Richard Bannister

There were no trip reports published on Tuesday and Wednesday because we did not visit any parks. Tuesday featured a visit to a winery and a wax museum in Brisbane; Wednesday featured a trip to the Blue Mountains, some general sightseeing, and a climb of the harbour bridge in Sydney. The latter was a particularly impressive experience, though foreign tourists should be aware that it is hideously expensive, and that personal cameras are not allowed. The BridgeClimb staff will happily sell you photos you could have taken yourself at seriously inflated prices.

This morning we were ready to go back to coasters and parks, and the Sydney Royal Easter Show fit the bill. The show is primarily a showcase of all things agricultural, and consequentially fun fair rides only make up a small portion of it. Nevertheless a very large number of attractions were present, broadly speaking equivalent to a middle of the road German fair. The place was heaving with people, and as such it took us the better part of two hours to experience just five rides in total, and it wasn't even a weekend!

There were two sections of rides located at opposite ends of the show grounds. The first we encountered was that aimed at younger people, but that didn't stop us riding both the Wacky Worm (#1128) and the powered Gold Mine Coaster. These were accompanied by a large percentage of the Zamperla catalogue, including a Rockin' Tug, a Balloon Race, a Wave Swinger, and several more. The standard of presentation was simply excellent, with everything positively gleaming.

While this area was relatively large it was nothing compared to the massive section of adult attractions. Taking pride of place was the largest travelling coaster in Australia, the Taipan (#1129). This ride operated at Sea World on the Gold Coast for twenty years, before being put on the road in 2002. There was also the ubiquitous Reverchon spinning mouse, here named Crazy Coaster (#1130). This ride was particularly popular, with a queue time exceeding half an hour, not bad at all when everyone is paying for each ride. We also rode the ferris wheel, as it was ideally placed for a good overview photograph of the entire fair.

Sydney's Luna Park is marginally bigger than its brother in Melbourne, but it is still not somewhere one could spend more than an hour or two without becoming bored. However, the staff here were considerably more friendly, and consequentially we managed to have a very pleasant visit.

We had originally hoped to ride all three wooden coasters in Australia during our trip, but scheduled maintenance closed two of them, meaning that the only one we were able to ride was Wild Mouse (#1131). The name of this ride is particularly apt; it is extremely aggressive, quite a bit more so than the the usual enthusiast benchmark. Every hill produced powerful airtime, and the car felt like it was going to come off the track at each corner. The experience on the whole was utterly amazing, if a little to heavy for rerides in the baking sunshine.

We had a good look around the rest of the park but elected not to ride anything more. Instead, we made our way back to the airport for our flight on to New Zealand.