Canberra Show

Sunday:

Today we went to the Canberra Show, where the country comes to the city! Canberra is about a tenth the size of Sydney where I grew up and the agricultural show is proportionately smaller, but still fun.

There was wood-chopping;

 

a petting zoo (these are alpacas, isn't the baby one adorable!);

 

jousting is new to the Show this year, we all loved it;

 

motorbike trick riding (you can see the guy level with the trees in the middle of the picture, probably just finishing a somersault or something equally dangerous);

 

and Flyball which I think is an Australian sport. Each team of four dogs runs in relay over the jumps to the far end to fetch a ball then runs back to his/her owner. The height of the jumps is based on the shortest dog, so you often have a team with one tiny dog bounding over jumps and then the other three big dogs hardly noticing the jumps are even there. I'm always amazed that the dogs don't get distracted by all the other dogs all over the place, but mostly they are very motivated to get that ball and bring it back!

There are also sideshow games and rides at the Show but we don't bother with those much. We did look at some cows and sheep and various stalls selling wine and honey and windchimes and "magic" pens (we bought some of those) and sour candy and patted a baby crocodile and made a police badge and looked at local artwork. The kids got a showbag full of lollies each, which they will have a couple of pieces a day from for the next few weeks. This year I didn't buy a showbag but I did have a packet of cheezels and some chocolate as well as pizza for lunch. We were there five hours and I got a lot of steps in!

It was really hot as usual but we had a little storm just before we left and being sprinkled with cooling rain was lovely. Great day, I love the Show!

It wasn't exactly a healthy day, I'll get back into my daily reporting tomorrow.