Every year, when my sisters and I were growing up, we had a summer ritual. Basically, once January hit, the TV would go on, all day, every day, tuned to only one thing. The tennis...
Now I know most other normal Aussies would have their TV's tuned to the cricket, but not us. We just loved our tennis. First there would be the Danone International, held in Milton, Brisbane, and then the tournament at White City, before the big one - the Australian Open. I remember even one time when we went away on the boat (although to be fair this was when we were much older - adults, in fact) we had the tennis tuned in on the TV on the boat - the reception was so bad that you couldn't even see the tennis ball as it merged with the dotty image on the screen - but it didn't matter, the sound worked. This was the year that Pat Cash made it to the Australian Open final, and we were just egging him on to win - alas, he didn't - but this goes to show you our diligence and determination to watch every minute of the tennis.
In fact, one year, Melissa and I actually made it to the Danone International at Milton. There we sat, precariously perched on the wooden seats on the practically falling down rickety old stadium, watching our favourites. I think Melissa got a photo with Jana Novotna or Hana Mandlikova or something - although her absolute favourite was Helena Sukova, for whom, one year, she edited an entire Helena Sukova video montage based on the snippets she recorded from the TV, and added the song "Take My Breath Away" as the mini-movie's soundtrack. But it was not long after that that the big names stopped coming to the Danone, basically because the money wasn't good enough, and the stadium so rubbish that the audience wasn't coming either. So the Danone folded, and the big names went to things like the Hopman Cup in Perth, or just didn't come to Australia until the White City tournament.
So this year, I was surprised to learn that they have now built a new tennis stadium at Yeerongpilly, at the site of the old Tennyson power station, and that they have reinstated the 'Brisbane International'. But I was even more surprised, pleasantly so, to receive a ticket to the opening day's play in the Pat Rafter Arena - a Christmas gift from Beck and Dem. How fab! In fact, we all got one - Beck, Dem, Mum, Mel and I - so on Sunday 4th January we made our way there (in Beck and Dem's car, despite the publicity advertising that there was no parking and you have to take the train - seriously, there is no train station on the Peninsular anyway, so it would've been extremely difficult to get there that way). Actually there was no problem parking anyway, as we just parked in one of the residential streets nearby. I'll bet next year they'll have parking restrictions in place once the neighbours complain about the numbers of cars parking outside their houses this year...!
Anyway, back to the tournament. I have to say that the stadium is pretty good. Ok, its not Wimbledon, or the US Open - but its surprisingly very good for what it is. Pat Rafter Arena houses centre court, and the seating is laid out such that there really isn't a bad seat in the house - you get a fab view from anywhere in the stadium. And the big plus is that the arena is covered - not like a fully sealed, permanent sort of thing - no, there's a substantial gap between the wall and ceiling which allows the breeze in, which means that you are not overheated in your seat, and you don't ever sit in direct sunlight - so really, we needn't have packed the sunscreen.
But the one thing, other than the breeze, that this arrangement allows in is this - crows. And boy do they come in! In the second match, between Gasquet and Gicquel, one lone crow came in and perched high up in the rafters - and proceeded to 'crow' loudly. Of course, in that environment, the acoustic amplifies exceptionally well - and at one stage the serving player looked up exasperatedly at the roof as the crow gave a full on animated commentary on the proceedings (as only an Aussie crow could do!). It happened later on in the day too, when Marion Bartoli was playing some young Aussie chick - Bartoli looked up at the crow in sheer frustration at the interruption to her concentration - which the audience found most amusing. One of the venue staff eventually went up there and managed to scare the crow off.
That got me thinking about Wimbledon. At Wimbledon, they have a dirty great big hawk circling the perimeter of the grounds to scare off the pigeons. This year there was a bit of a hue and cry over it, as someone wanted to shoot the pigeons, or something like this, whilst others thought it wasn't terribly humane to have a dirty great big hawk flying around. Personally, I never saw the hawk - but then, I never saw any pigeons either.
Anyway, we had an absolutely fab day: here is a brief slideshow of our highlights...
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