Easter Show 2K17
It’s April which means it’s Easter. Easter means different things to different people; family, chocolate, or maybe work. For me it’s mainly work, just because it’s easy to get shifts, plus penalty rates. Who doesn’t love getting extra money for the same amount of work? But my Easter was also the start of the Uni break. The break is only a week, and I have mid-session exams when I return, so I can’t relax too much. Just because I have exams, doesn’t mean I can’t take a break from university and catch up with friends and family though.
Some friends from back home planned to come up to Wollongong for the Easter long weekend. We also organised with Maddie in Sydney, to all go to the Easter show together. It was exciting making such a big plan, people travelling hours to see each other, and it being a success means we can do similar stuff again.
The weekend kicked off with a shopping trip, to stock up on food and Easter chocolate. It was the first proper shop I had done in a while, which surprised my mum. The one thing she doesn’t know is how much of it was junk food. It was strange shopping for myself, but it was good being able to choose exactly what I would be eating, for the next week or so. This was only a few days before David arrived for the Easter weekend.
David arrived on Good Friday, I gave him a quick tour of Wollongong. To be honest there isn’t too much to see, it’s quite a small city. It was also a great test of my navigation skills, I don’t think I have ever driven around Wollongong before. We didn’t get lost, well, much. I ended up going on a detour up a hill and through some suburbs I’ve never been before. Even though we got lost it was a great welcome to Wollongong as we could get to see the natural beauty, the beach, and a few important places. From there we headed back to my place and dropped of his baggage.
It was about 6pm when we got back, which is essentially dinner time for me. We made dinner then went down stairs to the basement. We took over the basement rec room and set up an Xbox to the projector. It was awesome being able to setup an Xbox and PC to a massive screen. It doesn’t sound that difficult, but when you’ve never seen the equipment before, it’s hard trying to guess what buttons do, all in hope that you don’t accidentally blow it up. We ended up playing Forza, I won of course … when David didn’t cheat. We then played Tricky Towers, where my Tetris skills came in handy, and I actually won a game. It was fun playing video games and eating fish fingers. Takes me back to the good old days. After this was when we jumped online and played Overwatch with some friends back home and everywhere else. It seemed like a necessary thing for us to do, even though it wasn’t. The rest of the night was spent chilling and watching movies.
Easter Sunday was the day we planned to go to the Easter Show. We woke up around 7am to get ready, cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast. Slightly burning the bacon, still better than the pancakes we tried making the day before. It was about 7:20am when we were ready and the train arrived at the station at 7:44am. So, it seemed like we had plenty of time but we were rushing 2 minutes later as we didn’t realise how long it was going to take to get there. But thankfully we made it on time and caught the train. The plan was to go to Maddie’s house and drop off a computer to do some data transfer then head over to the Easter show.
We arrived at the show ground around 10:30-11am. Heaps of people started rolling in with us. It was weird seeing this many people on an Easter Sunday, I guess I’m not used to going out on the Sunday. We basically walked straight in, having already pre-purchased our tickets online. Even though it with most events they say, “Save time, buy online” you don’t always save that time. The next step was to get ride tickets, which wasn’t too hard considering the amount of ticket stalls around the park.
We first went through the animal section of the show, watching bits and pieces of various competitions for all sorts of animals. We continued to walk around the park, seeing some of the other attractions at the show, including an artist that was doing live spray painting on massive canvases. It was quite impressive how they could create something by layering different spray paint. After this was when we started the hunt for the big rides, not the tea cups.
It was strange not being able to see most of the rides before we got to them, I guess I remember them being a lot bigger. We only went on a few rides, which was fun but I wish we went on more. The five rides we went on was the dodgem cars, nitro coaster, alien abduction, space roller, and Speed2. It was amusing watching people get off the spinning rides and them not being able to walk in a straight line.
Dodgem cars and the nitro coaster are pretty self-explanatory, one was bumper cars and the other was a fast roller-coaster – with a loop-de-loop. I enjoyed these rides the most, because I’ve never been on a roller-coaster with a loop, and who doesn’t love crashing into their friends? The Alien Abduction was like a massive washing machine, it spun around pushing you up against the wall. It was funny watching the cameras watching the people inside. The next two rides were similar, just varied sizes. Space Roller was kind of like a star that spun and rolled you around while sniping in the air. speed 2 was similar in the spinning part, but it more spun you on a beam instead of in your seat. So, you went really high then quickly to the ground and back up, like a fast Ferris wheel.
It was now about 1:30pm and when we finally decided to get food, now that we finished with the rides and no one felt sick after the rides. There were the usual places, like burgers and pizza. We decided upon wood-fire pizza, and fresh lemonade. That was mainly because it was the first thing we saw. The pizza place also just happened to be out the front of the stadium, so we went and sat down in there to have lunch. There was a few horse competitions happening on inside the stadium, so we had lunch and a show. I was disappointed though, as we just missed the car and motocross show. After the food we went and got a spiral potato on a stick, which tasted really nice, because it was basically chips, but on a stick.
But what would a show be without the necessary show bag at the end. We made our way over to the show bag pavilion, passing more super fluffy animals, more food and plenty of rides. it was interesting to see what rides and stalls got the most people. We made it into the massive warehouse full of people and show bags. There was the usual selection of show bags, like food, lifestyle and toys. But I went for the lolly show bags, because none of the other show bags really took my fancy. I ended up settling for 3 sugar filled show bags, mainly because they were apart of a 3 for $12 deal.
I really enjoyed the entire weekend. It’s not everyday you get such nice break from uni that isn’t filled with study. Catching up with friends was probably the part I enjoyed the most, especially since I haven’t seen them in a few months. I would definitely organise something like this again, and maybe next time more people, and a different event.