Tim Morgan

Tim Morgan grew up in south Gippsland in a family that was involved with the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria (RASV) and had a love of rural and farm life. He remembers the first time he visited the Royal Melbourne Show as a young boy:

I took a couple of mates from school and Dad took us in. We spent the whole day; we were there from about seven o'clock in the morning right through until about eleven o'clock at night. It was just the greatest experience we had because we did all the rides, we ate everything … To a young kid it was just the greatest entertainment and greatest fun, it was just absolutely sensational.

Tim initially began a career in television. But after a brief time assisting his father at the Show in 1970, Tim decided to leave the television industry and apply for a job with RASV. ‘That was really my introduction to the Royal Show proper’, he recalls. ‘I got to work with Dad and got to understand really what the Royal Show and what the RASV was all about.’

Tim was involved with RASV for over 30 years in a number of different roles. He started out working in the breed society area, then went to rural youth, before joining media management and public relations. Tim was also part of the redevelopment process, and took on an operational role during the Show for a short time.

Throughout his diverse involvement, one of the major things Tim noticed about RASV, compared with his time in television, was the workplace culture:

In television there was backbiting, there was politics … Whereas the RASV, there was an immediate feeling of almost family and it was just a wonderful organisation to work in. And everybody seemed to be totally dedicated to the task of getting this huge event together, making it work, and making sure that the people who came through those gates had the best possible time that they could.