What to do on an Easter Sunday once the morning Easter Egg hunt is over and chocolate wrappers litter the floor? Church is not an option; the shops are shut; all roads out of Sydney are jammed with holidaymakers...
Aha! Why not go to the Sydney Royal Easter Show? An Australian institution...
Daniel and I have found excuses every year so far during our Sydney sojourn to NOT do exactly this but this year we shamed ourselves into getting on the train to Sydney's Olympic Park, braving the great unwashed and going to the Fair...
As a show virgin, I relied on Daniel to steer me in the right directions...
First, we arrived....
...and, walking past the Olympic Torch which Cathy Freeman lit all those years ago and which is now transformed into a rather austere fountain, we headed straight for the Flower and Vegetable Pavilion...where it was Dahlia Day...
...and Pumpkin Day....
We hustled on through, past a cooking demonstration, past the Leaf and Leafstalk Inflorescence Vegetables (hard to drag Daniel away from them admittedly), and onwards to the Sheep and Wool Pavilion. Once there, the crowds thickened and it was difficult to get a glimpse of the sheep-shearing or the sheep-dog presentations so we simply made do with some sheep, lazily chewing in their pens, and some wool...
We then made a beeline for the Poultry Shed where things got really interesting...
Many of these champions were for sale at a mere 50 dollars or so...we were sorely tempted.
We breeze through the Alpaca Pavilion ("I don't like llamas" exclaims Daniel) and the Goat Shed (only one species of goat on display, the Boer Goat - a sturdy, burly beast) before heading onwards and upwards, towards the pigs and cows.
after which we stop for a 'German' sausage in a bun (see the animals, then eat the animals).
After watching some prize-giving whilst munching our hot-dogs in a large but empty stadium (we never did find out what the prizes were for - the commentator forgot to say) we stumbled across some cowboys doing cowboy things (apparently they were cattle-driving; it seemed a little random to me, but OBVIOUSLY I am no expert).
After these heady excitements it was on to even greater heights of exhilaration at the Wood-Chopping Pavilion, where we were just in time to watch the Veterans Final Upright Log Chop...
To calm ourselves down we left after one other chopping competition (missing the upcoming tree climbing) and visited the dizzy intellectual sphere that was the Arts and Crafts Pavilion where anything that wasn't intended to be eaten was so disturbing as to be (in the words of Rodgers & Hart) unphotographable...
Weary, footsore, sated, Daniel and I felt we were getting towards the end of our Easter Show Experience. We managed a desultory wander around the Dog Pavilion, saw some ludicrously coiffured mutts and their equally bizarre-looking owners, and were then headed for the train when Daniel remembered the National Displays. We hadn't seen the National Displays. So we headed for the Food Pavilion, bought a trio of marmalades and marvelled at the National Displays...
We were now feeling patriotic to our very core at Sydney's Royal Easter Show and this will perhaps go some way towards compensating us for missing the very Royal Wedding which seems to be about to go down in London... I'm off to learn the Australian National Anthem so that I can burst into it at appropriate moments (after all I believe it is Anzac Day tomorrow and I'm sure you have to sing it then).
And despite how it might sound, we had great fun at the fair (all for just 34 dollars, a right Royal Bargain.) I suggest you get yourselves down to the Olympic Park this week and thrill to the power of the Chicken...
what? no vintage cars?
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