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Published: August 6th 2007
Wandering Melbourne and Fantastic Footy
A Day of Shopping and Frustration We decided to spend Saturday in the shopping districts of Melbourne since all the shops were back open and would all be closed again for Easter Sunday. Since we’ve really enjoyed our nice hotel room, we’ve had a really hard time getting started in the morning. We just love to lay around in the huge bed and sleep until we are too hungry to lay around any more. Unfortunately I woke with a nasty sinus headache which made for a less than pleasant morning.
We headed for food at about 10:30 and had about a half hour walk down to the restaurants at the South Gate shopping center on the Yarra River. Kel was really hoping for lunch food but there are very specific times for meal changes here so we were about an hour ahead of the breakfast to lunch change over. I was happy to suffer through pancakes while Kel selected yogurt and granola.
With our bellies full we went up to Bourke Street and spent some time in the shopping district. I picked up a few books but other than
that we didn’t buy anything. Shopping is always a bit of a challenge for us at this point in our travels. We need nothing, can’t afford to buy anything or have the space to carry it with us and aren’t even really interested in looking. To make matters a little more challenging there were huge crowds in the area due to Easter sales. While we’ve dealt with some pretty claustrophobic situations, for some reason today’s crush pushed us both over the edge. We both got kinda short with each other and weren’t comfortable with our surroundings.
As we hoofed it out of the area both of us figured out that we were cranky because we were hungry as it was now 3pm and we hadn’t eaten in a while even though we had been walking consistently for the last couple of hours. After walking a bit more we stumbled across a Greek restaurant that was packed which, as always, is a good sign. We had to wait awhile to get in but had some really good authentic Greek food and both felt much better with each other and the world.
The hotel was pretty close by so we
walked back for an afternoon break and to drop off the books I bought. Once back in the room we realized that we were pretty tired, we had walked about 5 miles, so we napped a bit. Every once in a while we find that we are just tired for no real reason. This day had been one of those that would have been better for us to just start over. A headache, some crankiness and fatigue really got the best of us.
We did end the day on a much better note though. We went back down to South Gate and found a restaurant that was recommended by our hotel and had a really nice dinner and then went to the movies. This is the first time we’ve been to the movies since prior to leaving Richmond in November of last year. We saw Stomp the Yard which shouldn’t surprise anyone who is familiar with Kel’s obsession with dancing competition movies and hip-hop culture/music. It was a really nice movie. We both really enjoyed it and would recommend it for anyone who likes this sort of thing and enjoys feel-good type movies.
The Melbourne Tourist Bus We’ve been in a few cities that have get-on-get-off tourist busses that travel through the key points of cities and allow passengers to get off at key destinations and get back on at a later point. In all of these cities the price for these buses is usually reasonable. Never have we been in a city before that has one of these services that is free until Melbourne. We normally forgo these types of services to save the money and just walk around town instead. In this case, we couldn’t pass up taking a free ride throughout town and see a few of the places we hadn’t seen yet. Kudos to Melbourne for a great tourist service here.
After breakfast in the food court at South Gate we jumped on the bus and got a chance to see a few cool things we probably would have missed otherwise. We got off the bus at the Remembrance Memorial for Australians who have died in wars over the past 150 years.
Kel decided to spend her time reading under a tree in the shade while I took some time to look at the memorial. The inside of the memorial
Tippoff
Try to find the small yellow ball above everyone's heads. I used our small canon for these pictures, sorry their not up to par.is really nice since it spends time on each of the major wars that Australian have fought in without making any single war look more important. We often don’t hear about wars like Korea in the US but the Australians have done a good job of making sure all soldiers who have died get equal importance.
After spending a good amount of time at the memorial we got back on the tourist buss and went north of Melbourne to see the University of Melbourne. It was close to 2pm by time we got into the area so we stopped and had a leisurely lunch before walking through the campus. Most of the University ground is covered with buildings of various types and sizes. Not that much sets the University apart from other city campus universities around the world, but I’m sure it’s a great school to attend more because of its location in a town that has a ton of bars, clubs, and music venues. If I had a kid who wanted to study abroad I would definitely recommend this as a place that would be fun to attend.
