While most youngsters were spending their show days on rides or eating mountains of sweets, 11-year-old Matt Coffey was already axing logs in half.
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The son of two Australian representative woodchoppers, Coffey describes the sport of woodchopping as something he was born to do.
"It's [woodchopping] just really natural for me, it just needs to be done, I just do it," he said.
Now 22-years-old, that calling will take him from his hometown of Ballarat to Milan, Italy, where he will represent Australia in the STIHL TIMBERSPORTS 2024 Rookie World Championship on May 25, 2024.
Coffey qualified for the event by winning the 2023 Australian Rookie Championships in Wollongong, which was his first championship win in the STIHL TIMBERSPORTS series.
Despite being his first time representing Australia at an international competition, Coffey is setting high expectations for himself in Italy.
"I'm aiming for the win over there, if you go all that way you might as well go for it," he said.
"Give everything you've got and come home broken."
One of the nation's oldest sports
Originating in 1870 after a £25 bet between two men in a Tasmanian bar, woodchopping is one of Australia's oldest sports.
Indeed, this first competition even pre-dates Australia's first test cricket match by seven years.
More than 150 years later, the sport has progressed from its humble beginnings.
Now holding international level events, at the championships in Italy, Coffey will be competing against athletes from eleven other countries.
He will also be testing him across five different disciplines made up of the underhand chop, stock saw, standing block chop, single buck and springboard.
In each of these rounds, competitors will accumulate points based on their finishing position, and the person with the most points at the end of five rounds will be crowned winner.
Coffey said his preferred discipline was the underhand chop, which involves competitors splitting a log in two while standing on top of it.
Born to chop wood
Born and raised in Ballarat, Coffey grew up watching his international-level woodchopping parents compete at shows across the country.
By 11, Coffey was competing himself, but said it wasn't something his parents pushed him into.
"They didn't force me into it, I just followed mum and dad around all the country shows and royal shows," he said.
While his first competitions were at nearby shows including Ballarat, Beaufort and Daylesford, Coffey soon progressed to larger interstate events.
During those early years there were only two or three other children in his category, but the number of competitors steadily increased as he made his way through the age classifications.
Now, Coffey is working as a farmer and concreter in Ballarat while training for his latest round of events.
In the lead up to Italy, Coffey said he would be keeping to a strict training regime which involves little actual woodchopping.
"When you're chopping logs you sort of just burn out and get sick of it," he said.
"I do footy training, and running, and push-ups and gym work, and next week I'll be doing some chopping just to get me keen.
"Then I'll do some solid training when I get over there."
Chopperoo in waiting?
While success in Italy is Coffey's main focus, he is also eyeing off a variety of events in 2024.
These include the 14-inch standard block Australian titles in Perth and the 15-inch underhand and standing block world titles in Sydney.
Ultimately, Coffey's long-term goal is "definitely" to emulate his parents by representing Australia's national team, the Chopperoos.
It's something the 22-year-old had a taste of in 2023 while providing support to the team at an event in Stuttgart, Germany.
"It was definitely an eye-opener when I went over there ... It was a massive event" he said.
"It's pretty tough over there but Australia is really a dominant team."
