Moore Park

This afternoon we drove to Moore Park to have a look at the farmers' market. Moore Park is a huge area that was originally home to Sydney zoo, before they moved it to the site at Bradley's Head on the north shore of the harbour. It now encompasses the Aussie Stadium (where they play aussie rules football), the SCG (where they thrash us at cricket), Fox Studios (where they make mediocre films) and so-called Entertainment Quarter and showground, which is where they hold the farmers' market twice a week. In the picture you can see the showground in the foreground, then the SCG with the large floodlights and the Aussie stadium at the back.

Moore park is worth an hour of your time during the day if you have kids. At night it's home to cinemas, restaurants and fruit bats as well as the Comedy Store, which has exactly the same London underground logo as the ones in London and Manchester.

The two best things about Moore Park are the playground (with those funny sunshades on the top, which they call shade sails. Very nice play equipment, including a little castle with drawbridge and a kiosk peddling caffeine) and a shop called "Kids Central" which stocks almost the entire range of Early Learning Centre toys direct from the UK. And because they're British toys, the play food is labelled "Sainsburys", which warms the cockles of a pommie heart.

Anyway, the farmers' market was very pleasant, with real-life farmers selling soil-covered veggies and their wives presiding over home-made sticky date puddings, jams and cheeses. Ella bagged a warm slice of apple and pear cake and having parted with my dollars I took the opportunity to bend the ear of a real-life Aussie farmer's wife about the best way make to pear and raspberry bread, which is the next thing I'm going to learn to cook. Apparently it's all in the frozen raspberries, so we'll see how it turns out.