Melbourne Sports Facilities

Hey Everybody,

     Today we went on a tour of the Melbourne Cricket Grounds, The National Sports Museum, and the Rod Laver Arena.  Our day started off with a tour of the National Sports Museum, which was established in 2008, but the cricket museum had always been there.  The National Sports Museum holds past Olympic memorabilia for Australia starting from the 1920 Olympic Games in Anvers through the 2012 Olympics in London.  During our time at the museum we read up on the history of Australian sports through watching videos on small screens or just reading all the writing in the plaques.  Our second part of the museum tour we got to play simulation games of sports like Netball, Archery, Biking, and Australian Rules Football.   

     

     After the museum we went of to tour the Cricket grounds with our tour guide Lesley.  Lesley had great knowledge of the history of the cricket grounds and she even threw in a few things about United States history in relation to cricket and Australia.  From Lesley we learned that the Melbourne Cricket grounds is the oldest and biggest ground in Australia.  Did you know that the Melbourne Cricket Grounds held a record capacity crowd of 130,000 back in 1959 and that the stadium now holds 85,000 sitting and 5,000 standing?  When you think about the members of the Melbourne Cricket Grounds they have 100,000 loyal members paying $600 a year, but have a waiting list of 217,000 with a 22 year waiting period!!!  

     Our final stop of the day ended at the Rod Laver Arena, which hosts the Australian Open.  While at the arena we visited the Men's Locker Room where we got to see the lockers that Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic used in the 2013 Australian Open.  Walking down the Walk of Champions was awesome as we saw photos of the previous Australian Open Champions and you come to realize that you are walking down the same hall way that the greatest tennis players in the world have walked through.  Our tour guide told us how in 2005 that was the first time ever in Australian Open History that the final was played at night.  He also informed us on how players can be fined up to $20,000 dollars for not doing an interview.  Going into the interview room was cool as we all took turns sitting at the interview table and taking pictures as if we were athletes.  

To learn more about our amazing time in Melbourne come back tomorrow to see what Alex Mullen has to say.

 

   -Josh Benner

Batmania?

Hello everyone, 

Today was a very interesting day as we had the opportunity to take a walking tour through the streets of Melbourne. Matt, our tour guide, was very knowledgable about Melbourne's history and current culture. Being born and raised as a Melbournian, he knew all about this beautiful city! Since we took an hour and a half tour, there was tons of info to be heard. Therefore, I will sum it all up for you guys....

Hello, my name is Nicole and I will be your informal tour guide, telling you some interesting info on the city of Melbourne. Originally inhabited by the indigenous people in 1788, Europeans settled in Melbourne in 1835. John Batman, a farmer from Tasmania, led the settlement as he bought the land of Melbourne from the indigenous people. 

*Fun Fact*~ Melbourne was almost named Batmania, a reference to John Batman. Little did they know at the time was how cool a town named Batmania would sound. Also, if you are curious as to what John Batman looks like, you will never know. There was never any paintings taken of him as he got syphilis and passed away shortly after acquiring the land. 

Our tour took us through alleyways filled with graffiti, Queen Victoria Village, Greek Town, China Town, the Central Business District, Melbourne Town Hall, a few arcades, Federation Square, and we ended at the Melbourne Art Museum. The skyline at the end of the tour was beautiful! 

Above is some of the graffiti we saw. Graffiti is only legal when the artist signs a permit with the owner of the building. Legal graffiti usually lasts about 4-5 months until another artist paints over it. Illegal graffiti (as shown above) can last as little as a day before being painted over.

This is Melbourne town hall

The Melbourne skyline!

In case you were curious, that is me! 

