Sydney Royal Easter Show Archives

It’s an annual event we’ve held off for the past 3 years. The crowds, the smelly animals, the long lines – none of it made the Sydney Royal Easter Show appealing.

And I figured the twinions were still too young to appreciate any of it.

Okay, okay. I lie. It was always about me. Up until recently, I was a Royal Easter Show party pooper.

But this year, we braved the possible perils and surprisingly had a fabulous day. Here are some unconventional tips that you might (or might not) find useful:

Don’t go until post Easter Long weekend. There are far less humans to piss you off. Bonus if you go on Kid’s Day (the last day) as entry fee isn’t a complete major rip off.

Avoid standing in line for hours! Thanks to the assistance of one of the Show volunteers, we bought ours at the train station 100 metres away from the entry gates and where 100’s of disgruntled people were waiting for hours. SCORE

Go after midday. You miss the highly strung morning crowds and by 5-ish everything is a lot more mellow and everyone has come down from their candy floss sugar high.

Leave around 7pm when the showbag stands are closing up. Play dumb parent to the ones that aren’t and you’ve saved yourself at least $100 on bags of worthless, plastic items that will break before you get past the exit gates. *Note: No guarantee this strategy will work next year.

A mini denim skirt is absolutely inappropriate attire for the preschooler’s dodgem cars. Holding the steering wheel with one hand, while trying to hide your hoochie mama from the world’s glare with the other THEN yelling at your 4 year old to keep pressing the foot pedal is no easy multi-tasking feat. Seriously.

The train roller coaster in the Kids World section is actually age inappropriate and bloody scary. Your children will be fine. You however, will cling onto dear life and crap your daks.

Watch out for head butting cows! We witnessed one innocent little girl reach out to give a friendly pat only to have her noggin nudged out of its way. Luckily, she wasn’t hurt. I think the cow was in shock, though.

Coupon bartering is a no-no. If your shamelessly frugal husband tries to negotiate with the Super Slide ticket lady the number of coupons (“12? Really? Can’t we do it for 6??”) for a family of 4, cry ignorance. Dude, it’s the Easter Show. Everything is non-negotiable. Get used to it.

If your twins want to go to the Dinosaur Adventures exhibition hall 3 times in a row, go along with it. It’s about the only thing at the Show with free entry. Also, the monotony of seeing a mechanical brachiosaurus is far less painful than dealing with the future disappointment when your children find out dinosaurs no longer exist.

Watching a Mama Pig with at least a dozen suckling piglets will make you subconsciously squirm and fold your arms tightly across your chest in imaginary agony.