Tuesday I worked, Katka went to visit Sydney's famous Town Hall, and Misa stayed home to work on homeschool and relax. Sometimes she just needs a day off from traveling, which I completely understand.
I presented a paper at the school's weekly research seminar. It isn't a great paper, but the folks here were kind and gave me some good feedback. One thing I will really miss when we leave here is being able to talk about my research with thre faculty and get great suggestions on what to try or ideas on how to proceed.
Katka really enjoyed seeing the Town Hall, it is an impressive building and well maintained.
Wednesday we went to the Easter Show at the Olympic Park. If you have ever been to a large county fair or smaller state fair you have a pretty good idea of what it was like. However, there were a few reminders that you were in Australia instead of Colorado. For example the Save the Bilbies tent with the live koala, wallaroo, and bilby on display, or the stadium devoted to the wood chopping events, or the showbag hall. If you are not familiar with showbags, they are large plastic bags full of items with a related theme at a discount price. For example, most show bags cost $5 to $15 and contain merchandise worth up to $50. There were over 300 showbags for sale, everything from sports (rugby and Aussie Rules Football), toys (Barbie, Smurfs), candy (Cadbury and Mars company seemed to be represented the best), drinks (everything from Powerade to Pepsi to milk), movies (Harry Potter, GI Joe), magazines (the entire gamut), fashion (perfumes, makeup, accessories), etc. The hall where they were on display and for sale was about the same size as the hall for sheep shearing, which means you know it was one of the biggest.
We started with lunch, then the dog agility competition, Sydney Royal Dog Show, cats, equestrian show jumping, the petting zoo (ridiculously large and fun due to the number of baby animals), pigs and piglets (lots of piglets), the junior rodeo, the stockmen's ride (show), a freestyle motocross exhibition similar to the Crusty Demons we enjoyed so much in Melbourne, and finishing with a fireworks and pyrotechnics show. Even if we had two more days we wouldn't have been able to do everything at the fair. The things we wanted to do the most but didn't have time for were the carnival, Bonnie Yard Dog exhibition, the fashion and style pavilion, wood chopping competition, and lots of shows.