Bye,

Nicole 

Bus,bus,train,bus,bus

         Well, after bus, bus, train, bus, bus, or maybe it was bus, train, bus, plane, boat, jet pack, time machine, we finally made it to Melbourne after the traveling it was a pretty non-eventful rest of the night. It just consisted of food and then sleep.
         However, today we got to start our adventures in Melbourne. After breakfast we loaded up the mini bus and headed to the University of Melbourne. We were met there by one of their elite athletes who played water polo. Genevieve, water polo girl, talked with us about her major and how accommodating UoM was with their athletes. She told us how she went to Russia to play water polo and how the school worked with her so she was able to finish her semester.
         After talking with her the sports development manager, Rod Warnecke, came in and gave us a tour of the university we got to see all the facilities, and also catch a sneak peak on some of the renovations taking place. Rod also gave us an "eye-opening" presentation on the university. Some knowledge to be shared is that UoM was established in 1853, and it's the second oldest Australian university. UoM has 40,000 students, and is ranked No. 1 in Australia.
          We split ways following the "awakening" presentation, some of us did job shadowing while the rest of us had the afternoon off. I spent my afternoon off tripping over every uneven surface from the YHA to the Melbourne city center. That about wraps the day up look out for Nicole Bailey's take on the day tomorrow.
Peace up, A-town,
Kerby JOOOOoooones
Also Tom Ward rocks

Touring Canberra with Some Blokes

Hello Mates!

Well, we have made it to our last day in Canberra and Jayson was right we did have a group weigh-in! Collectively, we came out to be 1,439.2kg! Not too shabby if I do say so myself. Today we woke up to gloomy skies and rain, which remained consistent throughout the rest of the day. Not the best circumstance for a day packed with tours and site-seeing however we still learned a lot about Australian history.

After breakfast this morning at AIS, we hopped on a bus tour of the capital of Australia with our guide John. John gave us some preliminary background information about Canberra as we drove to our first stop. He told us that the designers of Canberra were two Chicagoans, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin. Being a Chicagoan myself, I was pretty fond of the fact I was in a city they designed. John mentioned in the initial background info that the Griffin’s modeled Canberra after our capital city Washington DC. After seeing the layout of the city from parliament steps we were able to see the similarities.

As John continued the tour, one fact we found particularly interesting was brothels are legal. In fact, they are governmentally run establishments.

When we got to our first stop we got to the majestic Mount Ainslie Lookout Point, which is 846 meters above sea level. Unfortunately, once we got there we had a beautiful view of pure fog. It was a bit of a disappointment, but we trekked along anyway and ended up at the Australian War Memorial.

At the War Memorial we walked around soaking up all the history of the Australians involvement in World War I, World War II, and other wars. After some self-obtained knowledge, we all gathered to watch actual footage from World War II from the eyes of the Australian Air Force. This was insightful because I feel as an American we sometimes don’t understand the sacrifices other countries made.

Next on our trip we stopped by the Australian Parliament House. When we walked into the foyer, John quickly explained that the numerous amounts of pillars we saw were meant to represent all of the trees that were cleared for construction. As we made our way through the large building our first major stop was the House of Representatives. As a group, we all found it fascinating that there was story behind why the House of Representatives had a green room. John said the green room was meant to match the color of Eucalyptus leaves. The earthy green color of the House was later contrasted by the vibrant red of the Senate. The Senate red resembled the color of the Eucalyptus tree when it is in full bloom. Both the Australian House and Senate are very similar to their English counterparts, however the designer of Canberra used the unique Eucalyptus colors to add an Australian flair to the building. Also in the tour of Parliament we saw many different works of art and one of the four remaining copies of the Magna Carta.

We then left the Parliament House and headed for the Australian Museum. On our way to the Museum John drove us through Embassy Drive. This is where the Embassies and High Commissions for other countries are located. It was intriguing to see the different architectural designs for each country. The majority of us were amazed at how much larger the U.S. embassy was compared to the others.

After that we finally made it to our last stop at the Australian Museum. Most of us were exhausted by this point, but we kept going and were marveled with the history of the aboriginals, and their artifacts. After a long day of learning and site-seeing we were ready to head back.

I would like to thank John, our tour guide, for providing us with great enthusiasm and information. John was very knowledgeable, but we enjoyed his light-hearted sense of humor as well. For instance, he told us this joke… “What is the difference between unlawful and illegal? Unlawful means against the law and illegal is a sick bird”. This was only one of the many jokes he told along with some funny Australian lingo like, chunder and bloke. John also put us Americans in our place when he kept telling us that we were not pronouncing Australia correctly.

