Tomorrow is the culmination of the Australian Rules football season. We’re down to just 2 teams who will tomorrow contest the rand Final at the MCG. The West Coast Eagles from Perth and the Sydney Swans from… Sydney. The day before the Grand Final, both teams take part in a parade through Melbourne. I went along to check it out and was amazed by the number of people who lined the route to catch a glimpse of the players. The players themselves looked a bit embarrassed about the whole thing - understandably. Anyway, I’m told it’s tradition. Tomorrow’s the big day, when the whole country (well, Victoria at least) stops what they are doing to watch the final. I’m told a typical Grand Final day is spent at friends’ houses having a barbecue and drinking the day away. Michael has asked me along to his mate Andy’s place tomorrow, so looking forward to a typical Aussie footy finals day.

Which means tomorrow is the first day of spring At 04:03 GMT (05:03 BST, 06:03 CET, 14:03 EST Australia) the sun will cross the equator from the northern to the southern hemisphere. Officially this marks the beginning of spring in the southern hemisphere and autumn in the northern hemisphere. It feels weird to think of spring starting in September, but I’m slowly getting used to it.

The day is still shorter here (by 9 minutes) than it is in Wales, but that’s due to the high latitude of Europe compared to Australia. This will be reversed in the next few days… Starting now to look forward to some sunny evenings here

Today however it is still winter, with gale force winds and rough seas throughout the southern ocean from Perth in the West to New South Wales in the east. This morning Tasmania’s west coast saw the largest wave ever recorded in Australian waters, with a peak hight of 19.5 metres. I wonder if anyone was out surfing at that time…

http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Winds-spark-rogue-195m-wave-off-Tassie/2006/09/22/1158431890781.html

3 channels here showed Steve Irwin’s memorial service from his Australia Zoo in Beerwah, Queensland, this morning. Steve Irwin was famous on Discovery and Animal Planet in Europe and the US as the Crocodile Hunter. He used to be ridiculed in Australia, but in recent years he became more popluar, as they realised from several tv interviews that he wasn’t an act. The way he behaves in his tv show is pretty much how he is anyway. I went to Australia Zoo in January 2002 on a day trip from Brisbane. I’d heard that occasionally Steve Irwin fed the crocs at the zoo himself, and I happened to be there on one of these occasions;

Australia Zoo (http://www.australiazoo.com.au/australia_zoo/)  is mainly dedicated to reptiles such as native Australian crocodiles (there are 2 types found here, saltwater and freshwater crocodiles) and snakes (of which Australia has the 10 most venomous in the world). However, there are many other animals to be seen, particularly native Australian fauna such as wallabies, kangaroos, koalas, etc. Until last June, Australia Zoo was also home to Harriet, the worlds oldest living animal. Harriet was a galapagos giant tortoise which was 175 years old (determined through DNA testing) and has been traced as being a sole survivor of one of several taken by Charles Darwin to London in the 1830s.

The demonstrations at the zoo are mainly aimed at education people on how to interact safely with some of the more dangerous animals, such as proving that it is vibrations (such as heavy footsteps) that attract crocs to the river banks in the first place, and disproving the myth that crocodiles are fast on land. Crocodiles are only fast when their giant tails are in the water, enabling them to propel themselves extremely quickly to within a few meters of the bank of a river.

Today the mercury hit 30 degrees for the 1st time since last March. A few days of strong winds bringing warm air down from the desert regions of WA and SA have made this the hotest 19th Sept on record. It was very windy, but the wind actually made everything seem even hotter. The wind shifted at around 6pm to westerlies, suddenly bringing us back to the reality that it is in fact still winter here…

Great site for climate info on Australia, is the government’s bureau of meteorology - http://www.bom.gov.au

The most famous of all Australia’s prime ministers was Harold Holt. He had been in office for about 2 years when, in December 1967, he decided to go for a swim in the Southern Ocean, off the southern Victorian coast. He was last spotted about 50m out in the surf, and promptly disappeared. His body was never found, and he was pronounced missing, presumed drowned. They eventually built a memorial for him in Melbourne, a municipal swiming pool! You’ve got to love the irony…

I got talking about ironic monuments in Austraila with someone recently, who claimed that 2 famous explorers who died of thirst crossing the continent from south to north in 1860, had a memorial in Melbourne. This was said to consist of a statue of the 2 men (Robert O’Hara Burke and William Wills) in the middle of a fountain. This sounded great, so I sent off in search of this monument. It turned out, that there is indeed a statue of these 2 hapless explorers, but there’s no fountain. It also transpires that they died whilst camping next to Cooper Creek, and died of malnutrition rather than thirst.