When done walking through the area we headed back
to our hotel. It was close to 4pm by time we got back to the room which gave us about thirty minutes to prepare for the nights activities. Earlier in the weekend we had bought tickets for an Australian Rule Football game.
Footy: Crows vs. Bulldogs We walked to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) for the game and got there about 10 minutes before the game. Our seats were pretty nice because they gave a decent view of the whole field. Aussie Football (called Footy here) is played on an oval field that is about 190m (a little over 200 yards) long and about 150m (about 160 yards) wide. As you can imagine this is a huge field.
Each team gets to have 18 players on the field. The general premise is to score points by kicking the ball (shaped like an American football but larger like the one used in Rugby) between a set of uprights like the ones used in Rugby. In this game there are four uprights in a line. If you get the ball between the outer poles then you get 1 point, if you get it between the inner two uprights
you get 6 points.
How the game is actually played is a little more complicated but is kind of a mix of a couple of sports. The game starts with a tip off which is similar to a basketball game. Once a player has possession of the ball they have a few options. They can kick it to another player or into the goal if they are close enough. They can hit the ball to teammate in a style similar to a bump in volleyball or they can run with the ball as long as they bounce the ball on the ground at least once every 45 feet.
If a player catches a ball in the air that was kicked to them, no other opposing player can tackle them or get close to them but if they attain the ball (bounce, bump with the hand) any other way then the opposition can tackle them. If a player puts his hands on you to tackle you, you must discard the ball (hopefully to one of your teammates) or the umpires will take the ball and repeat the procedure used to start the game. This gives the players an incentive
not to be tackled.
There seems to be less overt strategy in this game since plays never really start or end unless a point is scored in which case the ball is taken to the center of the field and another tip off ensues. Kel said it really reminds her of a school field game more than an organized sport and I tend to agree with her. I’m sure an Aussie who heard us say that would be really mad, but we are entitled to our opinion, right?
So this particular game was the Western Bulldogs (from the western suburbs of Melbourne) versus the Adelaide Crows. We decided to side with the Bulldogs since they were more of a home team (there are three teams located in Melbourne: Melbourne, Richmond, and Western). The people next to us were Western fans and were happy enough to share some insight with us as the game progressed. Unfortunately for them, and us, the Bulldogs were destroyed in the game. It seemed that every time the Bulldogs kicked the ball, an Adelaide player caught it and every time Adelaide had the ball half their players were open giving them more chances to
score. The final score was Adelaide 110 versus Westerns 72. For much of the game Adelaide had more than twice the points of Western…it was rather painful.
It was pretty cool to get to see something that was so uniquely Australian. The people next to us kept cheering for the Bulldogs by screaming, “Cumooon Dougies!!” That can be translated as, “Come On Doggies,” for those of you who don’t speak Aussie. The Australians love their football and it is apparent as you watch a game and hear them cheer. It was great!
Tonight we have to plan what to do tomorrow and get ready to depart from Melbourne. It’ll be sad to leave this fabulous room and head on to whatever is next. (Quick Note: As we left our room to head to the game tonight there was a person standing outside their room at the end of our hall talking to another guest. I looked up and saw that the person looked really familiar. As we walked down the hall all the pieces of what I had seen locked into place and I realized who I’d seen. It was Flea, the bass player of the Red Hot
Chili Peppers. They are playing in Melbourne on Tuesday so it made sense that he’d be in town and the room at the end of the hall is one of the big suites here in the hotel. Pretty cool, huh?)
Hope you are all well back home!
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fortymilliondaggers
fmd
There are way more than three teams in Melbourne. Collingwood, Hawthorn, Essendon, Carlton and St Kilda. Sounds like you realy enjoyed the legendry MCG...if Melbourne is the capital of something, it's the capital of sport!