Ian has been telling me about the Sydney Royal Easter Show for years and the day finally came around for me to see it for myself and it really lived up to all the hype. It was sensational, a bizarre mix - sort of Sydney slick meets Women's Institute.
It was held in the Olympic Park and we took the train down from Newcastle right into the venue with only one change. When we arrived at the station at the crack of dawn we went to buy tickets but were told travel was included in the ticket price if we were going to the show - astonishing as we were travelling from another city!
The first thing we walked through was the huge funfair and then, Ian couldn't wait any longer and we headed for the vegetable displays. It is the centenary of the battle at Gallipoli this year so most of the displays were dedicated to that and were amazing.
Onto Arts and Crafts. The effort that goes into this section is just staggering, I now have a picture in my mind of a whole industry of country women on remote farms churning out crocheting, knitting, feltwork, embroidery, mosaics, paintings, quilting, leatherwork,quilling(?), scrapbooking!, lace making and so it goes on and everything labelled quaintly as made by Mrs so and so, it reminded me of my grandmother and her neighbours who all addressed each other as Mrs. Most remarkable of all were the cakes, there were hundreds of them so many that I have added a page of pictures to the blog for anyone interested in seeing more. They were so elaborate and intricate we could not imagine how these women had transported them, some for thousands of kilometres and many along unsealed roads. 

On top of all this excitement there were the animal competitions, these are deadly serious because to win a category at the Royal Easter Show is like winning Crufts and can make a huge difference to the value of a farm's livestock.
Then my personal favourite, the woodchopping. I could have watched this for hours, it goes on constantly for the

whole two weeks of the show and the quantity of wood they get through is incredible. We were lucky enough to see the presentation of the prizes for the Jack and Jill paired sawing...look what takes the place of champagne on the podium.