QLD - Brisbane: THE ASHES

The first day of the massively hyped Ashes test series begins today, and we're all quite excited, and a bit nervous being outnumbered 18-2 by Aussies. John's uncle arrived at 6:30 and we left the house for the 7:40 train. When we got to the city, we found out that the buses to the Gabba aren't running yet, and there was already a massive queue. So, we met some of the other guys and decided to brave the 30min walk. It wasn't too bad for us as we didn't know how far it was but by the time we got to the Gabba it was getting a bit hot. We met Matty & Caroline (Johns brother and sister-in-law who we're going to Straddie with), then headed into the ground to find our seats. They were in the perfect location on the shady side of the ground at the Ipswich Rd / Stanley str end. We'll get a good view of any catches to the slips. The first round of XXXX Gold is ordered by 9:30 ;)

We had good views of the cricket, but talking about the game is history now as we all know how it turned out it the end ;( I guess Harmison's opening delivery of the test which was about 6ft wide summed up the series!! Still, it was a fairly good natured day. We were fairly close to the Barmy Army which gave us a bit of entertainment, like the old guy with the flag, the singing, and the guy dressed as the queen. A shame that the authorities had banned the trumpeter though ;( The game was ok, we got a few wickets, Ponting got a century, so a few things happened. Though after a few beers, by the afternoon, the game seemed less important, and we spent most of the time chatting amongst our group.

1st wicket taken by Freddie

Evelyn was getting a bit tired of the beer (the only alcohol on sale), and one guy in our group had managed to smuggle in some vodka. The stewards had seen someone else try this in the morning and during the first over, this poor chap was escorted from the ground ;) Anyway, Evelyn sneakily managed to get some and boy was it strong!! It was at this point when Ev was told that between the two bottles of "pop", she was drinking the lethal stuff!

So it was that at around 5:30, and quite a few beers later we, stumbled out the stadium and down the road to the next pub. The Plough Inn was the target, being on the Southbank close to the city cat to take us home. It served decent beer and most of the seating is outside, which is nice. There was a bit of banter going on through out the evening, and luckily, on our way to the Plough, a couple of other English blokes joined us for some beers - so Marc didn't take the full force of the banter ;) We then caught the citi cat (ferry) to the RE pub (more of a backpackers/uni pub) which was holding a beach party, and a bit closer to home. It was at this stage where we started losing people, and we decided it best to head home. It was a good fun day, and whilst the cricket wasn't as we'd have hoped, we all had a great time.