Appleton Ladies’s Potato Race
Residents of Robertson will not soon forget the controversy brought about when Melanie Tait returned to her hometown in 2018 and decided to shake things up at the annual show.
First published in the Southern Highlands Express Issue 53 - 9 June 2021
After discovering the village’s annual Potato Race offered vastly different prize money for the men than it did the women, she banded together with a group of old friends to raise the $800 between the winnings.
Melanie’s parents, Heather and Neil, run the village supermarket and own the town’s famous Big Potato, so it was quite a shock for her to find people she has known her whole life were suddenly blanking her in the street.
Now she and Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre company are bringing the story to the stage, as the Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race, with two busloads of Robertson residents traveling to Nowra this week to watch it come to life.
Starting out as a playwright in her early 20s, later an ABC broadcaster and now podcaster, Tait has always believed she would make a return to theatre with a story rooted in small-town Australia.
“I think seeing the tensions between the new people coming to town and the older families in town always seemed like something that was really interesting to me dramatically and comedically,” Melanie said.
“I think seeing the tensions between the new people coming to town and the older families in town always seemed like something that was really interesting to me dramatically and comedically,” Melanie said.
— Melanie Tait
“I guess the Potato Race fiasco gave me a story to hang my hat on.”
The play has a cast of just five women and the male characters are only ever mentioned, never seen - a comment, Tait says, on who is really running regional towns.
“All the people I was dealing with were women, the President was a woman and the treasurer was a woman and yet on the day of the race, its a guy commentating, a guy giving away all the prizes,” Melanie said.
“It’s like the women do all the hard work, and then the men just come in and take the glory.”
When asked what it was that shook the village of Robertson up so much, she said, “Some people just don’t like things changing.”
“There was a lot of people that supported what I did back in 2018, bu there were a lot of people who really outwardly didn’t. I think the tide has really turned.”
Last year, the woman was first across the line in the Ladie’s Race was a nursing student from Robertson. This meant not only did she take home the $1000 winnings, but also an additional $300 for being the first Robertson woman across the line.
“Whereas, the year before she would have gone home with $200, she went home with $1300. She’s a nursing student, isn't that wonderful,” Melanie said.
The show is on the home stretch of its run across NSW, ACT and QLD theatres, with just one last show tonight at Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre and two shows at Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre in Penrith this weekend 11-12 June.
By Madeleine Achenza