Rachel and Mike in Australia

The 25th of April is the national holiday of ANZAC day. ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and ANZAC day honors those who fought and died from Australia and New Zealand. ANZAC day was first celebrated in 1916 in honor of the ANZAC soldiers who were part of the Gallipoli campaign in WWI. The ANZAC force landed at Gallipoli (in Turkey) on the 25th April 1915.

What Churchill planned to be a decisive strike turned into an 8-month campaign where over 10,000 ANZAC soldiers died (of over 200,000 total Allied casualties). It is often said that though Australia’s Constitution came into force in 1901, it was not until Gallipoli that Australia gained an independent national identity. Though the Gallipoli campaign failed and ended with the remaining soldiers evacuated, it established a reputation for Australian people having great courage and a sarcastic sense of humor, whom rejected unnecessary restrictions. We have both been surprised that the presence of WWI almost seems to overshadow that of WWII here in terms of monuments and references, whereas we feel the opposite is true in the U.S. After WWII, ANZAC day was extended to honor its soldiers, and now it commemorates all Australian and New Zealand soldiers.

ANZAC day is celebrated a number of different ways. Wreaths of flowers

are laid on war monuments, often with personal notes attached to them. There are sunrise memorial services attended by veterans or their family members wearing medals. There are marches and parades. And then there’s two-up. Two-up is a gambling game that is outlawed in Australia except for about 6 hours each year on ANZAC day. The soldiers played two-up in the trenches to pass time, so in honor of their sacrifice, you’re allowed to gamble on the day of national remembrance. Some argue that it is not an appropriate way to pay one’s respects, but in modern times, it is a huge tradition for ANZAC day, so we thought it important to experience.

Two-up is a simple game. Someone tosses a couple coins in the air, and you bet on whether they will land with either two heads or two tails up. These days there’s quite a bit of structure to this simple game. Before each toss, if you want to bet heads, you put your money over your head and start yelling 5 (or however much you want to bet) on heads. Someone in the crowd who wants to bet 5 on tails finds you and hands you $5. The person who’s betting on heads always holds the money (this simple detail is pure genius as after a number of rounds of two-up and drinks it can be quite easy to forget which way you bet on the last toss). You can bet with people across the crowd as long as you can catch their eye. This would be much harder to pull off in the U.S. since all our currency is green. Australian bills are purple, yellow, blue, and red, so you know how much someone wants to bet by what color bill they’re holding even if you can’t hear them. It’s quite a sight – all these people with colored bills in the air hollering at each other and passing money around.

At some point the two-up umpire calls out “no more bets.” The coins are placed on a little paddle (heads up). A lot of bars now play with 3 coins so that you always have a result. The person tossing the coins has to get them over their head and on the coins’ ascent they have to spin an adequate number of times. I’m not sure how many, but the two-up officials were keeping track. They would yell out and stomp on the coins if the toss didn’t pass muster (and the crowd would boo). Everyone is cheering for their result with cries of “Heads ‘em up” or “Tails never fails.” If a fair toss ends with 2 heads showing, the heads keeps the money. If it comes up 2 tails, heads hands over the money to tails. This can be a bit tricky if you’ve bet with someone across the crowd, and we heard a couple of tails people shouting over their heads person going missing. We kept our stakes at $5 or $10, but some people were betting a couple hundred a round! We didn’t keep great track of how much we put in, but our pockets seemed fuller after a couple hours of two-up (not counting the bills that went to beer and bubbles…not sure we’d end up ahead counting them!).

Things can feel a bit upside down Down Under sometimes.  Even though it’s summertime in the southern hemisphere, all the Christmas decorations are the traditional evergreen trees and poinsettias.  Lots of stores have Christmas trees and candles and holly in the windows and a fair number of houses in our neighborhood have lights decorating them (though they’re on for less hours since it doesn’t get dark until about 8 pm).  There is one notable exception to the traditional decorations in

Sydney.  Downtown in the financial district there are a number of Christmas banners hanging up emblazoned with an upside down possum.  We don’t know what the story with him is, but we’ve embraced the Christmas Possum and he has made a few Christmas deliveries for us!

Sydney-siders consider December 1st the first day of summer.  Since it’s summertime most Australians don’t do a big Christmas ham or turkey dinner.  A classic Australian Christmas dinner is shrimp on the barbie, and it sounds like many spend the day on the beach or by the pool.

The school year runs from February until mid-December, so Christmas falls during the summer vacation.  We’re told that most of Sydney clears out for the month of January, and we’re going to do the same.  We are flying to Perth where a campervan will be waiting for us that we’ll drive back to Sydney.  We should have some great photos to share from the trip!

Happy Holidays everyone!

It’s funny how you learn things about home by living somewhere so far from it.  Being in Australia has reminded me what a sterilized culture modern day American is.  There are far fewer attempts in Sydney to separate oneself from the outdoors.  We were surprised in our first month or so here how cold Sydney felt.  The houses aren’t insulated the way homes in the US are and they don’t typically have central heat (electric radiators seem to be what most people use).  There are big gaps at the bases of two out of the three doors that lead to the outside.  And in one bathroom and one bedroom there are small windows that just have screens–there’s no glass.

