Steve Emrick's First Impressions of Queensland, Australia

I think, I think!, I now understand rugby. I want to qualify that statement. Last night we were privileged to watch a rugby match between the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales – a 30-6 victory for the local Queenslanders. Aspects of the game, the initial kick-off, the yardage markers painted on the field, the extra point attempts after a score, reminded me of American football and hinted at its origins, while others, such as a lack of blockers for the ball carrier and backwards passes took a little getting used to. We were all impressed by the civility of the participants considering that it features players routinely using other player’s faces as a means to regain their feet after a tackle. This type of behaviour in an American game always results in a fracas. We watched the game in a local bar/restaurant and were lucky to have on hand a helpful barkeep who was more than happy to explain the nuances of the game as well as more than happy to disparage our American version of it.
Australia in general strikes me as, admittedly after only four days on the continent, a more British version of the U.S. set in a tropical environment. Like our United States it is a large country with a great deal of open space crossed by hideous highway cultural debris and strip malls. But in this version one drives on the left, takes the Queen’s birthday as a holiday, receives tomatoes and mushrooms with one’s eggs in the morning and posts letters rather than mails them.
Thankfully we saw small herds of kangaroos hoping alongside our train on the journey south from Townsville to our headquarters in Cannonvale. One can’t help but consider a journey to Australia incomplete without a sighting of these unusual southern hemisphere marsupial oddities. I could have dived on the Great Barrier Reef for two weeks and seen whole guidebooks of colorful fishes and corals and still come away with a vague sense of dissatisfaction if I had somehow missed out on these megapod monstrosities. Our kangaroos were seen bounded through pastures filled with cattle, not ideal conditions for a sighting, but I still feel good about them. Now, about those koalas.

Contact Dr. Philip Pepe
E-mail phil.pepe@pcmail.maricopa.edu