Melbourne's Goals and Gaols

Life without our camper van barely seemed worth living for a few hours, then we remembered that we had tickets to an Aussie Rules Football (the official league for the game, is the Australia Football League, or AFL) playoff game (they call the playoffs the finals).  The game was held at the  famous Melbourne Cricket Ground, which holds 100,000 people.  The MCG was truly a marvelous sports venue, but we're glad we saw an AFL game there instead of cricket.  No offense to any cricket fans out there, it's just that Aussie rules was much easier to pick up.  Annette found that some sports are not a total waste of her time, as Aussie rules did not offend her or make her want to brain herself on the stadium steps.  We both actually liked the game, which is a cross between soccer, American football (they call it Gridiron in Oz and NZ) and rugby.  The team we randomly chose to support (Carlton FC! What?! What!?!) ended up kicking the other guys' teeth in, so we walked away from our introduction to Aussie rules and a beautiful day at a beautiful stadium quite happy indeed.

The highlight of Melbourne for us was the AFL finals game at the MCG, but the city was pretty nice all around.  A visit to the Old Melbourne Gaol (prison) was another highlight.  Ned Kelly was hung there after a brief stay, and their tour where they treat you like a prisoner was pretty entertaining.  They yell at you and act as if they are booking you.  You sit in a cell with the lights off, knock around a padded cell, and learn what hanging out in a jail cell was like for the drunks of Melbourne (as, apparently, a large number of their guests were just there for a night or two after some disorderly behavior caused by a little too much of the sauce).  The oldest section had some interesting exhibits on female prisoners, some of their real baddies, and, of course, lots of information about Ned Kelly.  The two coolest Ned Kelly related things at the Gaol was the awkward two-person play and the poster for the 1970 Ned Kelly movie starring Mick Jagger (we had no idea this film existed, but it is going straight to the top of our Netflix que when we get back).

The old Gaol was certainly one of our favorite things in Melbourne, but the Aussie rules game, and the excited and jet-lagged Kiwi we sat next to, really made our trip to Melbourne great.  And we were in the perfect city to learn about Aussie rules, as 10 of the 17 AFL teams are from Melbourne or one of its suburbs.  Although fans of the sport like to say it is the most popular game in the country, it really doesn't hold a candle to rugby (either league or union) in other areas of the country.  The Sydney Swans, we'd later discover, barely made it on to pub televisions when they played their second finals game a few days later.

We found Sydney a very different city from Melbourne in more ways than one, which is a story for our next post...