Boxing Day

Boxing Day…a day much like our “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving. There are tons of sales and good deals and lots and lots of shopping. Also, Boxing Day is the start of the fourth test in the Ashes Series. Most, if not all, of you are going “wtf is that???” Well, I’ve learned more about cricket than I ever though I would. So, we’ll start with a quick and dirty cricket lesson.

Cricket is like primitive baseball. I am by NO means an expert, or even fully versed in the rules and whatnot surrounding cricket games. I want to say there are 12 men on a team and two are substitutes maybe. I know that 10 men bat each inning, and to move on to the next inning (there are two innings) all 10 men have to be gotten out. Now, here’s how it’s a bit different. There are two batters at a time and instead of running the bases and only batting once, each batter bats until he is gotten out. Also, there’s a rectangle in the middle of the field called the pitch. The main batter stands behind a line in front of three wickets (wooden sticks) and uses a cricket bat to hit the ball. The bowler starts back from the pitch and has a line he can’t cross when throwing the ball but he gets a running start. A run occurs when the batters swap places on the pitch, running back and forth. If a ball hits a wicket, the batter is out. If the batter hits the ball and the ball is caught before hitting the ground, he is out. If a batter is running back and forth and doesn’t get on his side of the line before the ball hits a wicket thrown by an outfielder, he is out. Some bowlers bowl the ball with a spin on it and some bowl very fast. Most teams have multiple bowlers that can be substituted. To win, a team must get all the batters out twice (complete two innings) and still be ahead in runs. If all players aren’t gotten out twice by either team at the end of 5 days, the game is called a draw. It’s a tie if all batters are gotten out twice and the score is zero. These are obviously really rare. Those are the basics.

Now the Ashes is a series of cricket games played between Australia and England. The Ashes is a series of “tests” that take place in November, December, and January. A test is one game (two innings). They are always between Australia and England and they don’t take place every year. The actual Ashes themselves are a cup, a silver trophy, and the trophy is so fragile it never leaves the country it’s in now. Cricket is a big game here, in England, in Pakistan, India, South Africa, and other countries. Obviously not so much in the US.

So Boxing Day is the start of the 4^th test of the Ashes series. England has won one game, one game was a draw, and Australia won one game. England is winning the current series, and if they win this test, the Ashes will be over and the 5^th test won’t be played. However, a big thing to do on Boxing Day is to watch the cricket. We watched a bit of it, but wanted to go somewhere.

We had lots of suggestions from the crew at Christmas dinner. Gibralter Falls, another falls, and several other places. We ended up driving to Cotter Dam and Tidbinbilla. We drove along some areas that had been flooded, including Paddy’s Crossing. Normally, if we’d had the Patrol, we could have crossed the water and gone looking for wildlife. Alas, my car wasn’t going to safely cross. We kept driving….

Then we got to Tidbinbilla. This is a wildlife preserve. We bought an annual pass because we knew the kids loved the play area and it was only twice as much as a day pass. The preserve has lots of kangaroos, an amazing playground with ropes and rocks to climb, a huge slide and bridges and water running through it and just generally cool stuff. There’s a sanctuary where koalas live and wetlands where platypus live as well. We walked around for a couple of hours and saw a koala, a red-bellied black snake, lots of lizards, emus, and various birds. The first animals we saw were of course kangaroos. Lots and lots of them. Then we saw a koala just added to the sanctuary. They are almost impossible to see in the wild, and though we searched in the sanctuary, we couldn’t find any. Next, we came across the red-bellied black snake. I thought it was a good size snake, though Mick says it was small. I took video of it wandering around. It is a poisonous snake, so I didn’t get too close, that’s for sure.

We kept walking and I spotted a pair of small lizards. They were fighting! I didn’t get the fight on video, just got them circling and posturing. The victor took the tail off the other and we saw the blood and the stunted tail of the loser. Pics and vid will follow! We kept walking and searching for koalas but couldn’t find any. After leaving the koala sanctuary, we went to the black flats and the wetlands. We drove around and stopped at the lookout. What a beautiful sight! Huge panoramas and lovely mountains and hills around. Then we walked around ponds and through forests. We saw cockatoos and emus and more lizards. We just missed the platypus. :( We saw a turtle and several large birds, including black swans and geese and ducks. We watched a lizard eat a tiny frog.

It was a beautiful day…sunny, warm enough. Mick and I really loved getting to spend the time together. And knowing that we can go back and visit the wildlife for the next year is awesome. It was a lot of fun. So my first observation of Boxing Day was filled with excitement!