Bitter Cricket and Kangaroo Curry

Firstly thanks to all the people who have replied to us on the comments section, it is great to hear from lots of different people - keep them coming please. On 12 January Sarah and I drove to Melbourne in the morning to watch the first one day international between England and Australia at the MCG. It was a very impressive stadium with a capacity of just under 100,000. The tickets, which we had purchased on the internet a few days previously, only cost us about 16 pounds each, amazingly cheap considering it costs 12 pounds to watch mediocre football at Cambridge United. But then again we were going to watch mediocre cricket by England. After a little confusion about where we were going to sit we placed ourselves on the top tier of the southern stand. It was a day/night game and England had won the toss and elected to bat, which was hopeful. However they only managed to amass 242 in their 50 overs, despite a Pietersen knock in the eighties, I believe, before he was hit in the ribs by McGrath. Australia easily got to the total with the loss of only 2 wickets. The atmosphere was good in the stand except the Aussies only seem to have one chant and the beer was flowing freely which resulted in some supporters being ejected by the very-heavy handed police. It seems strange that drinking is so heavily advertised here and when people get a little loud or boisterous (but not aggressive) the authorities go over the top in ejecting people! Also members of the crowd (which was nearly 80,000) brought in beach balls and threw them about the crowd whilst desperately trying to avoid the stewards getting hold of them, as they confiscated them and then burst them. An interesting game of cat and mouse, particularly when a rubber doll made an appearance and visited lots of people in the crowd for about 20 minutes and avoided the mean stewards, much to the delight of everyone as they just failed to grasp her on a number of occasions. After the game we got changed in our hotel room and took a tram to town where we found a pub that served proper English beer!

The next day we laid on St.Kilda beach for a couple of hours and paddled in the sea, it was a little too cold and rough with quite high waves, before heading back to Echuca.

On 14 January Jenni and Rob, and two of their friends from Melbourne, took us to the RSL Club in Moama (just across the state border in NSW) for an evening meal. There are about 4 of these places in Echuca and Moama that serve food, drinks, lay on entertainment, have lots of pokie machines (a more basic fruit machine) and give you free lifts there and back home on the courtesy bus. Any profit they make goes to the group of people it represents, in this case retired servicemen. It was also incredibly cheap, with 3 beers and 2 bottles of wine coming to about 11 pounds. The roast meal that we had cost about 4 pounds. Sarah enjoyed the pokies and the wine very much!

On 15 January we drove to the Australian Alps, in our new car, to a small town called Bright in Victoria. After exploring the town for a bit we had a meal in the evening. Sarah went for her usual adventurous meal of chicken (there was no scampi on the menu) whilst I had a Kangaroo Curry which was very nice, it tasted a little like beef. The following day we drove up to the mountains but unfortunately all the really long walks were closed due to the extensive fires that they experienced here before Christmas. So we had to content ourselves to a blowie infested 3 mile walk, although the views were amazing. In the afternoon we hired some bikes and cycled in the heat for about a 15 mile round trip, before Sarah succumbed to the weather. Contrastingly the next day brought rain in the mountains, and, being ill-prepared for this kind of weather, we could not go for a mountain stroll, so had to walk in and around the town of Bright on a nature walk. We headed back to Echuca in the evening, with the intention of coming back to the Australian Alps some time either in the Autumn (where the scenery will be wonderful with all the colourful leaves) and/or in the winter to ski in the snow.

On the 19th January Jenni took me to visit my school for the morning and to meet the other members of my team, who both seemed nice. I had a tour of the school by the principal, Madge before having a short meeting where I learned that I will have a grand total of 20 pupils in my class, a huge difference to the 32 I had in England! There seems to be a big emphasis on sport in the curriculum and it shall be interesting to see this in practice once the term commences. In the evening Jenni and Rob laid on a barbie with some of the other teachers I will be working with. The cricket was on the tv, where England lost again to the Aussies, so I suggested that I will run the cricket club in school so that I can teach all the Aussie children how to play badly and in 15 years or so England can win back the Ashes!