After the tour, most everyone at this point went back to their rooms to start preparing for the long train ride ahead. We enjoyed our last free dinner AIS provided to us, even though I ran right into the revolving door when trying to enter the dining hall. Overall, I think all of us learned a lot of valuable things today and over our whole stay in Canberra.

 

Thanks again to Lisa, Linda, Regina, and Shanna for providing us with a well-planned and enjoyable week. We cannot wait to see what Melbourne has in store for us, but time sure is flying by! We will keep you posted on our travels, but Kerby JOOOONES will be back on Monday to blog about our first day in Melbourne!

No Worries,

Christine

 

Walkway leading to the tomb of the unknown soldier

House of Representatives

Senate

Money stairs at the Australian Mint

Australian Museum

John, our tour guide, and myself

At least two people learned something today ;)

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Cheers to all y'all around the world today!!!

LS

Go Brumbies!

Hello everyone,

Today (Friday May 31rst – for those of you in other time zones) started with breakfast and I think I can speak for most of us when I say that as much as we all love not having to pay for food while we are here, we are starting to tell its definitely made in bulk. I don’t know about everyone else, but I am so glad there is always cereal =)

As our free day in Canberra, everyone went into the City Center to see what the capitol of Australia was all about outside of the AIS. Most of us went immediately into the mall to shop around, and as typical Americans, the first store we entered was an Australian souvenir shop.  After the group I was hanging out with walked around the mall, occasionally looking into a shop and getting something, we finally went to Target. Unfortunately, this Target was not like the Targets I have been to in the US. It was much smaller and had a lot less variety, but the worst part was that it did not have any good sweatpants to keep us warm in this 5 degree Celsius weather! We only have a couple more days here though, so I think we will survive. People then had lunch at a couple different places and some then went to watch The Hangover 3 while others continued to shop around or start to head back to the AIS. I had chicken quesadillas at the Australian version of Chipotle (called Guzman Y Gomez) and then went to a cupcake shop with all vegan cupcakes, which was pretty interesting (and made the vegan in our group incredibly happy). Unfortunately, the only bar with amber ale was an hour walk, so I was unable to go there.

Once back at AIS, most people just hung out watching TV (a pretty common past time for us here), played a version of volleyball outside, or went for a run until it was dinnertime. After dinner was a rugby union game, the Brumbies vs the Hurricanes. It was a pretty interesting match, with the Brumbies taking the lead early on and keeping that lead throughout the entirety of the game. The final score was 30-23. Go Brumbies!

~Dana~

Netball?

G'day mates!
      We started our day off today with a lecture on sports psychology by Amanda Palmer, who is actually one of the psychologists for some of the team here at the AIS. She talked to us about the importance of mental health in the rehabilitation process and how the psychological component is just as important as the physical component when it comes to recovering from an injury. Ms. Palmer also talked about the use of psychology as a "performance enhancement" because it can be an important part in helping athletes to reach their full potential. We ended our lecture with an exercise in mindfulness and I think a lot of us found it difficult to focus on only one thing because we are so used to thinking about 100s of things all at once.
      After this lecture we broke into two groups and we each had a tour of the physiology labs. These labs were filled with equipment for testing an athlete's VO2 max, blood, body composition, as well as a variety of other things. Most of the equipment being used was actually built there specifically for the needs of the AIS. It was an incredible experience being able to tour this facility and see all the behind the scenes work that goes into training an elite athlete. The sports management students also had an opportunity to speak with David Meyer, an event coordinator for the AIS. He talked to the group about his career path and also his job here in facility management.
      In the afternoon we headed over to the courts for our netball lesson, or what we thought would be our netball lesson anyways. Turns out netball is oddly similar to basketball... Nonetheless, we were still able to play basketball with two of the athletes who stay here at the AIS. It was fun getting to talk and play with them, even thuogh they were head and shoulders above us... literally.
     Overall I think we are all enjoying our time here at the AIS. We have had a couple great lectures here and it is a relaxing change from the fast paced city. I think we are all excited to see what the rest of the trip has in store for us. Next you will be hearing from Dana!

 -Kaitlyn M.