Recently I was invited to a series of meetings in Australia. Which is on the map is not very far but in reality because of the vagaries of the time difference it is at least a five hour journey. Which I know is not a real hardship but it is still five hours with a time difference which means in some directions it is seven hours which plays havoc with more mature system.
I approached this trip with a sense of real excitement in going to see world famous venues. For those of you looking from further afield, for example North America, it is worth pausing for a moment just to give you an overview of Australia. It is by any stretch of the imagination enormous. It takes in a jumbo jet the thick end of five hours to cover it, but it only has a population of about 25 million, which means it has got a population of about two New York’s and a mass at about three times the size of America. So they tend to get lost particularly in the middle because most of that population is around the outside and indeed it is growing at a rate of knots by 2020 they may be up to 30 million, with a growth rate of about 50% in about ten years (impressive going).
I would like to say this is simply because of the testosterone level amongst Australian men, however when you are fighting 30° degrees every day of your life, it probably isn’t so strong. What they are doing is importing the cream of intelligence that can find its way to Christmas Island by every means. The Aussies are trying to managed repopulation, which is strange to the mind of us Brit’s as we tried to populate with our criminals back in the early 1800’s and to their eternal credit after this unpromising of starts, the young Australian nation has position itself in the world as one of the most forward thinking countries and from this distance in New Zealand, they are doing a good job of it. It is seems a big place with a big economy, particularly as Australia to hitched to China’s all conquering economy, it is going places.
It is going places, because it has a wealth of mineral resources and it is my humble view that this would inevitably lead onto great things in centuries to come.
My trip was to attend Melbourne where there are at least five wonderful leisure facilities. The MCG had a capacity of about 100,000 and is filled on a regular basis with sport’s crazed fans following the Australian rules, of which, I recognise the sheer athleticism of the players, however the game leaves me cold. AFL attracts, on average crowds, of 50,000 per year and the game I saw had crowd attendance of 72,000. This venue hosts at least two such games a week as well as being the home to test cricket which makes it one of two real Mecca’s of that sport worldwide, Lords in London, being the other.
This stadium is as well managed as any other venue around the world which includes Wembley, Madison Square Garden’s, and the Maracana Stadium in Brazil. This is a wonderful venue and one that the Australians should clasp to their hearts and hold dear. Unlike Wembley that was allowed to go to rack and ruin before its recent rebirth, the great minds of Melbourne have managed to keep this venue at the fore front of world venues and for those of you travelling to Australia you must stop and view it.
Knocking on the front door of the MCG is Melbourne Olympic Park which plays host to the Australian Open tennis championship, amongst other things and provides the opportunity for one of the best examples of an integrated leisure area that I have come across. Indeed within the city, at any one time, it has the capacity for quarter of a million paying spectators at the wonderful facilities at any one time. To the extent that this could be achieved is only limited by the infrastructure based around the city, but that is not to say that they have not had a good attempt, they have both tram and rail systems as well as six lane highways circling the city and had a damn good try at it. This year Melbourne is hoping to bring in 7 million people to events such as these.
In the evening, I went to Etihad Stadium, which has a roof as well as a grassed pitch, again driven by the economics of AFL but this time for a rugby union international this stadium the full schedule of modern conveniences, hot and cold running wind, ‘tap and go’ credit cards, in-suite service as well as international rugby, what more can a man want!
At the end of the day travelling back to New Zealand, it struck me that for a country that was emerging from the shadow of an imperialist past, Australia has established a fantastic collection of facilities and I say this having not been to Sydney but I was impressed by it all. Anyway, when I came back to Dunedin, they opened the door and the cold blast of freezing temperatures brought me back to earth, so onwards and upwards.