Armidale and New England Show Society secretary June Dangar said the group was pleased to see clear skies after last year’s downpour.

However, from mid-afternoon on Friday, the show had to deal with intermittent rain, and Saturday was cooler.

Attractions at this year’s show included pig racing, woodchopping, sideshows, rides, pavilion displays, horse events, steer rides, fireworks, Battle of the Bands, whipcracking displays and the demolition derby.

This year’s show did not feature a showgirl competition.

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Ms Dangar said the show was driven by community members including a large number of young volunteers.

“We’ve got some very special young people here running things which is just fantastic,” Ms Dangar said.

“Most people tell me that young people are prepared to do any volunteer work.

“We see the opposite here.”

Ms Dangar said a lot of work went into this year’s show, including in the pavilions.

“We’ve had all the judgings and there were some quite spectacular entries,” Ms Dangar said.

“There were a very large amount of children’s entries this year, about 140 entries.”

The farm produce section also attracted a large number of entries, including a very heavy giant pumpkin, Ms Dangar said.

“They needed a piece of machinery to lift it into place,” she said.

The pumpkin weighed in at 104 kilograms and was exhibited by Lachlan and Fletcher Chappell.

A larger than usual cattle section was one of this year’s show highlights.

Youth coordinator for the cattle section Tim Light said the cattle committee was happy with this year’s entries.

“We’ve got 140 head of cattle and the quality’s right up,” Mr Light said.

“Entries are well up on last year when we only had 80 entries in total.”

Mr Light said the cattle section had a really good committee for 2012 and cattle entries came from a wide area across the New England region.

“They’ve come from studs as far down as Quirindi and right out to Warialda, Inverell and Delungra,” Mr Light said.

The youth show also received a high number of entries with around 120 junior judges and 100 junior paraders.

At the other end of the scale, this year’s show did not receive any sheep entries.

“There weren’t many last year and there just wasn’t the interest,” Ms Dangar said.