Tour de Bridlington

As a step towards full cultural assimilation, we spent this weekend watching sport.

On Saturday, the lure of free tickets found us at our first Australian Cricket match. Queensland and Tasmania played a one day match at ‘The Gabba’ – Brisbane’s cricket and Aussie rules stadium.

It was only after we had agreed to go that I found out that the match lasted over 7 hours!! We arrived, armed with a good book and a crossword, to find the stadium packed and the game already underway.

The first few hours were quite slow, Steve and Ben, our more informed friends, explained what was going on. The highlight of the first half seemed to be the umpire falling over his feet, which caused massive hilarity in the crowd around us. The reaction to the clumsy umpire made us realise the volumes of Castlemaine XXXX being consumed around us. One group of lads, had already built an impressive metre tall tower of consumed beer cups and the day was young….

Cricket fans...


By the end of the first half, Queensland had finished batting and were 290 for 5. The half time entertainment was a throwing competition - this really is true... Spectators, who fancied themselves as a bit of a thrower, could go down onto the pitch and see how far they could lob a small plastic toy. The winner, whose toy nearly hit the other end of the stadium, won a hat – it was a white knuckle ride, I tell you…..

After the excitement of the interval, the cricket seemed a little dull, but fortunately they called the lucky programme number. Programme owners who hadn’t won, quickly unleashed a torrent of paper aeroplanes on to the pitch sending the ushers into a frenzy and the crowd wild. Next came the beach balls, which were thrown around the crowd until they fell onto the pitch and were confiscated by an usher, sparking a booooo of 15,000 voices…

After a few wrapped knuckles from the announcer, the attention once again returned to the cricket. Queensland got all of Tasmania out for 180 making the crowd very happy, if a bit wobbly, chappies - the beer tower, by this time, was approaching 2 metres tall and was looking as unsteady as its creators.

We left, full of cheap meat pies, happy to have won. The book hadn’t been touched and we were still two answers short on the crossword…

On Sunday, buoyed by our new sporting enthusiasm, we wandered down to the South Bank to watch the cycling Grand Prix (or a ‘pushy’ race..). The track was a fairly small block with two long straight sections and very tight corners at either end.
The guys cycling were serious sorts with very fancy bikes and tight shiny pants. A few of them had just returned from a season in Europe, including the Tour de France, so why they weren’t at home with their feet up and a nice cup of tea is beyond me.

In true Brisbane style, just before the race started, the heavens opened and it truly poured down, but utterly professional and seemingly unaware of the rain causing their small pants to become transparent, they all cycled at 60KPH round and round and round until lots of them had fallen off and hurt themselves. We were lucky enough to stand next to a very enthusiastic Canadian man, who explained what was going on and why they shave their legs – It’s got nothing to do with aerodynamics apparently – some waffle about making injuries easier to deal with – sounds dubious…

It was good fun to watch, from underneath an umbrella, but we were ready for a sit down and a slice of cake afterwards, so we went to a café and waited for the rain to stop. Luckily we got bored of waiting and made a run for it, because we would have been there yet…

It’s still showing no sign of getting sunny, but as we have proved ourselves incompetent with sun cream, its probably best…