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!).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 3:06 am and is filed under Australiana. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.