ALPA young auctioneers are fighting it out in Gracemere for a chance to compete at the Ekka

Through ALPA, the auctioneers are being coached and judged, and ALPA chief executive officer Andy Madigan said he was pleased to see two women in the ranks – for the first time in Queensland history. 

A total of 22 auctioneers are attending the workshop, with 12 of them vying for a maximum of 10 positions to compete at the Ekka. 

Mr Madigan said the rest of the group were mostly older auctioneers honing their skills to protect their voices with the two speech therapists who are there working with the group. 

“It’s extremely important that we have professional speech therapists,” Mr Madigan said. 

“There’s a lot of older auctioneers who just can’t sell for longer periods of time anymore because they never had the training with speech therapists when they were starting off.

Victorian speech therapist Eliza Galvin traveled to the workshop to help train the auctioneers. 

She said she has been working as a professional voice coach for 18 years, and said for auctioneers it is vital they can continue to use their voice for a long time. 

“Without their voice, they don’t have a job,” she said. 

“So being professional voice users they rely on their voice for their income so it’s paramount, not just as an auctioneer but also as an agent.”

Ms Galvin also said for those who continue on to compete at the Ekka, it was important for them to know it is about more than just their voice. 

“For the guys that go on to the competition process they need more tools like the body language and the facial expressions and they learn to sort of fine-tune their auctioneering skills to become more of a performance.”