Onto Oz! Where footy and wine are king

Friday March 13 and Saturday March 14

Post-Holi I had a few hours to attempt to clean up, finish packing, and head to the airport for my flight to Melbourne, Australia to visit Sarah and Gareth, friends from Colorado, for a week. Before I left, I was able to watch the movie “Outsourced” with Sunitha and Ashwyn. Highly recommended to anyone who has visited India, worked in any sort of call center, or dealt with calling a call center! Very funny stuff.

Also, I foolishly booked my flight through Dubai, which for those of you not familiar with the geography of the area, is in the wrong direction if you want to go to Australia from Mumbai. Alas, visiting the Dubai airport did present me with the opportunity to play Bon Jovi on Guitar Hero at one of the electronics stores; “You Give Love a Bad Name” has never rocked the United Arab Emirates harder. I also saw many great films on the plane: “Mama Mia!” (go see the musical, the movie is fun but rubbish in comparison); “Vicky Christina Barcelona” (very well done, worth a look if only for Javier Bardem the lead actor); “Breaking Away” (how I never saw this my two years in Bloomington I am still amazed); and “Madagascar 2” (worth it for the penguins alone! I may buy this one.)

Four movies, an overload of food courtesy of Emirates Airlines, and a stop over in Singapore later where I had a pleasant chat with a pilot from Zimbabwe who was getting Australian citizenship, I reached Melbourne.

Melbourne greeted me with blue skies, open space, and no horn-honking. Alas, I thought, I must indeed be Down Unda.

I caught the airport bus into town, borrowed a phone from a passerby on the street and phoned Sarah, who soon met me and we made it to her and Gareth’s apartment in Port Melbourne. After catching up for a bit, they headed back to work for the afternoon and I took a much needed nap before they returned home and we partook in having several of their home brewed beers before heading to the Footy Game.

I had not heard of Footy, or the Australian Football League, until a few days prior my arrival. It’s a sport only popular in Australia, and it really is loved by fans, the arena the games are held in is quite large and the beer flows freely.

Footy Stadium

S & G Enjoying some Fish N Chips

But really what one goes there for (if not acquainted with the sport) is the fans, along with the fish n chips. We were lucky enough to sit between a fan who knew everyone by first name and especially loved yelling “C’Mon Chappy!” Another fan was not afraid to utter profanities in front of his young sons, who promptly corrected him that “Mom says you aren‘t supposed to say that!” Alas, it was highly enjoyable, although the game was a massacre, something like 100-50, with Gaelong victorious over Collingwood.

The next day, we were supposed to go walk about AKA bushwalking AKA hiking, but it was rainy so after getting a move on by noon (it’s pleasant weather here; I slept in), we headed to the Yerra Valley that has several wineries in the vicinity. The area was affected by the brush fires a few months ago in Australia, in fact we had tried to go to the Sound Relief concert but that was sold out (the Aussies LOVE their Kings of Leon here, one of the performers at the event to raise money for victims of the fires).

Instead, we hit up three wineries that were all tasty and all different--Helen’s Hill, where the woman was extremely knowledgeable about their wine and told us they had to fight the fires with towels and buckets of water; Yearing Farms that had lots of rustic beauty and where the winery across the way from them was affected but they were minimally and which was very rustic. Also Sticks, that was more Hip and Urban (even in a rural winery, this is possible).

At the first winery of the day, Helen's Hill

Nine bottles of wine bought and my first kangaroo roadkill sighting later, we went back to Melbourne that evening, and Sarah made a great dinner at home and we kept drinking wine, and more wine, and more, until we decided to stay in, which may have been the worst decision since that lead to a rough morning on Sunday.


However, we did phone our friend Kate and her boyfriend Haydn in the US and I think may have convinced them to make a trip to Melbourne this year, and we also busted out some great tunes on the guitar; “Leaving on a Jet Plane” was taken to an entirely new level. I swear wine makes rocking out so much more effortless.