“Alpaca walkers: SEE LINDA.”

The Post-it note, stuck prominently in the Sydney Royal Easter show’s admin office, is tantalising in its possibilities.

On the first Sunday of the show’s 12-day run, which will bring an estimated 250,000 visitors streaming through the gates, organised chaos prevails.

A display of rural pride in the heart of Sydney’s urban sprawl, with an old-fashioned carnival tacked on to boot, the Easter show – which enjoyed its first event in 1823 – has always been an odd hybrid. Watching a herd of sheep rumble by as the Olympic stadium squats awkwardly in the background produces a faint dissonance that is reflected throughout. For the two weeks of the show, cultures that normally have little contact with each other are pressed together, making for some strange images.

Beleaguered inner-city fathers, sporting conspicuously clean Akubra wide-brimmed hats along with their KeepCups and double-wide prams, rub shoulders with red-faced farmers in the bushman’s-day-out uniform: a checked shirt tucked into blue jeans, gleaming boots and a belt to match. Ignoring the warnings of handlers, city visitors blithely try to pat 1,000kg prize bulls, which paw the ground and test their restraints, fantasies of murder in their eyes.

Competitors in the second division 300mm standing block handicap, at Sydney’s Royal Easter show. Photograph: Alex McKinnon/The Guardian

While well-meaning, the show’s efforts to bridge the rural-urban divide sometimes don’t quite come off. A display about road safety features a cardboard cut-out of a smiling child about to get mown down by a Mack truck. In an effort to educate city kids about where meat comes from, Meat and Livestock Australia is running a virtual-reality tour of the journey beef makes “from paddock to plate”.

Bucolic scenes of cows grazing in sun-kissed fields give way abruptly to a 360-degree immersive view of an industrial slaughterhouse. From one angle, the first-person view the VR headsets afford make it seem as if a white-coated butcher is gutting the spectator, rather than a cow carcass.

A certain Disneyfication bleeds through the festival’s periphery. The KIIS FM haunted house does a roaring trade, presumably so people can see if one of the horrors lurking inside is in fact Kyle Sandilands. Many of the food stalls, unsure what constitutes rural Australian food, fall back on American western and southern cuisine instead.

Stalls festooned with cartoon cowboys and blaring the duelling banjos riff from Deliverance offer up baby back pork ribs and bacon-wrapped turkey legs, served with a generous side of yee-haw camp.

The Easter show’s heart still lies in its staples: wool spinning in the sheep and wool pavilion. Photograph: Alex McKinnon/The Guardian

But no gimmicky sideshow can compete with the might and authenticity of the Country Women’s Association tea-and-scones stand. No concessions to carnival-barker nonsense here. An army of smiling, ruthlessly efficient women dispense devonshire teas with military precision. Tea is served in proper china cups with saucers, all immaculate.

Every stray serviette is pounced on and cleared away. Every table sports the same chequered blue-and-white tablecloth, as recognisable as the national flag. Every scone is made according to the official CWA recipe, primed for optimum fluffiness. A chalkboard keeps count of the number of scones served: 7,796 so far.

The effortless primacy the CWA enjoys, away from the rides and the talkback radio sponsorships, speaks to where the Easter show’s heart still lies: its staples. Its core business of showcasing rural Australia before an urbanised and increasingly divided nation is where its daggy charm shines through. There is real heart in the blue ribbons, the meticulously groomed livestock, and the lovingly assembled fruit and vegetable displays.

The NSW northern district’s entry in the annual district exhibits competition showcases regional produce. Photograph: Alex McKinnon/The Guardian

Two days ago the owner of Tathra Oysters, Gary Rodely, was thanking firefighters for battling to save his south coast town from a bushfire that destroyed dozens of houses and properties. Now he’s here, showing Tathra’s prized oysters. “We need people to not cancel their holidays, we need people to come,” he says.

“The message that everyone is keen to get out, especially with Easter coming up, is that the town’s open for business, and back to normal.”

There are still plenty of spectacles that are cheerfully baffling to the outsider. In the Charles Moses stadium, a concrete amphitheatre baking in the 32-degree heat, the world’s largest woodchopping and sawing competition is under way. Blocks of wood the size of stereo speakers are blown to pieces by men the size of fridges.

At the cat show, impossibly sombre attendants in white lab coats take the prizewinning cats out of their cages, hold them aloft to applause, and put them back again.

A feline contestant is held aloft at the cat competition. Photograph: Alex McKinnon/The Guardian

But the reactionary caricature presented by professed representatives of rural Australia seems very far away amid the displays of solar-powered remote weather stations and automated crop harvesters. In a time when 83% of Australians are agnostic about the value of agriculture, the show’s efforts to win over the next generation of city slickers are as valuable as ever. The Woolworths fresh food dome presents a squeaky-clean version of rural life, one in which the industrial-grade exploitation Australian dairy farmers and produce growers endure at the supermarket giant’s hands is blissfully absent.

It’s hard to be cynical about the “Say g’day to a farmer” wall, though, where children leave scrawled notes of thanks to farmers they will never meet. “I am greatful [sic] for cheese!” says one. “I am greatful for cows,” reads another, more solemn. If nothing else, the show remains a reminder that no matter where they’re born and raised, small children always go berserk when they get to ride in a tractor for the first time.