102. Sydney’s Royal Ea(s)ter Show

If you’ve ever been to a county faire or a highland games then you’ve got an idea as to what this is. This annual event is a big deal in Sydney and for the two weeks that it’s on for it draws several hundred thousand visitors a day. It’s held at the site of the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the whole place is filled with rides, food stalls, demonstrations, animals, music and beers tents as well as the usual amount of purchasable tat.

We arrived in the morning started to explore the grounds of the Show. Our first stop was the Fresh Food Dome which showcased foods grown around Australia. It was a celebration of farmers from all the different states in Australia and they had put together some huge displays of their produce. There was also several stalls selling honey, wine, juices, leather goods, fudge, coffee, chocolate, ice-cream and also the kind of cooking and household product demonstrations that you would expect to see at the Ideal Homes Exhibition in the UK.

All that food got us in the mood for some eats. We didn’t have to walk very far to find some deep-fried badness as there are eateries everywhere. The day turned out to be a terrible one from the diet point of view as we felt the need to sample something from every stall. This will make you boke but over the course of the day we had sushi, deep fried hotdogs on a stick, deep fried cheese on a stick, pizza, corn on the cob, ice-cream (twice), 3 beers, donuts and smoothies. I could feel the old coronary arteries hardening as the day went on and for the first time ever I was actually craving fruit and vegetables by the time that we got home.

After lunch (not that there was a specific food stuff that I could identify as lunch) we went to watch the wood-chopping event. I really wasn’t sure what to expect but it was basically a display of wood chopping and sawing in the format of an international competition between Australia, USA and New Zealand. It is one of the highlights of the Easter Show and it was certainly entertaining. The best bit was where the blokes had to chop into a pole and jam a board into the hole then climb up onto the board and repeat the action two more times until they are standing on a flimsy wooden board about 5 metres in the air where they then chop half way through a log at the top of the pole. Then they jump down and do the same again on the other side. First one to chop through the log completely wins.

After some more food, Isla dragged me to see the animals in the kiddies corner. We had missed most of the animal displays so I relented and she was in her element petting horses, camels, sheep, lambs, piglets and chickens. It wasn’t really my cup of tea but I was amazed how soft the camel’s coat was. Luckily it didn’t do any of the biting or spitting that they are famous for.

We grabbed some pizza on route to the rodeo which was to be our final stop of the day. The pizza was disgusting and since the heavens opened before we started eating them they were also sodden and cold as well as tasteless. If nothing else, at least they made us not want to eat anything else that day.

While we were sitting in the rain eating soaking wet pizza waiting for the rodeo to start we had to watch the finals of the dog trials. It consisted of ten teams of eight people and their mutts doing some very amateur exercises like “sit and stay” and “fetch the toy”. They were mostly rubbish at it and as far as I could see not a single dog carried out all the tasks without making a mistake. I was glad when they left the grounds but unfortunately we still had to wait for about 30 more minutes while the fences and pens were set up for the rodeo.

It seems that there was a competition running between Australia and the USA for the duration of the Easter Show and this was the 4th heat in the trial. The rodeo consisted of different events with points awarded for the winners of each. There was the steer wrestling, women’s barrel horse race, bare back horse riding and the finale – the bull riding competition. It was very exciting and there were several edge-of-the-seat moments with riders almost trampled by enraged stallions or nearly getting kicked in the head by livid bulls.

Drenched but pleased, we left Olympic Park and heading home after a great day out. I’m still not entirely sure of the point of the whole thing and I guess I would sum it up as a glorified fun fair that lets the “city folk” see some aspects of rural Australian living from the safety of paved roads and plastic seated arenas.