4 September - Brisbane

We spent 3 nights in Brisbane and really enjoyed our stay in the city, which reminded us of a very warm, sunny and clean version of London. The wide, meandering Brisbane River runs through the city and on the south bank are a row of buildings that look much like the South Bank Centre and Royal Festival Hall in London.

View across to Brisbane River southbank

We managed to get tickets to an Aussie Rules football game on Saturday night, which also happened to be the opening of the annual River of Fire festival, with a spectacular fireworks display. We had the fortune of watching the Brisbane Lions fight it out against Geelong for a place in the final play-offs while colourful fireworks lit up the night sky. As the finale to the fireworks two jets dumped their fuel and lit it with their afterburners. The jets flew over the stadium with tails of fire. Along with 30,000 supporters we were awed by the fireworks. Though unlike the majority of supporters we were thoroughly baffeled by the antics of aussie rules football.

Stephen at the Gabba before the kick-off

Aussie rules was created as a game for cricketers to play to stay fit after the cricket season had finished. 18 players are on the field for each team, the game is played on an oval field with what looks like a rugby ball. The ball is constantly under contest and punch ups seem to be part of the tactics to win over the ball. In addition to the 36 players there are number of other people that are on the field including 4 umpires and a number of other people. We never really understood the role of the 2 guys wearing flourescent yellow, we think that they may have been message boys telling players what to do. There was also a woman who was on the field during play giving players bottles of water. All in all, it was quite a spectacle.

Fireworks at the Gabba

During an early tackle one of the Geelong players had his shorts ripped off and a little later a Geelong official ran onto the field with a replacement pair of shorts. In the 3rd quarter (aussie rules games last for 2 hours of playing, played in 4 quarters with short breaks after 30 minutes) 2 women streaked across the field in their bikins to the amusment of players and the crowd. During their sprint around the field they managed to pinch the bottoms of several of the players.
We decided to support the home team, which unfortunately lost by 103-138. Triple digit score lines are not that uncommon in Aussie rules, in fact there seemed to be goals scored all the time. After a while we clapped when other Lions supporters clapped rather than trying to keep track of all the goals.