Moore Park in the 1940s

The Sydney Showground opened at Moore Park in 1882, and the Agricultural Society's Show had carried the "Royal" in its name since Queen Victoria granted it in 1891 — a fixture of the calendar since long before any of these photographs were taken. The grounds themselves kept growing to hold it: expanded south between 1902 and 1919, then north through the 1920s and 30s, and renovated again in 1938, two years before this Show, to fit still more of the crowd in.

The 1940 Show is what they mostly record. An officer's address, broadcast over an ABC microphone from a draped platform, opens the day. Soldiers in slouch hats stand in ranks across the arena as officers walk the line on inspection, the grandstand and a judges' pavilion behind them. A grey horse clears a post-and-log fence on the sand arena, watched from a crowded stand. None of it reads yet as anything but an ordinary Easter — the Show had run almost every year since 1869 — but within two years the grounds were given over to the war. The gates did not reopen to a Show again until 1947.

Look for the ABC microphone on its draped stand, and the log fence still standing between jumps.