Our Weekend

As I said on my last post we were out to dinner with friends on Saturday.
We parked near their flat and caught a tram into town. They took us to a favourite of theirs a Japanese restaurant on Flinders Lane called Hako. Gorgeous sashimi and sushi!
For those of you who have never tried sashimi give it a go. I love seafood of all kinds, Deb on the other hand doesn’t usually like fish, but she loves sashimi.

Anyway after a late night out Deb and I were out and about on Sunday.
We did a bit of exploring, we didn’t see much of great note. However I did stop on this little dirt road to take a couple of piccies. One shows how threatening the sky was.The other feature what I really stopped for. Someone must have been mad keen on practising kicking goals on this farm. This is about the first time I have seen someone with their own nearly full size set of Aussie Rules Footy goals.

I pondered given how overgrown these are how long it is since they were used. I also wondered if someone who was so keen ever went on to play professionally. A kind of country boy done good thing.

Enough for tonight because it has been a really long day!

Mark Twain, A Race and a Footy Match

Well today is a Public holiday in Melbourne. There is an event that happens here every year on the first Tuesday in November. A horse race called the Melbourne Cup.

I guess it is somehow typical of Aussies that one of our biggest public holidays, a spectacle that brings the state to a halt, is a horse race.
And I really mean to a halt. Today is an official public holiday which means employers are obliged by law to pay anyone working today two and a half times their normal pay. Not surprisingly most businesses shut up shop for the day.

To be fair “The Cup” has a long tradition as a big event, this year sees its 150th Anniversary.
Mark Twain was in Melbourne in 1895 and he said of the day:“Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal—and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme it has no rival.”

Now that is all I have to say about The Cup. I enjoyed the day off but I didn’t go to the Flemington Racecourse to watch the race run.

Instead I will talk about another sporting event that would arguably be even more important to Melburnians. The Aussie Rules Grand Final which happens at the end of September.

In Victoria there are two sports that really grab the public attention. Cricket in the summer and Australian Rules Football (or footy) in winter. Footy would be the closest thing there is to a universal passion in Melbourne. If you want to have a conversation with a Victorian a good starting point is almost always footy. The passion for the sport somewhat bewilders me as I am from Queensland where Rugby is the local "footy" and I have to admit I am not much interested in that either. I maintain I am the quiet writer type :-)

However this year Deb and I went to the Grand Final.
Deb is a big fan of The Saint Kilda Football Club and they were playing. More to the point Deb was given a pair of corporate tickets worth… Well I dread to think what they were worth, the face vale was $345 each but I know they always sell for $700 - $1500. Safe to say we wouldn’t have gone unless we had been gifted the tickets.

So the big day came Deb and I arrived very early to avoid the worst of the crowd. We walked from Flinders Street Railway Station towards the Melbourne Cricket Ground the home of footy (the MCG also affectionately known as ‘The Gee’). We used a footbridge to cross the lines running into Flinders Street.
The view from the footbridge back to the Melbourne CBD

As you get close you realise just how big the stadium is.When we arrived the stands were fairly empty.The teams came out on to the ground to warm up.Deb snapped this shot of me to prove I was there.

“Entertainment” was provided like this ‘footy’ shaped hot air balloon.One of the coaches discussed kicking with Nick Riewoldt the St Kilda Captain.
Who then had a go himself.INXS played their hit “Suicide Blonde” as the ground continued to fill.They are starting to look like old rockers.
QANTAS did a flyby with their latest Super Jumbo.And the players (who had disappeared as INXS played) made their formal entry to the field.
The first ball up was held by one of the referees (there are four on the ground plus two goal keeping umpires) and the game was on.I won’t even try to explain the rules, the game is very different to any other form of football (the closet is Gaelic Football played in Ireland). If you want to get some idea of the rules you can go here.

Probably the most important thing to understand is the game is fast, very fast. Often scores of 130 or 150 are achieved by both teams.It is also very intense as you can see by the face of this St Kilda player.The ball flies high and the players leap high into the air to try to ‘take a mark’ which gives them a free kick.The whole crowd scream their heads off. Deb screamed (so much she lost her voice that night), and even me, the least football minded person on the ground, ended up screaming my lungs out.

The writer in me has filed this experience away. The atmosphere is amazing, very much as I imagine the feel at a Roman spectacle must have been.

The result a draw!

Collingwood kicked 9 goals and 14 behinds for a score of 68, while St Kilda kicked 10 goals and 8 behinds for a score of 68.Under AFL rules the teams would have to come back to play again the next week. This is only the second time this has happened in over 100 years!

A word about Aussie crowds, as you can see when the ground is at its fullest fans of both teams are intermingled. There seems to be little or no ill will between the supporters of each team.
I think this has two causes: first Aussies tend to be relatively laid back, we aren’t generally aggressive to each other; and with such high scores the supporters of both teams get plenty of outlet for their passions!

So that was the (first) Grand Final of 2010.

The day had a final treat in store. As we walked back towards Flinders Street the evening light and a rapidly approaching storm did wonders for the light over the city.The Eureka Tower in particular looked spectacular.The colours of the building have some symbolism. The gold face represents the gold of the 19th century rushes. The red represents the shed blood of the Eureka rebels and the blue and white stand for the colours of the Southern Cross flag they fought (and died) under. I may say more about the Eureka Rebellion around the anniversary later in the year.


