Sport and gambling are the two official past times of Australia and many activities combine the two. The Sydney* equivalent to the Canadian office hockey pool is tipping each week’s winners in the NRL. I actually can’t really stand the sport. Perhaps not growing up with rubgy league has led me to only see its faults (repetitive!) rather than its strengths (I assume there are some).

Regardless of my feelings toward the sport, at work I am kicking ass in our footy tipping pool. In fact, I’m only 5 games behind the leader who, presumably, actually knows something about the rubgy league. I barely know the teams. I have to rely heavily on the newspaper and Friday morning strategy sessions with some of my fellow co-workers. But I may be that prick at work who wins stuff without any skill whatsoever. Hate me, hate me now.

Tonight I picked the Broncos (who are currently winning) and the Raiders (who are currently getting schooled). Let’s see if I can have a good weekend…

*No one outside Sydney actually cares about the NRL. The rest of the country follows AFL. Now you know.

Sean continues to milk one trip in April for blogging in May…

There are Big Things in Australia. In Goulburn (one of the glorious bustling cities along the Hume) they have the Big Merino. It’s even anatomically accurate. In the gift shop attached to the sheep’s right flank we overheard a woman say to a man (with absolutely no irony), “You can climb those stairs and get right up inside the sheep.”

What a fantastic world we live in.

Last week in WA a school teacher was attacked by a shark. He fought it off by poking it in the eye before he was rescued by a mother of three (not even his mum!). Many beaches in the area remain closed as the sharks have been spotted every day since the attack.

Don’t let anyone try to convince you shark attacks don’t happen that often.

A few weeks ago, Amanda and I spent the better part of four days driving all over the southeastern part of Australia. Our ultimate goal was The Twelve Apostles on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road so when we set out from Sydney on a rainy Monday morning we had a whole lot of road ahead of us. Most of that road was the Hume Highway.

Fortunately, the rain didn’t last long. In fact, the entire time we were in the Melbourne area it was beautiful, sunny, and warm while back in Sydney it continued to rain (it rained for 13 days straight in Sydney last month!). The drive from Sydney to Melbourne is pretty easy:

Step 1: Get on Hume Highway
Step 2: Stay on Hume Highway for approximately 9 hours
Step 3: You are in Melbourne

I love driving, so I actually did all the driving on this trip. The Hume Highway is not the most exciting stretch of road in the world (though I80 through Wyoming is far worse) but I was excited nonetheless as I hoped the road would afford me the opportunity to see some of the wonders of rural Australia. And the Hume Highway delivered.

Just a little past the thriving metropolis of Goulburn is the up and coming suburb of Yass. Now the McDonald’s people in Yass fancy themselves a little bit edgy as evidenced by the massive billboard outside Yass:

A little further along we saw a Dog on a Tuckerbox (though I preferred the no-nonsense sign):

You might well be asking yourself what could possibly top a dog on a tuckerbox. Well the fine folks in Holbrook might respond by telling you about their submarine. I would have loved to have been a part of the meeting that led to a landlocked town hours and hours away from any body of water larger than a puddle acquiring a decommissioned submarine that they would then half bury in a park.

“You know what screams Holbrook?”
“What, city councillor?”
“An old navy sub.”
“…”

And they are proud of that sub, dammit.

“What delights lay beyond Holbrook?” I wondered as we continued southeast through New South Wales. Would Wodonga turn out to be the Paris of the southern hemisphere? Would Bowser have a Super Mario themepark? I drove on, eyes wide like a kid at Christmas, enraptured by what I might encounter next.

Well cross we did into Victoria where we came across Glenrowan, the site of Ned Kelly’s last stand. Ned Kelly’s last stand is one of the most popular moments in Australian history. Peter Carey even wrote a novel about the Kelly Gang and won the Booker for it. And this is how the site of the last stand is preserved:

I have some more pictures of Glenrowan that I will save for a separate post. They are that good.

Anyway, on we continued, getting closer and closer to Melbourne which would be our basecamp for our trek along the Great Ocean Road. But before we got to Melbourne we passed a town called Dookie. You can’t make this stuff up! The sign also makes me wonder just how purple Violet Town is.

It took approximately ten hours to drive from Sydney to Melbourne (including a number of stops) and that entire time we saw no (live) kangaroos (about 20 dead ones though!). Luckily, on our return journey we saw one kangaroo and a fox! Score.

More photos from our trip here.

Coming up next time: our hero negotiates Melbourne’s hook turns and trams and then faces off with a vicious echidna all the while discovering that Australian speed limits are ridiculous.

I’ve got a backload of articles bookmarked that I need to clear out so…….here’s what’s been going on on this crazy little Island of Death.

1. Police save (drunk) swimmer from crocodiles

Constable Stanley said there were plenty of “no swimming” signs along the beach warning that sharks, box jellyfish and crocodiles prowled the water.

Just sharks, box jellyfish, and crocodiles? What, no dragons or dinosaurs? The article gets better…

Mike O’Keefe, assistant manager at the beachside Alyangula Recreational Club, said he was shouting at the man to get out of the water while he was filming on his mobile phone. “I was trying to explain to this idiot that a four-metre crocodile was going to kill him,” Mr O’Keefe said.

You can’t make this stuff up! But my favourite part of the article…

“He was very intoxicated and started basically abusing police for the fact that we were shooting at crocodiles,” Constable Stanley said. “He stated that he had been living in the Territory for 27 years and he had swum with crocodiles before and knew crocodiles.”

Priceless.

2. Police hail ‘hero’ husband for wrestling croc
If you wrestle a crocodile that is attacking your wife you are exempt from ever again having to purchase flowers and chocolate, correct?

3. Croc in custody after schoolyard visit
Did the croc show up in a white panelled van?

4. Don’t vilify killer shark: Greens
After the tragic death last month of a teenager, the NSW Green Party urged people to not seek out vigilante justice by hunting down sharks and killing them. I scoffed at the article at first, until I remembered people started murdering stingrays after Steve Irwin was killed. I shake my head a lot.

5. ‘Shark attack’ looks a bit fishy now
You can bet if I ever emerge from the water bleeding from a barracuda bite I will be telling everyone who will listen how I tangled with a Great White and lived to tell the tale.

6. Snake-free NZ gets yellow-bellied surprise
How is it that Australia has every poisonous/dangerous creature ever, while New Zealand is practically paradise?

7. Man shoots woman while hunting snake
Guns don’t kill people…

Alright, that feels better. I hate e-clutter.