Sydney Royal Easter Show

Sounds quite impressive with the 'Royal' in there in the title, doesn't it,  and it was, even though I didn't see any Royals. There were lots of people of different nationalities, families, teenagers and seniors all having a great time, though.

It seemed equally popular to go and see the animals and the sheep shearing, as to see the cake-decoration competition, or the Elvis impersonator (he was great by the way), or the wine tasting (we had some lovely rosé from the Mudgee region). What I am saying is that there were people everywhere, but it is a spacious venue in Sydney Olympic Park so there was plenty of space. The walking almost killed me however, I wish I had had a pedometer to see how far we walked.

My absolute favorite event though was the wood chopping which according to the signs is a time-honored activity here in Australia and this particular competition is colloquially called the Wimbledon of Woodchopping!!

The men were mostly chopping with axes and the women did sawing. Here you can see one of the female contestants hard at it but I was actually looking at my favorite one further away.

In the final part that we looked at they had to lop off the top of a 3 metre high "tree", the tree-felling event. This was done by a special technique which meant that they had to insert bits of wood to stand on to be able to reach the highest bit. This event was won by a New Zealander (darn it!)  The only thing that worried me through the whole thing was that it would have been so easy for someone to let go of their ax and for it to fly into the audience. It didn't happen so all's well, but just imagine.