Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!

As if we haven’t had enough bank holidays so far we got another one today for Australia day, a day dedicated to all things Oz. The day commemorates the landing of the First Fleet in Port Jackson in 1788 and is celebrated on the day that New South Wales officially formed. We were led to believe that everyone paints themselves up and goes flag crazy for the entire day. So we set off early in the morning to purchase face paints, novelty ties, headbands and two massive flags. Loaded down with our booty we then headed out for an advertised beach party in St. Kilda. We got to the beach and there was no party, they’d obviously heard Alex was on his way and decided to scarper. We did however come across a large crowd by Brighton beach so we decided to stop and check it out. Turned out there was a celebrity/Olympian swim race going on. The abs on some of those guys were impressive!

After Rach had wiped up her drool we drove to a nearby station to catch the train into the city centre to see what was going on there. We arrived and we both found there was something wrong. It wasn’t until Rach figured out that no-one was wearing any flags aside from us that we suddenly felt very conspicuous. Still, we set off proudly wearing our regalia to a nearby park to check out a small fair that was going on. We got treated to the surprisingly entertaining spectacle of competition logging, basically guys going at logs with a variety of chainsaws, hand saws and axes. We won’t bore you with the details but the winning guy in the standing axe contest managed to hack his way through a seriously hefty fifty centimetre diameter log in less than ten seconds!

In the aftermath of the contest and surrounded by wood chips we decided to apply the face paints and make ourselves stand out even more. It was pretty strange what with us not being Aussies and yet being the most made up with all our flags, and face paints. We obviously stood out as we were sat eating some hot-hounds on the edge of Federation Square when a guy from Channel Ten came up to us asking if he could take a picture of us to go on the national news! He took down our names and said that we could catch it at half five that evening. We rushed back home but sadly didn’t make it in time however our next door neighbour had seen us on it and it turned out the guy who took the pic is actually something of an Aussie celeb! Whilst they had got our names right, we reckon they were a little embarrassed that two Poms were getting more into the spirit of things than the Aussies so they’d listed us as coming from Hobart, a place in Tasmania. Still at least we made it onto the TV, the pic of us that went up is below! It was great getting into the Aussie spirit and it would be brilliant to have a similar day back home in the UK.

Rex’s Rules of the Road

• Aussies themselves don’t really seem to dress up but go for it and you never know you too could become famous like us!