We had an exciting day ahead as we had booked to see the Sydney Swans take on the West Coast Eagles at the ANZ Arena (formerly the Telstra Stadium) in the evening. So we had a lazy day in the city beforehand, doing a bit of shopping in the Queen Victoria Arcade - a grand old Victorian shopping emporium in the heart of the city. We grabbed some lunch and headed down to the Chinese Garden just off Darling Harbour, to escape the hustle and bustle of the city for an hour or so. This was a magical little haven of tranquility with waterfalls, koi carp and beautiful mock chinese temples. It was really nice to escape away for an hour or so and take a walk around - other than the mass of mosquito bites I managed to attain!
We headed upto Olympic Park on the metro at around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, hopng to have a walk round the site of the 2000 Olympics. The park is very impressive, with dozens of big stadiums and arenas dotted about. Everything was beautifully landscaped with huge boulevards and parks between the arenas. This must have been a really fantastic place to view a massive sporting event like the olympics. About 2 hours before the game the atmosphere really began to hot up, with live bands playing outside the stadium and plenty of food stalls selling everything you could possibly imagine. The Aussie's really seem to make an effort with their supporting - the stadium was a sea of red and white with everyone kitted out in the latest Swans merch - from vests to hats and scarves! The game kicked off at about 7.30, and the 44,000 fans made a fair bit of noise. The stadium is gigantic, holding around 80,000 when full, but even just over half full it was a mightily impressive sight. AFL is a frantic sport with lots of tough tackling and whistle blowing. Its really a cross between football, rugby and basketball, the aim is to kick the ball between a set of 4 upright posts -between the middle 2 is 6 points and the outer 2 is 1 point. The Swans crushed the Eagles 101 - 49, so we saw plenty of action - the highlight of which was Barry Hall, a 6ft bald Aussie bruiser forward landing a punch and flooring one of the Eagles guys in plain view of the whole stadium - and he didn't even get cautioned! This was all over the front pages of the news the next day! Justice was done however as later in the game he broke his wrist when he went crashig into the advertising boards at the side of the pitch!
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