Us girls at the game!

Raeann, Almira and I at the Rugby League game

The difference of rugby, rugby and rugby.

There’s three kinds of Rugby in Australia – and for foreigners, especially Canadians – the only commonwealth nation to have really missed the ball - it gets a bit tricky to figure out what you should be watching: Aussie Rules, Rugby Union or Rugby League.

So my first boss here, from South Australia, was a pure Aussie Rules fan, so she took me out to my first Rugby game – the Sydney Swans (who names a football team after a Swan? no wonder it took them 70 years to win The Cup!) The players are taller, and leaner than the other two games. It’s very paced, a lot more running than tackling. Basic differences: you can actually pass forward (by punting it with your fist), goals are scored by a kick through the middle uprights (6 points) or through either side of the second uprights (1 point), and no real scrums, players do a basketball-style jump for the ball at the start, and you’re off from there. Played: basically everywhere in the Country *except* New South Wales (Sydney). And the winning team has their team song played (every team has a team song – one of the people next to me made me listen to the Swan’s song because it was her phone ring tone.)

(I’m a little partial to AFL - I joined an Aussie Rules Rec team (with flag belts – no tackles) for a few weeks, which was heaps of fun. Especially since the only two girls on the team were myself, and one of their girlfriends – a tiny Thai girl. They took pretty good care of us – especially since the rules gave guys 6 points for a kick through the uprights, but girls got 9. How’s that for a rule incentive to pass to the women?)

Game two:
Rugby Union. One of my buddies, Peter, scammed two corporate tickets from work for the Sydney Waratah’s – the Rugby Union team. Rugby Union is considered the Private school/privileged game, and it feels like going to see the Canucks – with $160 jerseys at the souvenir stand, and big corporate sponsorship. Aussie Stadium had 38,000 people watching the Waratah’s vs. the Canberra Brumbies (Brumby is a wild horse). Rugby Union is considered ‘real’ rugby – it’s international. Australia has 4 sides in the International league – the Super 14 (NZ has 6, South Africa, 4). There are very structured scrums, when you are tackled, you just release the ball and hope your team gets it – so it’s a fast game, big tackles, and it’s good fun to watch. Points are 6 for a try (try = touchdown), 2 on conversion.

And to finish up the triumvirate – we took our Canadian tourist Raeann out to a Rugby League game. Rugby League is the “public school version” of Rugby – the teams are neighbourhoods in the City, so people get pretty passionate about their favourites, because one of their buddies is probably playing. The crowd is definitely rowdier, there’s a lot more jeering – but the games are still big – 20,000 people at the Balmain Tigers vs. the Parramatta Eels – so it’s no small game. League has nastier tackles, its a little slower than union, no line-in’s (where they throw the ball from the sidelines, and the players jump up to catch). There are far fewer scrums, which are less organized to start with and they actually have 6 tackles (equiv. of a down) for a try (equiv. of a touchdown) before possession is given to the other team. It looks a lot more like Canadian or American Football (or Gridiron as they call it here). Scoring is 4 points for a try, and 2 on conversion. League is pretty much only popular in New South Wales (maybe extending up a bit to Queensland).

Still kicking down under!

So it has been awhile since I have sent a travel update – usually I try to do something interesting, silly or engaging, but life for the last little bit has been pretty regular.
I keep trying to generate some good stories - I went sailing for the weekend with a whole wack of strangers – nuthin’, I’ve been to two major horse racing carnivals in the last two weeks – and we enjoyed ourselves so thoroughly, that I can’t remember who won, let alone spin a decent story (think of what you look like at about 2am on a drunken prom night, except you are 25 – 60 years old – that’s about how a racing carnival looks).

The Aussies at work are attempting to improve my slang and pronounciation so I don’t sound like a Sepo (it’s an American – comes from ‘yank’…sounds like ‘septic tank’… shortened to ‘sepo’… it’s rhyming slang, like cockney!). I am working in Human Resources at an Eyewear company waayy out on the edge of Sydney, but every time it looks like it’s my last day, they find something else to keep me busy. It’s starting to slide into Autumn – the leaves are falling. It’s cool in the mornings and the evenings, it’s still about 25, 26 degrees at noon – so mostly it just feels like a Vancouver summer, but the mornings are chilly! We still managed to get a couple beach days in for a girlfriend that stayed with us last weekend, but that wind is getting a lot colder.

We have our own little Italian restaurant 20 meters from the apartment, where the owner (Joe) lets us arrive near closing, opens a bottle a wine, brings a couple deserts and we just watch the street pass by – it's La Dolce Vita for certain.

Australia's Friday Religion

Drinks at Opera Bar, in the show of the Opera House.

That's (from the left) Natasha, Jobina, Peter, Almira, me and Peggy - The Crew.

Sailing in Sydney

Australia is mad about sailing. It’s not hard to believe when Sydney and surrounds feel like one never ending harbour – all you can think about is how to get on that water and out of the traffic you are sitting in.

Ever since I watched the Sydney to Hobart sailing race at Christmas, I have been trying to bribe my way onto someone’s sailboat, and I haven’t been spectacularly effective…until I found a Social & Outdoors club, sponsored by the YHA that lead sailing weekends out in Swansea. Perfect! I thought – I can go and spend a whole weekend on a boat, learning to sail, sleeping in those little bunk beds – rocked to sleep by the waves. Now there was going to be a good blog posting. Not the least of which, I was going all by myself with total strangers to god-knows-where in Sydney for an entire weekend, always a recipe for entertainment.

I managed to scam a ride up to Swansea (where we were sailing) with a delightful couple – one was a computer programmer for research computers and his girlfriend was a statistician. Well – I can tell you they were oodles of entertainment - 80% of the car ride was discussing the merits of the chosen itinerary, and disaster scenarios of what ‘might’ have happen should they have – god forbid – decided to take the X highway or the Y exit. “Would have added 20 minutes” they laughed. Some people need to discover the joys of life beyond optimal traffic planning… because everyone else showed up at the same time we did.

Anyway…
Turns out that instead of my dreams of a 80 foot yacht sailing down Sydney Harbour, we were running little 20ft. Catamarans on Macquarie Lake. That’s not to say I didn’t end up having a blast. After we (finally) got the boats rigged up, and stopped them from actually blowing away 3 times, we were ready to sail. Winds were gusting about 18 knots, and we were probably on the edge of it not being very safe with a bunch of newbie sailors, but out we went anyway.

Well – I was sitting on the mesh in between the pontoons, feeling like a character out of Castaway. I didn’t get washed overboard, but did my best impression of a drowned rat – the waves were crashing over and under me – I looked like I was in a spa bath with all the water frothing around. We made it as far as the other side of the lake, which – when the shelter of harbour meant I could actually see and breathe water instead of air – we had to rescue the other boat that had capsized.

The water was warm though, all limbs accounted for and everyone was in good spirits. We jerry-rigged the other boat, got it back upright and made the crossing again – and it made for great tales at dinner, where a few of my crewmates didn’t recognize me dry!

The next morning, boy was I excited to get back on those boats again. I got all dolled up in my ‘hot-pants’ wet suit again (hello 70’s!), put on my ‘diaper’ - a cloth harness, by which you attach yourself to the boat so you can lean out on the edges – and got ready to get wet. I needn’t have bothered. We got on the boat, and drifted – yes - drifted to the centre of the lake. Not a breath of wind for 45 minutes – we had to paddle with out hands to get back into shore.

Ah sailing.