go essendon!

For our last morning in Melbourne, we went on an Aboriginal Heritage Walk through the Royal Botanic Gardens of Melbourne. We walked to the Queen Victoria Markets and from there took the free tour bus to the Gardens since it was raining pretty hard. When we arrived at the Gardens, we met our guide, Den, at the café and then he led us to a bungalow in the park which is especially reserved for the Aboriginal Heritage walks. There he spoke to us about the Aboriginal culture and his life story of being an Aboriginal. We also participated in a traditional smoking ceremony, complete with clapping sticks and eucalyptus leaves. We then split us up into two groups and went on two different walking tours. Our guide taught us about different uses for plants as we walked by them and we even used some of them. I rubbed up my hands on the massage tree, chewed on special roots which relieve pregnancy cramps (obviously did not feel any effects), and our guide even wove a bracelet using those same roots and gave it to me!

When the walk was over, we took the free tour bus back to the Victoria Markets for some lunch. Because we were having an early dinner, I chose to have a lighter lunch and ordered half of a grilled falafel wrap. I have honestly eaten so much fresh falafel here, I don’t know how I will go back to eating mediocre falafel in the US. After lunch, we headed back to the hostel to finish packing before leaving for dinner and the footy game. For dinner, we went to a pub by the stadium (which happened to be the Melbourne Cricket Grounds) called Beer DeLuxe. This was our last group dinner and it was free for us, so we were all planning on stuffing ourselves completely. I ordered a pizza with roasted pumpkin, mushrooms, rocket, pine nuts, pepitas, and no cheese. It was a great last meal and I wish I could have eaten more, but that pizza was pretty filling.

At around 7, we started walking to the stadium since kick off was at 7:50 pm. The sports event we watched was a game of Australian Rules Football (called footy) between the Carlton Blues and the Essendon Bombers. I do not know much of the background of these two teams, but we were told that it was a pretty big game since they are both highly ranked and are two of the more hated teams in the league due to their constant dominance. It is also one of the largest spectator sports in Australia and it was expected to have about 80,000 people in attendance tonight (there turned out to be 87,000 which, although large, still does not beat Michigan football attendance.) When we arrived at our seats, there were Essendon fans sitting next to us and the man closer to us asked us who we were cheering for. Our response was obviously Essendon based off their apparel and we became good friends with them. Although we had had a quick lesson about footy at the University of Sydney, they re-explained some of the rules for us throughout any points of confusion.

Since gambling was legal in Australia and extremely popular, the guys decided to use all of their leftover change and bet on the game. According to Tom and Jayson, there were over a hundred things you could bet on like which player was going to score firsts or how many failed goal attempts per team, etc. Not knowing much about either of the teams, they decided to just bet on which team was going to win and they put all of their money on Essendon. Essendon was the first to score so it was starting to look promising. But then, Carlton started scoring and at the half, things were not looking promising for Essendon, who was losing 41-22. However, in the 4th quarter Essendon started picking it up and somehow caught up to Carlton to make it an extremely close game. Then there was the classic, one team would score and then the other and then the one team would score again. At the end of the 4th quarter though, when it looked like Carlton was for sure going to win, Essendon comes in and scores a goal with seconds left in the game to beat Carlton 77-72. It was so exciting to be in that environment surrounded by both Essendon and Carlton fans—so both emotions were felt and witnessed. Something I noticed about these fans though is that they are only loud after something big had happened to either celebrate or yell angry remarks. In fact, during the game you could only hear a couple people in my program who felt it necessary to provide commentary throughout the entire game—something I do not think the Australians sitting near us enjoyed.

After the game, the entire group headed to a pub to celebrate both the Essendon win and our last night together in Australia. Since we had to leave for the airport at 5 am, we decided it would probably be best to not sleep that entire night so that we could sleep the entire 14-hour plane ride to the US. So we did just that—went to a pub in the city, danced, played pool, and hung out with each other since it would be the very last time we would be able to do this is a group.