Cracking Cricket and Possums in the Park

Reality dawned on 30 January when I realised the main reason I was out here was to do a school exchange as I drove to Rochester Primary School that morning. It was a teacher training day and the children came in the following day, 31 January, after their long summer holiday (which I still find it strange to think about, summer in the sweltering months of January and February). The vast majority of the 21 children in my class are great with one very notable exception, although I don't think I should go into any further detail there!
I initially found some of the staff and pupils difficult to understand with their strange antipodean accents and words. For example they all looked at me strangely when I asked them to get out their felt tips and rubbers (and thoughts of a famous 1970's glam rock singer who likes to frequent certain south-eastern Asian nations sprang to mind here) before I was told that they are called 'texters' and 'erasers'. I certainly wasn't asking any of them to be in my gang! All the pupils have to wear wide brimmed hats too, to keep off the baking midday sun. This is an essential part of school wear here.
Australians all seem to say as little as possible and speak from the back of the throat without moving their lips much. I now realise that this is because if the do say a lot then they get a gobful of blowies. Poor Sarah has a full three course meal at least three times a day here! You don't need any industrial strength stuff here, the blowies are incentive enough. I'm thinking of getting some imported specially!
It has been particularly pleasant being an Englishman out here in the past couple of weeks. The amount of stick I have taken from the first moment I touched down onto Australian soil about the English cricket team has all back fired in a cloud of fallen Aussie wickets. England have turned from being no-hopers to world-beaters and have thoroughly beaten the Australians on the last three occasions (and the Kiwis too for good measure). And as all the cricket is on live terrestrial television here I have been watching it with glee. Some people still say to me that the English were lucky although some have been noble in defeat. Roll on the cricket world cup next month. With the cricket on television (a commercial channel) I have had to endure the mind-boggling annoying adverts that they have here. Firstly there only seem to be about 10 adverts here which they keep rotating. Also they seem to think by playing so-called 'catchy' themes and by shouting very loudly they will attract peoples attention. Apparently buying a patio will change my quality of life forever and ever and if Harvey Norman tells me to 'go' one more time I will tell him exactly where to go! Saying that there are a couple of cricket based adverts that are funny. One in particular takes the mick out of both the English and Australians and a certain ex female British Prime Minister and men with moustaches!
Sarah and I also went to Melbourne for a couple of days last weekend. We drove up and went to the Immigration Museum and shopping at the large market. In the evening we met a couple of possums in a park. They were both very tame and we managed to stroke their very soft fluffy fur for a while. The next day we again went to the beach (Brighton incidentally, although we didn't see Matt or Bough) where it was too cold and wavy to swim again. It is typical that when we go there seems to be a cold front coming through and in Echuca in the working week the temperature is in the thirties or even low forties!