I forgot to mention that after we went to the aquarium, I had to see a street called Batman Avenue. However, it’s not named for who you think it is. It’s named for a man named John Batman. Why is he a big deal? He founded the settlement on the Yarra River that eventually became Melbourne. He’d be the equivalent of Chief Paduke around here.
We decided to head to the Melbourne Zoo after we’d rested a bit. We were supposed to meet the two co-workers of Josh’s for dinner, so we decided to take the tram (what I’d call a streetcar) to the zoo instead of walking. Melbourne has a pretty extensive tram system. You use a card that you tap as you get on the tram and when you get off. It’s pretty much the honor system though. One of Josh’s co-workers who had left had given Josh his car (they used the tram to go to the hospital to work a few times). There is a “Free Zone” that covers part of the city. However, the zoo was outside of that. You pay based on travel between zones. It cost something like 5.00 American for a roundtrip (the zoo is about 1.25 miles about or 2 kilometers as I’ve learned by now) so I wouldn’t call it inexpensive. Anyway, we got to the zoo with no problem on the tram.
It was quite a large zoo. We however ran into the same issue we had at the aquarium. There were a ton of families with young children there. We managed to out run the crowd on the path finally. It was your basic zoo with elephants, giraffes and zebras. The zoo is well-known for its gorilla exhibit. However, when we got to the exhibit, there was a sign up saying “The Gorillas need downtime from visitors”. I’ve never seen that before. Near the end of our visit, we made it to the exhibit that had the “Little Penguins”. So, I was actually able to take a few pictures of them. We saw most of the zoo and hustled back on the tram to meet Josh’s co-workers. They had been told to go to a Spanish restaurant for dinner. Unfortunately, when we got there, we found out it did not open for another hour. So, we set off to look for somewhere else to eat dinner. We found a place called “Queen Street Rescue”. I remembered reading about that restaurant online. They had several Australian dishes. I ended up going with Fish & Chips again and found these were much better when what I’d gotten before. Once we finished eating, we took off for our final destination.
Several of the people at the Melbourne Children’s hospital had recommended we go to an Australian Football game. I knew nothing about the sport except vaguely remembering it being shown during the NFL strike in the 90s. The teams to play would be the Essedon Bombers versus the Geelong Cats. Essedon is part of Melbourne so they were the home team in Ethiad Stadium. We’d seen people all day in their colors (Black and Red). They were sporting what I thought were some spiffy looking black and red scarves. So, we walked on over to the stadium. It was a domed stadium that seated about 35 or 40 thousand people. One of Josh’s workers picked up the tickets at will call and we went in. Our seats were about midway up toward one end of the stadium. I had read a little about the game. You score by kicking the ball. It looks like a rounder thicker football. There are two sets of goal posts at each end of the stadium. If you kick it between the two closest ones, you get six points. Kicking between the others is one point. There is a line marked with a 50 that I found was 50 meters from the goal posts that would come into play. I figured I’d root for the Bombers (for obvious reasons).
The referee started the game by bouncing the ball between two players like a jump ball in basketball. You can either run the ball (you have to bounce it every so often), pass the ball (you cannot just throw it, you have to punch it with your fist) or most often, kick the ball. If you kick the ball from outside the 50 meter line to a player inside the 50 meter line and it goes over 14 meters and they catch it, he can get a free kick at the goalposts. He can also elect to “play on”. You can also make a kick at the goalposts during live play. I will throw out at this point that I still don’t totally understand all the rules so I may have some of these wrong. Anyway, Essedon got 4 free kicks but only scored one point each. Then Geelong turned it on. They were up 19 to 5 at the end of the first quarter. The halftime score was 59 to 6! Essedon didn’t score a six point goal in the first half. I found out that this was the first time that this had happened to them since 1984. Their red and black clad fans booed them as they left the field at half time. They played better in the 2nd half but still lost 122-53. Josh told me when we got back to the States that the people at hospital apologized to him for sending us to such a non-completive game. I wasn’t upset, I found it quite interesting.
I went out at one point to get some food. I ended up getting a drink and some candy bars. The concession stand was totally different than I was used to. All the food was out cafeteria style. You picked it up and took it threw a line to a cashier and paid for it. On my second trip, I got my staple from home – a hot dog. It was one of the worst I’d ever had. It wasn’t cooked well and the bun wasn’t steamed well. I didn’t even finish it. I did find the fans while cheering strongly for their teams were not nearly as obnoxious to each other as NFL fans usually are. We stayed for the whole game then walked back to our hotel. We loaded up our suitcases to be ready to depart for home the next day.
In my next post, I’ll relate about our trip back home. It was not uneventful….
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