Ps. In the replay St Kilda were defeated by Collingwood (but as Deb is still smarting I won’t say any more).

Four N’ Twenty

Well I seem to have aroused a great deal of curiosity over Four ‘N Twenty Pies.

How do I answer the simple question what is a Four ‘N Twenty Pie?

Well being creative (or foolish) I am going to engage in a little cliché.

If you feel I malign you or your much loved nation, well all I can do is apologise in advance.

When people feel the need for a little snack, or lunch on the run across the world they often fall back on a local tradition.

The French eat croissants.The English eat egg and chips.Americans reach for a hot dog.Aussies when eating on the run traditionally grab a meat pie.And in Victoria the most favoured brand of meat pie is a Four ‘N Twenty.Absolutely the most traditional place to eat a pie is while watching Aussie Rules Football at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground).To complete the wrap up of cliché I include a piccie of a Four N’ Twenty being eaten at the footy.

Just to totally change the subject, I thought you might be interested in another reflection I caught on the pond I showed you the other night
Down at the far end was:(you’ll have to forgive the quality, this is a small section cropped from a much larger photo).

Most of the images in this post were from Wikimedia Commons . The Kangaroo reflection is mine.

Next: I answer the question "You want to publish your third book in five years. What about the first?"

A Tinny at the Footy

We had a busy weekend. Mon, my sister-in-law (Deb’s sister), her husband and two young children came down from Queensland to visit us.
Mon has never been to Melbourne (or for that matter Victoria) before, so we had an eventful couple of days operating as tour guides.

Because of our visitors, I arranged the roster to give myself the day off yesterday.
For those in the know, I did not ‘chuck a sickie’.
We took my dearly beloved’s rellies to the zoo.

A brief note about Oz English ‘rellies’ are relatives.
Aussies have a habit of shortening many words or phrases by dropping syllables and/or substituting ‘ie’ or ‘y’ at the end.

So: a sick day becomes a ‘sickie’; a barbeque becomes a ‘barbie’; a beer tin becomes a ‘tinny’.

An aluminium dingy isn’t a ‘dingy’ as would be logical it is a ‘tinny’ as well. So to say: ‘I drank a few tinnies while at sea in a tinny”, would make perfect sense to an Aussie.

Another small point: Australians call Australia ‘Oz’ because we pronounce ‘Aussie’ as ‘Ozzie’. When most Americans say ‘Aussie’ it sounds like ‘Arsey’ to our ear which means something entirely different. An ‘arse’ is a butt, I believe ‘arsey’ means ‘unpleasant’ in British English, but in Oz English it means ‘lucky’

As to our beloved mother country, many Aussies (or is that Ozzies) following our tradition of dropping syllables now say not “Aust-ra-li-a” but rather ‘Ah-stray-ya’ or for the verbally lazy ‘Stray-ya’.

While I am rambling about Oz language I should mention briefly another word much beloved by many Aussies.

Footy.

I am largely mentioning footy because of a conversation I had with Lisa of Lit and Life.

What is Footy you might ask? Well following the rules of Oz grammar it is an abbreviation of “Football”.

“Ah,” they say, “that makes perfect sense.”

Unfortunately it doesn’t, there are four widely played codes of football in Oz. The word ‘Footy’ has differing meanings across the country.

Perhaps foolishly I will attempt to explain.

The four major codes of football in Australia are:

Soccer: this international game is usually called ‘football’ in most of the world. Not many Aussies would call Soccer ‘footy’. However, fans of this sport are attempting to claim the word ‘football’ exclusively for their game and if they are successful (which is probably unlikely) Soccer would no doubt become ‘footy’.

Rugby Union: The international version of Rugby. ‘Union’ is a minority sport in Oz. But if you go to a private school odds are when you say ‘footy’ you mean ‘Union.’

Rugby League: A version of Rugby played widely in the North East of Oz (and in New Zealand). If you come from New South Wales (NSW), or Queensland (QLD)it is expected that you believe ‘League is the one true footy.’

Of course if you come from the rest of the country, Victoria (VIC), South Australia (SA), The Northern Territory (NT), Western Australia (WA) or Tasmania (TAS) there is only one sport. Australian Rules Football sometimes called ‘Aussie Rules’ but in its home states simply ‘footy’.

American Football is played by a tiny minority of people in Oz. It is never called ‘footy’ rather it is usually called, well as is obvious, ‘American Football’ or sometimes ‘Gridiron’.

Being an adoptee of the state of Victoria (although once a Queenslander always a Queenslander) I should say a bit about the home grown ‘footy’ Aussie Rules.

Australian Rules Football is akin to a national religion in Victoria. It is incredibly popular. I think this popularity stems from the fact that it is not only a traditional game here, but it is incredibly fast. For example the 2009 Grand Final score was Geelong Cats 80, beating Saint Kilda 68, and that was considered a fairly low scoring game!

I include a link to some footage of the 2009 Grand Final. That should make Lisa happy being a Cats supporter!

Now I have waxed lyrical about Language and Footy for so long that I have run out of time to do what originally intended.

So next time: The cuteness factor.