‘We brought dagwood dogs to Queensland': What it's like to grow up in a family of Ekka workers

The Age

6 days ago

If you're going to the Ekka and thinking of getting a dagwood dog – and why wouldn't you, they're delicious when freshly made – you'll be biting down on a deep-fried, sauce-slathered piece of Queensland history.
The story goes like this. Corn dogs were invented by German immigrants to Texas in the 1920s. About 1949 they were brought to Sydney's Easter Show by Americans, and were known as pluto pups, pronto pups and ultimately dagwood dogs, after a character from the popular comic strip Blondie.
Thelma Howard, a second-generation Queensland show woman, along with her brother Charlie Pink and another showman called Dickie Riley, decided they would figure out how to make their own.
The ones at the Sydney show were made in a waffle iron, a slow process resulting in long queues. Howard, Pink and Riley were sure there was a better way. Howard's granddaughter, Bronwyn Bridgewater, takes up the tale.
'They put the stick in it, and they dipped it in batter, and put it in boiling water, and all the batter came off!
'They finally worked out how to make a dagwood dog in oil. My grandfather and grandmother, who were very entrepreneurial, were the first people to start using canteens [food trucks] to sell dagwood dogs, and the first major catering family for dagwood dogs.'
She vividly remembers her grandfather, Bill Howard, strapping on a box filled with dagwood dogs to go in and sell to punters watching the Jimmy Sharman Boxing Show at the Ekka in the 1950s.
'And while he was doing that we were like crazy cooking more, because he'd come back and fill it up again.'
Gold Coast-based Bridgewater is the State Library of Queensland's 2025 Royal Queensland Show Fellow, researching the 149-year history of the Ekka.
At the age of 72, she's surprised at the turn her life has taken. She had resigned herself to never using her Masters in Creative Writing to tell her story. 'The thing is that once you retire, you feel it's all over,' she sighs.
She had been working on a film script about her early life as a show kid, but had been 'feeling pretty lost' since the death of her husband, an Australian Christian Churches pastor.
Last year she found out about the State Library fellowship four days before it closed, and got her application in.
Then a medical issue struck: a doctor told her she had cancer of the thyroid. 'I thought, that's it. I hope I don't win it now, because I'm gonna die.'
Not only did she win the fellowship, when her thyroid was removed it proved to be cancer free. 'It all worked out very well for me.'
In Bridgewater, the State Library lucked upon a researcher who is also a living, breathing source of Ekka lore.
Her great-grandparents, Snowy and Ethel Pink, would travel Queensland and Northern NSW in a horse and wagon as far back as 1894, running sideshows and living in tents with their seven children.
Their eldest daughter, Thelma, was variously a contortionist, a snake handler, a ukulele player and a sharpshooter.
'My grandmother was a dead-eye shot. She used to shoot at a woman who would supposedly catch the bullet in her mouth, but it was really [hitting] a plate on the chest. My grandmother would be required to shoot exactly at that spot so that she didn't kill her. She would have the local farmers inspect the gun to prove it was authentic.'
One day – this was the early 1930s – Thelma had an odd intuition about her assistant.
'She said, 'What's going on?' And she checked, and the plate was not there. She said, 'What are you doing?' The girl goes, 'I broke up with my boyfriend and I wanted to die!''
Bronwyn was born in 1953. As her parents had split up she was legally adopted by her grandparents and lived with her young mother, Betty Marshall, on the show circuit.
The Pinks would travel from North Queensland to Brisbane, through NSW out to Dubbo, through Victoria and all the way to Mount Gambier in South Australia.
'In the show community, everyone's an auntie or an uncle,' she says.
The Slim Dusty Show was an Ekka staple back then; Bronwyn would play with Dusty's daughter, Anne Kirkpatrick. Boxing legend Jimmy Sharman was her godfather. At the age of five she would wander the grounds, and take herself to the sample bag (showbag) pavilion.
'My grandmother would say, 'well, Bronwyn, if you're gonna go get a sample bag, the cops are gonna pick you up. And when they do, you've got to take them to Jimmy Sharman's boxing tent.'
'Jimmy Sharman would come out, and then the copper would get to shake his hand, and, and then Jimmy would say, 'she's not lost, she knows this showground better than me.' All the coppers wanted to shake Jimmy Sharman's hand, so they were on the lookout for me just so they could.'
In those days, showgoers would clamour to prove their mettle in the ring against prize fighters. It was the age of fairground spruikers and tent shows: the Gladiator Show, the Samson the Strongman Show, the Globe of Death motorbike show, the Monkey Show.
In those days the dignity of animals or humans was less of a concern. A troupe of pygmies brought out from the Congo by showman David Meekin reportedly made a very comfortable living performing on the circuit. 'The Pygmy Show was the highlight of my life when I was little,' Bridgewater admits.
She attended the local school in whichever town the show was on. 'None of the kids would talk to you. I had a girl say to me in Coonamble, 'Oh, you show people are really dirty. When you drive past the showgrounds, you can see all your washing hanging outside for everyone to see.'
'And I said, 'Well, if you didn't see our washing, you'd say we're dirty because we didn't wash!'
'I respect the showmen, because they're very philosophical about it, and they teach their children not to be defensive and angry about people treating them that way.'
'I had a girl say, 'You show people are really dirty. When you drive past the showgrounds, you can see all your washing hanging outside.''
Bronwyn Bridgewater
It all came to an end when her grandmother enrolled her in a Catholic boarding school, Marist Sisters Convent, in Sydney. The nuns quickly realised she couldn't read or write. 'But I was good at maths, which all showkids are, because they're good at taking change.'
She married Mark Bridgewater young, at 19, had six kids, and co-founded the Eastcoast Church in Coogee, Sydney. She never returned to the show life, although she remains close to her extended show family. Her grandfather, stepfather and uncle all served as president of the Showmen's Guild of Australasia; her cousin, Aaron Pink, is the current president.
Today's sideshow alley is a very different place to what it once was, she notes.
'The tent shows stopped in the '70s. It's now become the age of the multi-million dollar rides, and the thrills and spills have to be better and bigger every year.
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'They have to have engineers check those rides very frequently to make sure they're safe. It's very tough for the showmen because every time there's an incident on a ride, insurance goes up.'
Sideshow alley may be her special subject, but Bridgewater's fellowship has her meeting legends of other show staples like showjumpers, woodchoppers and cakemakers.
As for dagwood dogs? She hasn't eaten one in decades. 'As a kid, I loved dagwood dogs. And sample bags – it's a credit to dentistry that I still have all my own teeth, because of the number of sample bags I ate growing up.
'I guess I've always been, and always will be, a showman.'