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Published: January 31st 2015
Aussie Import 25 & 26
thJanuary 2015
Sunday morning arrived and the day of our Australia day celebrations, we had set a breakfast date with everyone for 7.30 with the same guests we had for dinner last night
Everybody dutifully arrived, (except for Brian and Nesta, who’s excuse was they cannot remember me advising them we would do breakfast) and we cooked for another 12 hungry campers, eggs bacon, sausage, grilled tomatoes and toast. We all then regrouped over to the TLCC membership area as the Cricket matches had started at 8.00am.
Now Australia day is a big day, it’s all about celebrating Australia’s identity, meats pies, lamingtons, cricket and generally having fun, historically it’s when the first fleet of British ships landed in 1788 at Port Jackson. It is celebrated on 26thJanuary but as most of us have to travel home tomorrow for work on Tuesday, our day is today and the itinerary is pretty full for the day with the cricket starting at 8.00am.
Smoko at 10.00 am (Which included including sausage rolls, pies and tomato sauce, vegemite sandwiches and Lamingtons)
10.30 am Mr and Mrs Australia entrant parade
Aussie Import-Australia Day 2015 Fonty's Pool Manjimup
Caroline sporting the Southern Cross, well we are in the Southern Hemisphere11.00 am Two up
12.00 (Midday) Cricket Final
12.45 pm Lunch
1.15 pm Presentations for Aussie Flag Designs and Mr and Mrs Australia
1.30 pm Handbag Throwing Competition
2.00 pm Gumboot Throwing Competition
2.30 pm Boomerang Throwing Competition
3.00 pm Bombie Competition
5.00 pm Sundowner (Drinks and Nibbles)
6.00 pm Communal Dinner.
The sun was up and hot, we sat and watched the cricket for a while and enjoyed the glorious sunshine, then it became the “Sun Dance” when you want to be in the sun, then in the shade, then in the sun and so on. During the sun dance we enjoyed a decent coffee from one of the members who was doing barista service, you donate a suitable sum for the coffee and the money goes straight to into the pot for the RFDS..
The morning drifted on and the first few short matches of cricket came to an end, and all the teams settled in to the same sun dance until
it was time for Mr and Mrs Australia
This is where people,(usually a husband and wife) will dress up in all their Australian finery to demonstrate just how Australian they are, which entailed, maybe a blue wig, a huge Merv Huges moustache (Merv Hughes was an Australian Cricketer) and so on.
About 12 couples got together and paraded around the inner circle, we all had slips of paper to vote on, there was of course a lot of cheating and barracking and so on which made it all the more funny.
Caroline and I had on high hopes of making some form of costume statement but sadly ran out of time and I just ended up wearing my red, white and blue Australian bow tie and Caroline was displaying her new tattoo, that was an Australian Flag, upside down and the words “Aussie Import” Tattooed above the Australian Flag on her right calf, really classy looking. She did want me to write “imported from England only using the finest ingredients.
The contestants went around and everyone voted, there were some very good ones, when all the judging was completed we all broke for morning
tea, lamington cakes, hot meat pies with tomatoes sauce and vegemite sandwiches.
After morning smoko (Morning Tea) there was serious judging to be done on the “Develop your own Aussie Flag) and I do have to say some of them were very well done, some of them were also done by the grandchildren of some members who were taking the kids away for this type of easy fun weekend and to give their mums and dads a break.
The kids had done some really good flags which of course usually had a picture of their Grandparents four wheel drive on it, or a picture of a boomerang, Kangaroo, Ayres Rock or something iconical to Australia.
After perusing the flags, we all voted, the results would be read out later.
Next a rope was laid in a circle on the ground, we were going to play “Two Up” and our president’s partner Brenda was handing out pre made fake money which we could “gamble” with, we have never played before but can remember when we were with Jan and Ted in Sydney on Anzac day a few years ago and watched people playing it outside a pub.
Two-up is a traditional Australian gambling game, involving a designated "spinner" throwing two coins or pennies into the air. Players gamble on whether the coins will fall with both heads up, both tails up, or with one coin a head, and one a tail (known as "odds"). It is traditionally played on Anzac Day in pubs and clubs throughout Australia, in part to mark a shared experience with diggers through the ages.
The game is traditionally played with pennies – their weight, size, and surface design make them ideal for the game. Weight and size make them stable on the "kip" and easy to spin in the air. Decimal coins are generally considered to be too small and light and they don't fly so well. The design of pre-1939 pennies had the sovereign's head on the front and the reverse was totally covered in writing making the result very easy and quick to see. Pennies can often be observed being used at games on Anzac Day, as they are brought out specifically for this purpose each year.
It was so much fun, Caroline had her own pile of money and I had mine, I was having side
bets with Caroline and soon cleared her out of cash, so she assisted me in getting rid of my pile of cash that we did quite quickly, sadly though the game was to increase ones wealth not decrease it. Caroline even had a go at spinning, but lost that too.
The next thing was the finals of the cricket, which happened to be Australia Vs England, the teams had been preselected and the first morning games had whittled down who would make the final, we all took our seats and watched the game of limited overs.
Old and young were playing together and there was a tiny little girl who’s daddy had to help her, the cricket bat was nearly larger than she was, it was great that they only used a soft ball and the bowler carefully bowled her overs so she could make her contribution to the game.
With all this fun going on, you can only keep this action going for so long before you need to stop and have some lunch.
As we were just readying ourselves Peter and Leigh walker said to me that I needed to go over to their
truck as they wanted me to see something.
