Rachel and Mike in 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.

Dancing grill girls?!

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!

More grill choreography...

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.

Is the answer to the question “Did Australians pay attention to the American presidential election? In fact, the election has been a major topic of small talk for the last few weeks. Probably half of the people I’ve spoken to (from store clerks to friends of friends) have brought up the election. At first, they’re often quite timid about the topic…until I’ve answered the inevitable question of “Who are you going for?” The answer of Obama generally solicited a big smile and a “Good on ya” or “Good girl.” I think the recent economic woes have made it particularly apparent what a large influence the U.S. has on the rest of the world.*

Thursday's front page

But the Australians also take a very active role in their democracy in general…partly because they’re forced to. Voting in Australia is compulsory, and one guy I spoke to said he was fined nearly $200 for not voting in an election. Australians have been very surprised at how few American’s vote. Trying to defend our nation, I argued that in some cases it was because the person lived in a state that leaned heavily one way or the other, so their vote was unlikely to make a difference. In retrospect, that was not a very smart line of defense because it required me to get into the electoral college (which thanks to Bush/Gore they think doesn’t make any sense). I’ve been having to call upon all my middle school social studies skills to try and explain it to them (not sure I’m making Mr. Dubbs proud).

On election day, we had no trouble following the results via the internet, and apparently all the Aussie TV stations carried Obama’s acceptance speech live. We went to a pub to celebrate and had just missed the speech (luckily, YouTube had the video posted a couple hours later), but the pub had CNN on, so we got to hear some of Anderson Cooper’s analysis of the speech. The afternoon of the results, I saw some ardent Aussie supporters of Obama running down the street with red, white, and blue balloons and yelling O-bah-ma in their Aussie accents. The name sounds much fancier the way they pronounce it.

Obama was the lead story on all the newspapers on Thursday (election results came in Wed afternoon our time). The Sydney Morning Herald website had video postcards to him where they recorded people on the street in Sydney congratulating him. Australians seem hopeful for what he’ll do on the world stage. Nevertheless, some of Australia’s major bookies won’t pay out until he’s actually inaugurated, in case he gets hit by a bus or has a stroke before then. There are a variety of forms of legal gambling in Australia and Australians do seem to enjoy gambling. Last week was the Melbourne Cup race (more or less equivalent to the Kentucky Derby). and one of the popular ways to bet is to buy a ticket where you don’t get to pick the horse. You pay $5 or $10 and they hand you a ticket that you then tear away a portion of reveal what horse you’ve bet on. I thought that was crazy…but actually the only person I know who won had bought that type of bet, so maybe it’s not so crazy after all.

Australian Obamaphiles

*We have been surprised that the Aussie dollar has fallen relative to the US dollar since the beginning of the credit crisis. Apparently, the Australian banks were essentially penalized for not offering loans to those who couldn’t really afford them, since the American banks did so and made a big profit (for awhile anyway), and are now being bailed out by the government when things have gone sour. I know that’s a very simplified view…but it’s the best understanding I have of the situation.