OUR TIME IN OZ -------------------- THE RELLIES THE GAMES ROY, H.G. & FATSO THE PUBS OTHER STUFF HOME, JAMES Comments or Hate Mail

Talk about a beach party! Set on Bondi (bon-die) Beach, probably the most famous beach in Australia, the stadium held about 6,000 screaming, drunken idiots... all having a great time. There was a courtside "DJ" keeping the crowd revved up during breaks. He was getting the crowd to do the "Mexican" wave. Where that came from, who knows. It's always been just the "Wave" to us. The coolest was when he got the crowd to do a slow motion wave to classical music. Before the event, we went out and stuffed our faces and walked down to the beach to hang out. And lucky Rob saw something else hanging out. When he was about to snap a picture of us, he noticed a woman sunning herself about 10 metres away (that's about 30 feet). He put the camera down when he realised one of her breasts was hanging out of her suit. Now you might think this was normal but it didn't look like she did it on purpose. It was just kind of like she rolled over while she was sleeping and BAM! There it was. Plus it was only one, not a matching set... whatever! Although it was cool when we went into the stadium, by the time the first match got going the temperature had gotten up to about 25, errr, that's about 75 for you Yanks. That and the sun coming out was all we needed to convince us to head off to the bar to get, what else, VB! And since we rode a bus to Bondi, Rob and Robert didn't need to hold back. After about $30 later (more like $16 US) and we were feelin' fine. We got to see Brazil vs. Japan first. The best part of that - aside from the players in skimpy bikinis for the males in the crowd - was the Japanese fans. Our favourites were three guys on the other side of the stadium doing an "eat the sushi" dance routine in full sushi chef outfits. There was also the Bola, the world's "biggest" volleyball fan. This guy was about 240 kilograms (for comparison, I weigh about 90kg)... Okay! He was about 500 pounds! Anyway, it turns out this guy was a DJ in Rio De Janiero and he travels all over with the Brazilian sports teams but he was good for a few laughs - as if a black guy speaking Portuguese wearing a blonde afro wig and a yellow cape and tights banging a drum would not draw a few laughs. And oh yeah, the Brazilians were out in full force, with the drums and the singing only adding to the atmosphere. The second match was between the eventual gold medal winners from Australia and another Brazilian team. So here you had the home team and the Brazilians who know how to party no matter where they are and no matter how many of them are around. The match was close even though the Aussies won both sets. Two entertaining matches, loud music, a raucous crowd, sunshine, VB, bikinis... was anything missing? We didn't notice if there was.

On the cliff overlooking Bondi Beach - Disassociated Press, 2000 Bondi Stadium as seen from the water - Disassociated Press, 2000 Inside Bondi Stadium in the Yank section with all the other folks that got ripped off by Cartan for our tickets - Disassociated Press, 2000