And now for something completely different

Australia. Some people say it’s a little like England, only bigger and sunnier. Its cities have touches of Americana, but somehow work in a more charming and intimate way. Its proximity to Asia adds a multitude of flavours, including my favourite Laksa from the lovely girls at Thai Cornar. So, like the coffee, the blend is good. The cream on the top are those uniquely Australia things – its Indigenous culture tied inextricably to the red earth, nature’s bounty rich and rare, the flying Kangaroo and, probably the most unfathomable thing to an outsider, Australian Rules Football, or to those in the know, AFL.

The undisputed capital of AFL is Melbourne, which is where I happened to find myself on the penultimate weekend of the footy season. The temple of footy is the MCG, which also happened to be near the mystery hotel I had booked. It was time for us to get better acquainted.



The ground, ah the ground, a magnificent Coliseum, a huge bowl you could fill with cornflakes a billion times over. It’s also home to cricket of course, but in the ‘winter’ it fills with Melburnians decked out in their team colours to watch a group of hoons in tight vests kick a ball about and have a bit of a scrap.

Tonight was the turn of the Hawks (Hawthorn) versus the Saints (St Kilda) for a place in the Grand Final against the Cats (Geelong). An all-Melbourne duel, bringing out 77,000 of the locals and, barring the odd blotto, a frenzied all-Aussie atmosphere. What followed were four quarters of kicking, running, jumping, bundling each other over and chasing an egg around a field. It’s really not a hard sport to follow but, as much as I wanted to, I just didn’t feel it. Perhaps part of the problem was Hawthorn romping to a comprehensive victory rather than those nail-biting one-pointers that have even been known to keep me on the edge of my seat. But it was an experience, a real fair dinkum she’ll be apples experience and the G was the real star.





Now, back to that mystery hotel I was talking about. It was a mystery because it was one of those ‘don’t find out until you book it’ deals and in the end it turned out just about perfect, a punt between the posts from the MCG and on the eastern edge of the city with the views and all. I was glad to be staying here thinking I could have access to a TV showing the Ryder Cup, only to find it was on terrestrial TV anyway, though Channel Ten decided to stop coverage right at the brink of the end of the day’s matches to bring us the shameless promotional advertising fest that is Video Hits. Still, I couldn’t stand fat amoebas shouting “Boooooooooo” anyway.

Sunday was shaping into a ripper, proving Canberra doesn’t quite have the monopoly on Spring and I duly wandered and fell in love with Melbourne once again. From my pad I sauntered over to Fitzroy Gardens, filled my face on breakfast and coffee and waddled through the flower beds to the ‘Paris End’ of town. Yes, it’s true, they call it the Paris end, I guess courtesy of the many small boutiques, designer stores and snooty women with poodles (OK, that bit’s not true). It’s also where the theatres are and any pretensions of Paris were truly obliterated with the forthcoming show:

(For tickets text flipper boy on noice shayne, noice)

For the more common fellows like me, the place to shop is the Bourke Street Mall and Melbourne Central, a more typical, Aussie myriad of stores and food and smell of coffee. It’s only a mall, but at its heart is a huge conical glass structure along with a giant watch. I later found out the watch plays Waltzing Matilda once an hour and I am gutted I did not linger. I got a watch of my own though, finally, so I can actually get through the focus groups I came here to do knowing just how long they’ve been going.

There are more crazy structures down at Federation Square. I cannot really describe what it is, I’m not sure if I like it or not, but it’s quite magnetic. I think it typifies Melbourne and, as such, it was full of AFL related going-ons in the lead up to next weekend’s Grand Final (which, if you have been paying attention brings the Cats up against the Hawks. How that one would play out in nature I’m not too sure).

And so, like the footy season, the end is nearly here. The sun sets on another weekend, but sets nice it does over the Yarra.



Hopefully in the morning Channel Ten can keep going and Boooooooo can bugger off and find out exactly where Eyouroop is on a map. If not, I might have to turn to the AFL. Go the Hawks!