Sydney Royal Easter Show

21 minutes past 11.

Now, we just love the Sydney Royal Easter Show here at 2GB and we're a little while away and we'll be out there broadcasting again in 2027, hopefully.

A great way to see the country come to the city and it's just such a fun experience to be a part of and that's where you come in because...

The show is something that we can all play a part in.

You see, volunteer applications are now open for the 2027 Sydney Royal Easter Show with the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales calling on people to giddy up and get involved.

The show's happening from the 19th to the 30th of March, so put those dates down in your calendar.

Any opportunity, I get to catch up with my great mate Murray Wilton, the general manager of the Sydney Royal Easter Show.

He's on the line with me now.

And I think that was...

Oh, I thought you meant like if you're at the Easter show, you know, where you had to go there, you know, everyone goes to the Pig Pavilion at least once.

That's exactly what it was.

And then, like, one day, one year, they had, like, Basement Jackson at Chemical Brothers.

Okay, and what's your horse's name, and what do you do with your horse?

His name is Paddington, and I take him around the various agricultural shows, collecting points to exhibit him at Sydney Royal every year.

So you've got to get points, have you?

Yeah, you've got to get points.

So it's a great way to encourage people to support the agricultural shows because I think they've done it tough with the price of fuel and stuff.

The numbers are a bit down.

But, yeah, you still need your points to get your horse accepted to Sydney Royal.

So, yeah, a good bit of community support needed everywhere.

Great man.

So you'd see him at the Easter show when

you were a kid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, they had to, yeah.

When I interviewed him, me and myself and Jake Lindsay, the late, great Jake Lindsay, shot by Jake, my photographer.

We did a book on the Royal Easter show.

for Peter Olof.

Anyway, won all my riding classes in all the shows all around, Bankstown Show, Liverpool Show, Ingleburn Show, all the shows I was, you know, under 12, riding classes.

And it's so funny, I grew up with Bruce Flood who was champion gentleman rider at Sydney Royal and won many, many champion hacks, many beautiful horses, and he's still a really great friend of mine.

And so back in the day, all you could do was either hacking or show jumping.

And so Bankstown show, I was a one champion rider under 12 and champion under 12 jumping rider.

yeah go on a straight line and go around the corner I don't know but what I once hang on yeah stay on steer it kick it and stay on one of the things that we did a lot at Rossmore Party Club was do musical rides and Now

you're actually giving me a little bit of, oh, no, no, not the musical ride.

Yeah, because I guess watching the musical ride at Sydney Royal with the police and all of this, we did a special show at this fabulous, I don't know, it was at the bloody where they had... basketball i can't remember the exact name of the arena but they had this show jumping show at the basketball one of the guys that are listening will remember and we did it was uncle sam the music to uncle sam and i dressed up as uncle sam and the kids rode around and they were dressed up in all stars and stripes and all of this and the rossmore pony club did this thing at this the show jumping show anyway one hook one kid's horse who she still events these days her son events as well and um anyway her horse went off its tits and there's always

one

Yeah, the reason I asked that as well is this will date when the episode comes out, but I was at the ECHA on the weekend, so opening weekend.

So for those who don't know, the ECHA is the agricultural event in Brisbane for Sydneysiders, like the Royal Easter Show, not quite as good.

That's not controversial.

I'm a New South Wales guy.

And because of that, it has a longer shelf life.

One of the biggest things for us was we were doing a Royal Sydney Easter show back in 2004 and it was pensioner day.

And we thought our biggest concern was can pensioners afford to buy our products? And when they started coming through the dome, Frank was talking to his couple and they said, oh, we buy these bananas.

And we said, really? And they said, yeah, they're like bananas used to be.

It's a sham.

It's this, it's that.

And then when we did the first Royal Sydney Easter Show, which was 2003, we'd taken a stand in the Woolworths Dome.

And that was when Coles and Woolworths actually came to us.

And in fact, the very, very first boat on display, in a public display, which was not quite a boat show, but an attempt for, um, visitors to, um, or the businesses in the marine industry to have an interaction with the consumer face to face, was in about 1933.

And that's when, um, Halverson used to exhibit a display or a, a range of boats at the Easter Show.

So it goes back to the 1930s when, um, boats started being on display.

There you go.

Oh

... and I was at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, and Silverchair were performing.

Remember how big they were when we were, like, teenagers?

Yeah.