Granted that Sydney doesn’t usually get freezing weather, but considering how it felt in late spring, I would not want to hang out in that room in the dead of winter.  My first Australian purchases were a scarf, heavy sweatshirt, and a wool quilt, and I was very thankful for all of them on more than one occasion.

Houses in Sydney often don’t have A/C either.  Now that the weather has warmed up, we’re opening the windows frequently.  Unfortunately the two small windows that don’t have any glass are the only two windows in the house that have screens.  I think you could argue that in the US we are overly worried about separating ourselves from nature, but I’m still having a hard time understanding why, in a country that has some of the world’s deadliest insects, you wouldn’t put screens on your windows.  The lack of sealing has introduced us to some of the native fauna.  We’ve had quite a number of wild beasts wander into our house: flies, mosquitos, ants, regular cockroachs, flying cockroachs, spiders, beetles, caterpillars, a cat, lizards, slugs, mice, and rats in our house…and that’s in just 9 weeks and only the ones we’ve actually seen.

The ones that have mystified me the most and which prompted me to write this blog are the slugs.  I’m used to seeing slugs only in really wet places…usually outside after a big rain.  One morning here I went to fill the kettle with water for my morning tea and nearly leapt out of my skin when I looked down and saw a gigantic slug on the sink basin.  I think it was the biggest slug I’ve ever seen.  The day before it had rained and Mike had been cleaning our oven shelves outside.  The rag he had been using was also on the sink basin, so I figured the slug must have been on the rag.  How else could this giant slug make it into the house and up onto my sink?  Well, I don’t know but a couple nights ago as I was getting ready for bed I went into my office.  It looked like there was a twig on the ground but when I got closer, I realized it was actually slug.  The office is the middle of 3 rooms downstairs, and it and the room next to it that goes to the outside are carpeted.  I was amazed the thing had made it across that much carpet.  I can’t say I know what slugs eat, but surely it wasn’t in my office, so I thought it would dry out overnight and die.  As I lay in bed contemplating what on earth had prompted the slug to come inside and where it had come in, I thought that I ought to take a picture of the thing for the blog.  I went back downstairs and I’ll be damned if in the elapsed 20 or 30 minutes, the thing had disappeared.  These Australian wildlife are impressive!

As my new friend the exterminator said, “You can’t worry too much about it.  That’s Australia.”

Aussie’s are known to ‘love their sport’ and we’ve had the chance to observe and partake in some of the fun.  Not long after we’d arrived in Sydney was one of the biggest “footie” matches of the year.  Footie in Australia can mean one of four games: rugby league, rugby union, Aussie rules football, or soccer.  Rugby league and rugby union come from the same original game but split in the late 1800’s, with rugby league being faster and rugby union being more physical.  The first rugby league game played in Australia occurred in 1908 just a short walk from where we live at the Birchgrove Oval, which is still used for footie (and cricket).

The beginning of October was the national rugby league Grand Final, which our Aussie friends were equating to the Superbowl.  Rugby league is apparently played in over 30 countries but is biggest in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand (Australia was World Cup Champions every year from 1975 to 2007).  The Manly Sea Eagles made it to the Grand Final (versus the Melbourne Storm), and I got to watch the game at the Manly Wharf Bar with a bunch of Oscar’s friends who live in Manly and are huge Sea Eagle fans.  The hoopla began with a pre-game show (rather than a big half-time one).  Jon Stevens, an Australian rock star, performed and he was accompanied by the most bizarre back-up dancers I’ve ever seen.

They were dressed like sports fans and danced with charcoal grills.  They stomped the lids and had brushes to swish as though they were cleaning the grill grate.  The concept was bad and the execution was even worse.  Luckily, it didn’t affect Manly’s playing and they trounced Melbourne 40-nil, which is the biggest spread in Grand Final history.  Needless to say, Manly was pretty psyched and thankfully their excitement doesn’t lead to riots over here!

We’ve also had the chance to forgo spectating and actually participate in some Aussie sport.  A friend of a friend had organized an afternoon of cricket.  While rugby league is the dominant sport in Queensland and New South Wales (where we are), cricket is played across the country and is thought of as the national sport.  The basic cricket game consists of a bowler (essentially the pitcher) and a batter.  The batter stands in front of the wicket, which the bowler tries to hit with the ball.  The batter tries to protect the wicket and to hit the ball into the field.  The batter can score runs by running back and forth across the pitch until the fielding team gets the ball back to the bowler.  The way they throw and hit is completely different than baseball.  You’re supposed to bowl with a fully straight arm and as the batter you keep the bat straight up and down with tip on the ground so as to block the wicket.  Full-length professional cricket games can last 5 days.  We played a shortened and simplified version and it was still too long and boring.  Oscar took a couple videos that show the our cricket prowess.  I’m bowling and Mike’s catching.  We did pretty well, and I even got a wicket!!  The ball wasn’t coming in fast but managed to get by the batter with a tricky bounce and hit the wicket.  Unfortunately, Oscar didn’t catch that one on film.