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Heide and Mark Adventuring until the money runs out.... |
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Busy in Brisbane.... In the, erm, “classic” Aussie soap opera “Neighbours” many folk were written out of the show by moving “up to Brissie”. It was as if Brisbane lay on the shores of the Sea of Tranquillity rather than the banks of the Brisbane River close to the Queensland coast. It is, I suppose, a provincial city, but that seems an unduly harsh dismissal of this city which is home to pushing on a couple of a million people. We found it a quite welcoming place, full of decent people and it had one of those eminently liveable feels.
One of the main reasons we decided to stop at Brisbane was to watch a Rugby League game. We’d seen other quintessentially Aussie “things” such as Kangaroos, Koalas and the Australian surf life saving championships. A bit of biff on a rugby league pitch would just add to the whole Aussie experience. Now while Rugby League isn’t real Rugby (I wonder how many folk I’ve just hacked off with comment!?) it’s still a great sport. Not that any sport has to be great to draw me in to watch it. I’d be quite happy watching competitive tiddly winks, but when you get the chance to watch something you actually enjoy, well so much the better. The home team were the Brisbane Broncos and were playing host to the Parramatta Eels. Normally when turning up at a foreign event it’s best to side with the “home” team but we didn’t fancy being that conformist and so we were backing the Eels. I’d actually watched the Eels play a game back in ’97 and supported them in that game so it would have been treacherous to desert them now just because they were playing away. I’m not the glory hunting type who only watches the team it’s easiest to watch. Everyone hates Man United and Yankees fans!
The local support was superb. Sat directly in front of us was a group of four older, err, “ladies”. They were absolutely superb. They were Ockers through and through and were probably the funniest thing this side of the Comedy Channel. Come to think of it they were much funnier than the Comedy Channel. In the curtain raiser (two local teams as far as I can gather) they were staunch supporters of number 13 from Charville, who went by the name “Nigel”. Now Big Nig, was not perhaps the slimmest lad on the park but he did score a fine try, breaking through a few tackles and then ploughing over from a reasonable distance out. He was absolutely knackered after that. Still at that moment he was a god in the eyes of the fab four in front of us. “Nigel. Yer bladdy marvellous yer are!” If only the final whistle had blown then. Nigel would have been the toast of the town. Sadly the game was far from over and the heat started to slow the star down. Indeed, he once had the audacity to try a sly reverse pass rather than crash through the defence. It didn’t work. His “move” was met with howls of derision from the crew who were amusing me: “Nigel. Yer too bladdy fat to troi that. Just crash through ‘em ya useless lazy dog!” Ah, touching isn’t it just how fickle sporting support can be?
After all the excitement of the curtain raiser we were already sweltering and in need of a beer and hot dog and the fine lasses who so staunchly supported Nigel went off to the groupie meeting point. Go get ‘em Nig! However the fun with the fans was far from over. There was a group of three lads with long hair who were sitting a few rows in front of us and were leading the chant “We’re the mighty, mighty Brisbane Broncos and we come from Bris… Bris… Brisbane town!” Frankly this may seem a little obvious but I’m glad they were chanting because if we hadn’t known they were supposed to be “mighty’, and frankly you wouldn’t have guessed it by the performance, we would have assumed they were pretty well crap. The Eels crossed the line five times in the first half (though the second and fourth “try” were ruled out thanks to the TV Referee) The match was a little closer than the first half suggested it would be. It ended a 26 – 18 victory for the Eels. This was considered a bit of an upset but any other result would have been a travesty. As it goes we moved from one end of the ground to other at half time, expecting there to be much more goal line action at the North Side of the ground than in front of the South Stand. We were wrong but at least we got out of the direct sunlight. Go Eels!
While in Brisbane we discovered (thanks Mum!) that I had a cousin who lived right there, in that very city. For some reason I’d always thought that he lived in Adelaide but it turned out that Stephen Boyle had landed on these shores some 8, or so, years back and had always been in Queensland. I’m delighted to say that this Boyle, unlike the scores we found at the Barracks in Sydney, had come down under voluntarily and was living with his Aussie wife, Nik. They’d met back in Scotland many years before hand and had now moved back to her home town and had two beautiful daughters. Sally, who is a babe in arms and the delightful Lucy. Although I hadn’t seen Stephen for about twenty odd years family is family so we arranged to meet. We spent a great day with the Boyle family and, as testament to his professional training (he’s a chef) Stephen knocked up an absolutely superb, classic Aussie barbeque. We certainly had a wonderful time and can only hope that it’s not another two decades or so until we see them all again. Thanks for your hospitality guys and a special thanks to Lucy for the dinosaur sticker! Next Entry: March 24, 2004 Previous Entry: March 20, 2004
This Page was last update: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 at 7:15:28 PM This site is using the Adult Contemporary (purple) theme.
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