Melbourne

Colm had said to us that one of the big events in the Melbourne Aquarium is walking with sharks. We had checked it out online and decided that we would really like to do it so we headed off on Friday with that in mind. I feel myself and Brian have become a little immune to the beauty of aquariums after seeing so many. This one was a lot bigger than the one in New Zealand and the sharks and fish had a whole lot of space to swim in. It turns out you can walk in maybe half the bottom of the tank and you are fine to walk around in it once you don't have any problems traveling on planes. You get into wet suits and put weights on to get in the water. Then a big heavy helmet is put on your shoulders but it doesn't feel that heavy as it's filled with air and you are going into the tank when it gets put on your shoulder. We got down about 4 metres to the upper floor of the tank which is the only bit you are allowed walk on. Walking was really weird as even with the weights you float about so stopping and walking briskly are difficult. You don't get to touch any of the animals but you do get a better view of them than when you are in a cage. We saw a sea turtle go by and then we walked around for about 15 minutes with no much happening. Some sting rays were swimming up and down but they were still a bit away. Then we walked over to one side and a mantra ray swam right up to us along the floor of the tank. We got to see it right up close but then it landed on my foot. Unfortunately you can't look down in the helmets so I had no idea where it went. I had thought it was in front of me but then Brian signaled to move forward and the scuba diver who went with us took my hand and had to push the ray out of the way so I could walk off. Brian was laughing away as he could see it all quite easily :) Finally about 20 minutes in a shark came swimming up. It was a massive one, I think it was one of the biggest in the tank. He swam around with a few fish swimming along underneath him. The diver had to move me out of the way here as the shark was just swimming along really close to us and I might have been in his way if he had of kept going the way he was. After a little while the same shark making a second lap swam along by us. This time he swam within arms reach of Brian. Soon after we had to head up as you only get 20 minutes.

That night we headed to an AFL game in Melbourne Cricket stadium. Colm was able to get the four of us tickets. It's a bit like GAA with an oval pitch and a few changes to the rules. It seems really big in Melbourne and the turnout for the match was amazing. We were a bit away from the pitch but you could still see everything that was going on and it made it easier to see the game a whole. We were all cheering for Bobby's team Collingwood. They did really well and won the match by quite a large amount. It was well worth going to see an AFL match. It seems to be a really big sport over here. I don't really know that much about football so I'm not going to go into a blow by blow account or anything. The two of us caught on fairly quickly about the basic rules and almost all of them by the end of the match.