some of the most enjoyable times for Glen, despite the less than glamorous conditions. He remembers: ‘the lockers, they were cold, they were dark, they were dusty and dirty … There were stories of rats running across their beds at night-time, various stories’. But Glen loved it and recalls that he never got sick of anyone in that confined space, because he had almost a year between visits. It was a great place to share knowledge:

… not just Clydesdales but life on the farm, life experiences. Sometimes it was good to talk to those people, they weren't your everyday life people, because the other eleven-and-a-half months of the year you never saw them, but you'd learn something or got some advice from them and you'd carry that over for the rest of the year.