whales, swans, and youth

Our Saturday started with us doing all sorts of dirty things around the apartment. Once we finished cleaning, we started our day…

Whale watching

Sydney has one of the longest migratory periods in Australia. There are many varieties of whales that pass through here and today we were out looking for humpbacks. They are 50 ton creatures that migrate from their feeding grounds near Antarctica to the warmer waters of northern Australia where they mate and give birth. That’s about a 5,000Km commute; in fact, there have been records of humpbacks travelling as much as 18,000Km. Ahhh, the power of sex!

To quote George Constanza, “the seas were angry my friend”. We got out for the whale searching in what they claimed were moderate seas… they might have been moderate to an experienced boatsman but to your average potato farmers daughter (Julie) they were pretty heavy. Julie got a little green around the gills on the route back and asked that I leave her alone once we got back to shore. (Like she had to ask! I already cleaned enough stuff at the beginning of the day) She soon recovered with her intestines intact… Moving around the catamaran boat was challenging to say the least… the rocking and tossing was quite a workout and it trashed my already bad knee pretty significantly.

As for the whales…we finally caught up with a pair of males about 3Km offshore and 10Km south of Sydney Harbour. The choppy water made them difficult to spot, and even more difficult to photograph. We managed to hang with them for about an hour. For me, watching a pod of dolphins surfing the wake of a sailboat in the harbour was probably more fun…but I digress. Anyway, above are the better shots of the whales. I should have taken photos of the people standing on the bow of the boat for over an hour…soaked doesn’t begin to cover what they looked like. :-)

SIDE NOTES: When I describe our boat as a catamaran I am technically correct. However, it’s an 80 foot three story craft with twin diesel engines. On the topic of boats…Sydney has an unbelievable variety of watercraft. It seems that there are no two boats that are the same except for the harbour ferries. There are single person kayaks, sculling boats, small personal boats, skiffs, large personal boats, yachts, mega-yachts, ocean-going freighters, cruise ships, aw hell, there are A LOT of different boats in the harbour.

Swans "Footy"

It’s no secret that Julie and I are rabid Oregon Duck fans. In fact, we worry on a daily basis that seeing a Duck game (in 51 days) might be difficult in Oz. (Rest easy, we signed up for the online service that streams games around the world) We knew before we moved that we’d have to have some sort of a replacement sport (methadone for our heroin addiction) while we are in Australia. Julie’s workmate, Jane Lancsar, hooked us up with two Sydney Swan tickets. The Swans are one of two Australian Rules Football teams in Sydney. (The Australian love of abbreviating everything refers to it as “footy”) We arrived about an hour before game time at the Sydney Cricket Grounds. (Cricket is big here too — all sports are pretty big here.) Our working assumption was that we’d be able to score some dinner at the grounds before “footy”. We did that although the selection of foods was shockingly dismal. So…yes…we had fish and chips in our seats at the game. (The guy sitting next to me ate three meals….wow!) One last point of interest is the cricket grounds themselves….it’s patterned after Churchhill Downs so there is a mixture of architecture that is at best eclectic, at worst odd, but pretty fun and comfortable. It’s immediately adjacent to The Fox Studios where they make movies — in fact, one of the seating areas is named Bill O’Reilly (that falls into the “odd” category of the stadium.

Now I don’t want to bore everyone by describing the game of “footy” so I’ll bullet point the basics:

• The field is an oval.
• There are very few rules and the clock runs like soccer; with 4 quarters instead of 2 halves.
• You can’t pass the ball - you have to either bump it to people or kick it
• If you kick it and it’s caught you earn a “mark” which means you are free to kick or run or whatever from that spot without being hassled.
• If you run, you have to bounce the ball off the ground every 15 meters or it’s a penalty. It’s also a penalty to simply hold the ball.
• You score by kicking the ball through one of two goals posts; inner or outer. If you make it through the inner you get 6 points; outer you get 1.

The Swans are in first place. In fact, last night's game they tied the longest winning streak in team history for wins in a row (12). They smashed the lowly Carlton team last night 124 - 51 scoring nearly 50 points in Q3 alone. It was fun and exciting and COLD! It’s winter here and the last few days have been pretty cool — 14C/56F (<—guess conversion) Anyway, thanks Jane! We are already somewhat hooked on the Swans — hell, we even bought team scarves!

The last reportable moment was the bus ride back to Circular Quay from where we caught our ferry home. We got on the bus and sat in the middle of 10 local kids heading out for the night. The scarves we were wearing were real conversation starters — the fact that we left after Q3 and didn’t stay for the whole game was disappointing to everyone we encountered. As soon as we spoke they had a lot to say about America. Again, they knew about Oregon and even the Ducks; they talked about LeBron James and Michael Jordan; they covered various geographic places they’d visited. It was a dizzying experience where we had 10 people talking to us all at once about everything you can imagine. One young girl (there were 2 girls and 8 guys) shared information about Australia that I wanted to hear but I kept being pulled away by the rowdier boys. It was fun overall. The biggest shock (for me) came when they got off the bus near Kings Cross (Kings Cross is party central; red-light district; nightclubs, you name it, the Cross has it.) We continue to be amazed by how hard the people of Sydney party and how dressed they all get for a night of clubbing. It’s kind of cool to see young people caring so much about how they look when they go out for a night on the town.

That's a wrap blog stalkers. Have a great day!