I went with Greg to the Perth stadium (Subiaco) today - Sunday - to watch Western Force (the Western Australian regional Rugby team) play Canterbury Crusaders (the NZ South Island regional Team) . With players like Ritchie McCaul and Dan Carter the visitors were favourites, although Force had players such as Matt Gitteau and Nathan Hinds. The game was very entertaining and was quite close with Crusaders winning 29 - 24. The stadium and atmosphere was different to Europe. The shape - presumably set up for aussie rules football - was oval, so you were all some distance from the playing area and I guess from its somewhat drab interior the stadium was quite old. There was basically no cheering on the team, just cheering good passages of play - in fact the only time the local 27,000 crowd chanted the Force name was 2 minutes from time. Despite the fact we were in row M we were still level with the ground (as well as some distance from the playing area) so being able to see the detail of the action particularly at the opposite end of the ground was pretty poor. There did not seem to be the normal chat between opposition supporters - I guess there were a 1,000 or so Crusader supporters (interesting that many seemed to be Moari origin). The ticket price of roughly 25 pounds included the free use of any form of public transport so Greg and I used the railway to travel the 40 -45 minutes to the ground, as did many other supporters.

Weather here clear skies and 26/ 27 c. Monday is sorting out day and walking on the beach day. We then leave Greg and Liz to give them some peace for 4 days to go to Margaret River, the wine growing area. So far I have been amazed in both NZ and Aus at the price of wine - similar to UK prices despite being such a major industry - I believe this is due to the Government taxes.

Sadly we heard that Deana's brother had died of a stroke aged 72 as they were just traveling thru to Wellington from South Island, so they will cancel the rest of their trip and catch a flight via Melbourne back to UK on Wednesday.

All photos are now on Greg's PC hard drive - so next step is onto the blog!!

Bryan