I walked over and Peter opened his side box and said, “No I’m not giving you my fridge”, but in a bag at the top of his box was a face in looking at me, and Leigh said “We popped in to a shop, saw this and thought of you.”
They gave me the bag and inside was a fantastic Wombat, so lovely and plump it was brilliant, so nice to have friends who said that they thought of me, it was great, I took my new Wombat over to Caroline we were having lunch with Andy and Karen, Caroline sat him on a chair next to her.
Lunch was just lovely, light nibbles, nice and easy and again we were sun dancing this time taking shade under a big tree.
After our lunch it was back in to the serious stuff and handbag throwing for the ladies, about 20 of the ladies queued up to throw a variety of handbags and Caroline did an excellent throw but was sadly knocked out of the finals by Alison who put in a mega throw.
With the ladies handbag
throwing concluded it was the turn of the fella’s who were throwing a gum boot and this was a far more dangerous event with gum boots flying all over the place, I could not enter this as I am still having problems with my right thumb and as I am having surgery on Wednesday 4
th didn’t want to aggravate it any further.
Caroline was taking pictures of the boot throwing and a boot narrowly missed her, when she was crouched down with her camera poised.
Once the male and female boot and hand bag winner had been selected they were crowned “Tosser” of the weekend, an honour I was glad we did not win, and as soon as the Tossers had been crowned, it was on to the Boomerang throwing.
One of our members Brian had graciously made 36 boomerangs for us to throw and there were a few Boomerangs that had been kept from last years event, that were hopefully going to get airborne.
We were given a boomerang with a number on it, mine was number 4, we had a quick talk on how we were to throw our boomerangs and we all needed
to do it in number order.
My throwing slot was soon upon me I stepped up to the line and readied myself, I had observed the previous throwers and how their boomerangs flew in the conditions we had.
I chucked mine and was quite happy with the way it flew, and recorded in my mind when my projectile had landed, unfortunately it was one throw only, winner takes all and even though my throw was good it was not the winner.
Now obviously at Fonty’s pool on a hot summers day there had to be a Bombie Competition, Caroline was doing the photos and I was one of the three judges who had to score the entrant for the best Bombie, which we agreed would be the biggest splash and the most artistic entrance in to the water, the only problem we had was that we could not commandeer the pool or diving board so had to accept that we had to share the area with the other campers who were not part of our club.
Everyone was entitled to a try out jump then we got in to the serious stuff we did had two
classes for children and adults to make it fair and we let the kids go first.
What we didn’t realise was that ALL the kids at Fonty’s pool thought they wer part of this Bombie competition so we had to carefully score “Our Kids” but also let the other kids have a jump, then pretend to score them.
The same thing applied to the adults, when they had a jump and all the others kids were on the diving at the same time as our adult contestants, so it was a case of giving the contestant the thumbs up when we wanted them to do their Bombie and allowed us to score them ,it soon became apparent that if we gave the thumbs up to people who were not in our club and therefore not in the competition then we just got them to move along quicker and I have to say it was funny, they do say people are like sheep.
With all the scores compiled, our events were completed so we dispersed for a shower and in my case a half an hour relax on the bed.
We regrouped at 6.00pm for our clubs
Australia Day communal dinner, all 102 of us, we all made a contribution on some shape or form, either by giving our time to an activity or event, or providing something for dinner.
Dinner was served, and it was queue up and get fed or go hungry so we took our place in the queue. We were served a banquet of Chicken, Kangaroo Rissoles, Beef and Lamb, with veggies, it was truly amazing how we can rally this kind of quality food for so many people.
The dinner was excellent, the weather was excellent and the fun we all were having was excellent, some of our members, got up and read poetry, sang songs and one guy sang the whole of Waltzing Matilda in an aboriginal language and that was amazing.
Deserts were served at around 8.00pm,and again they were just awesome, pavlova, fruit, custard tart, rocky road, so much to choose from, in between all the eating, singing and poetry we had the awards for furthest boomerang and Mr and Mrs Tosser for the hand bags and the gum boots and the best Australian Flags,
Wow how lucky we are to be in this amazing
country with amazing people, who love to celebrate their identity, we love Australia, and they do call it the lucky country.
We were exhausted from such a full on day and everyone had slowly started drifting away from the camp to their beds and we didn’t need telling twice.
We slept soundly all night and woke to another gorgeous morning sad that we had to go back to Fremantle and back to work tomorrow, still it was our second trip out with Roobie and we were getting used to her now.
We started packing away and got 99% of it done before we were back at the club area as we all had a drovers breakfast before we left, today was the official Australia day and we acknowledge this with all our friends what an amazing weekend we had had.
We pulled out at around 10.15 when Fonty’s Pool was in our rear view mirror we knew it would be a busy day on the roads, we stopped for a coffee break at Donnybrook where we bumped into various friends of ours from the club, a common stopping point on the way back to Perth before
we all gradually peel off in different directions.
It was about 3.30 in the afternoon when we arrived home, but we did not sit down we cleaned up Roobie, got the laundry on the go and got ready for the W thing in the morning.
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ThePass
Australia 2008
Tatoo
Real or not? Did a left handed boomerang get made? For us lefties?? What a great weekend you had, great pics Caroline. Most interesting to me was the proliferation of Australian wear, especially T-Shirts. Couldn't find much of anything like that on our trip. You do need someone to take a picture of the pair of you once in a while!! Didn't know about the thumb, Andy, but sure hope all goes well.