By JULIETTE ODDOUX, Tawonga Primary School teacher

TAWONGA Primary School's first giant pumpkin competition had a very successful conclusion last Friday evening.

Excitement had been building among students during the day as pumpkins kept appearing in the school yard.

Approximately 50 to 60 people attended the evening event and it was great to see people from the wider community drop by to have a look.

There were 19 entries, 12 of them quite large, and three of them too big for the scales.

All but the three biggest had been pre-weighed on the Farm to Fork butchery scales before the night and with the remaining three some very helpful parents assisted after school by lifting the pumpkins with a tarp and identifying the order of heaviest to least heavy.

Year 6 judges Sam Svarc and Harry Weaver were busy judging the prettiest pumpkin while spectators were able to write down their best guess of the weight of the pumpkin grown on the school grounds.

There were also slices made by the our students in their cooking class for spectators to enjoy.

The winner of the prettiest pumpkin was Dianne Rogers and the best weight guess of the school pumpkin at 64.46Kg was John Stripeikis who guessed 65Kg.

Tony Gentile came in 4th place with a big 80kg pumpkin.

The final three entries were weighed with the help of Gentile Steel's truck and crane.

Surprisingly, the order of the initial guestimate based on size of the pumpkin - 3rd Col Clewitt, 2nd the Richardson family and 1st Deb Clewitt - altered when they were weighed, with Deb Clewitt 3rd (131kgs), Cole Clewitt 2nd (136kgs) and the Richardson family in first with a whopping 160kgs pumpkin.

There was a lot of laughter, good will and swapping of ribbons and Brenton Richardson was very happy to receive the meat tray, generously donated by Farm to Fork butchery.

When asked what his secret was, Brenton responded with a short “good soil and lots of water”.

When pressed further, he said he wasn’t giving away any secrets.