What time is it there?!

We arrived in Melbourne on the day before the opening ceremony and it already seemed busier than Australia Day in Sydney. By the next afternoon it seemed that even more people had crammed their way into town, and most of them were heading to the river to watch the opening ceremony on the big screens. We did briefly consider buying tickets to the ceremony, but since the cheapest tickets available were about £175 each it didn't take too long to decide on the riverbank option! (this may also explain why thousands of volunteers were given free tickets at the last minute to ensure a full stadium).

Now we may be judging unfairly as we couldn't see the screens that well, but the opening ceremony inside the stadium seemed to be 2 hours of complete nonsense involving a duck (for reasons which were never made clear). Those of you fortunate enough to have watched it on the BBC may well have received some explanation of what it was all supposed to mean, but the inane ramblings of the presenters that we had to endure gave no insight whatsoever. Down on the riverbank it was a completely different story, as tens of thousands of people (many no doubt feeling equally smug about being £175 better off!) got a great view of the events on the river itself and a superb front row seat for one of the best firework displays we have ever seen.

We spent the next two days at the rugby 7's competition, which was actually far more enjoyable than the non-rugby fans amongst you might expect. Apart from anything else we got to see the Australians wildly supporting New Zealand in the final (against England), so now we know that they dislike the Poms more than the Kiwis! In fact we were probably amongst the only people in the country who did see the final, as we have since discovered that the magnificent Channel 9 (with their "Wide World of Sport" slogan) seemed so taken aback by the lack of Aussie involvement in the match that they switched their TV coverage to a medal ceremony (Aussie bloke wins bronze) and , er, recorded highlights of lawn bowls! Oh yes, the Australian Media, its quite comical at times, but more about that later......

Getting tickets to the swimming or diving was virtually impossible as they had sold out months ago. So the only other event we actually went to was the night of athletics involving the 100M and Mens 5000M final. This was a great choice as although we had booked the cheapest seats available we somehow ended up sitting directly above the finish line!

Although we didn't attend any other events it didn't really matter, because there were numerous big screens around the city centre showing events throughout the day. There was also a music and arts festival on throughout the games, so every afternoon and evening there were live performances on 4 or 5 stages around the park.

Did anyone watch the closing ceremony? Was I the only one who thought that the closing musical performer was actually Donald Trump, rather than John Farnham? Maybe it's just those big screens again! From our point of view (sitting on the grass in the park) the ceremony seemed just as ridiculous as the opening. The only good points were, firstly the appearance of the Lord Mayor of Melbourne who (for reasons that we have yet to establish) seems to enjoy almost 'pop star' like popularity with the people, and secondly the part of the show put on by the Indians to promote the next games. In fact, maybe they could set a new standard for opening ceremonies, it still might not make any sense but everyone will probably be having so much fun that the ceremony could go on for longer than the games themselves!

On the day after the closing ceremony it still wasn't quite over. There have been volunteers from all around the country helping out around the city and we had been told that they were having a parade of their own through the city on Monday morning. It seemed as if all 15,000 of them had stayed around for the event and it must have taken 45 minutes for them all to pass by accompanied by some of the Australian athletes. It certainly looked like they had all had a great time, so if about 15,000 of you could make yourself available to work in central London in 2012 (for free of course!) then I'm sure everything will go well.....