We flew from Tasmania to Melbourne for a week after which we feel we can scientifically compare the great rival cities of Melbourne and Sydney.
I thought people from Sydney were called Sheila and Wayne, but apparently they’re called Sydneysiders. And one thing that many of them do is to over-exaggeratedly swing their arms when they walk. It was one of those things that, when you point it out you then see all over the place.

Melbourne had a very different feel. It doesn’t have the wow factor that Sydney has with the harbour, bridge, opera house (and people there keep their arms sensibly close to their bodies), but Melbourne feels much quirkier and characterful. Better cafés and better coffees. And there are free trams in the city centre!

We went to the cathedral in Melbourne for a Good Friday service – Stainer’s Crucifixion was being sung, primarily by the choir but we were allowed to join in a few hymns. I read that Stainer himself didn’t think much of what he had written. Say what you want about him, he was a good judge.

Watching the news on Easter Day was a little odd compared to the UK as they had quite a long news report on church services and the meaning of Easter and they showed a fair number of interviews with people about why they were at church. It was all done in a relaxed and very natural way – it wouldn’t have been reported nearly so openly in Britain.

On Easter Monday I went to my first Aussie Rules Football game. It’s a sort of cross between rugby, soccer, basketball and a punch up outside a night club.

I enjoyed it.

It was at the Melbourne Cricket Ground which housed the cricket World Cup final the week before in which Australia beat New Zealand to much antipodean joy and despair. It had been transformed from a cricket pitch to an Aussie Rules pitch by taking the stumps out, drawing a big square and two big semi circles and sticking quite a few goal posts here and there. It was the first game of the season for Hawthorne Hawks, last year’s league winners, against their arch rivals the Geelong Cats. Nearly 80,000 were watching and it seemed a pretty good, if massively one sided game with the Hawks whupping the Cats 123 to 61.
Basic rules as far as I could make out: you have to try and kick the ball through the middle two of the four goal posts and if you do that you get 6 points but if you only manage to get it between one of the middle and outer posts instead then they give you a point for trying. That’s the encouraging Australian way.

There was a lot of dropping the ball and fumbling after it on the floor and people ran into one another fairly frequently and someone got a bit knocked out. It looked like a Scotland rugby training session.

I was supporting the Hawks so I can hold my head high. “Go Hawks”.

Teams in various sports often take to the field to the sound of a particularly rousing and emotive song. “We are the champions” or “We will rock you” or something similarly inspiring… If you get the chance, please, please listen to the youtube clips of the anthems for the Hawthorn Hawks and the Geelong Cats. These were what the rough, tough, Aussie rules players came out to on Monday, I kid you not.

For the Hawthorns go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfy4LFWn5Rg

For the Geelong song go to

Honest – these are what the crowds sing and the players get pumped up to – it was like some bizarre Monty Python sketch. Each of the main league teams have a song of the same ilk. Let the English Premier League take note!!

And, in passing, is it only in Australia that they get to rename the global phenomenon that is McDonald’s? Here, it’s called Macca’s.

Gotta love Australia.