The Sydney Easter Show is a big deal around here. Britta had been talking about it for a while, mentioning wood chopping contests, Showbags, Australia's biggest lemon and so forth. So today was the day we went there, because it's the second-last day.
It's on in the Olympic complex, and is very much like what you might imagine every single thing that's ever been on in the RDS (except the Eircom Christmas Party 2000) amalgamated into one. Craft exhibitions, food stands, fairground rides, sports displays, overpriced everything - it's all oddly familiar.
So today I've seen prizewinning sides of beef, huge dioramas made of fruit and vegetables and grain, a giant happy packet of cat food, half a dozen chicks in bikinis climbing down a ladder, Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men made out of cake, a man spinning on his head, another man clapping his feet together in front of his face whilst in the midair part of a motorbike jump, people being launched aloft in a ball on elastic bands, Miss Piggy the diving pig diving into a tub of water and a goat peeing. Amongst other things.
A showbag, by the way, is a sort of lucky bag thing, except it's more expensive and bigger and there's a bunch of them each with a different theme. The "Transformers" one turned out to be a gratuitous and somewhat sick (in my opinion) misuse of a registered trademark, and they all seemed to be filled with utter crap anyway, so I settled with buying one from an Australian chocolate company that was pleasantly heavy and cheaper than buying all the chocolate individually, which I wouldn't have, but I'm sure enjoying owning it. Or I was up until I started feeling unwell, at least.