Blake and Deb Down Under: Jindabyne - The Irish Are Coming!

Jindabyne is hosting an Irish Festival this weekend and our inn is fairly full, with a few of the guests sporting genuine, born of the old sod Irish brogues. Our lack of vacancies is compounded by the fact that this weekend marks the end of school summer holidays and it is a long weekend: Monday is Australia Day, a national holiday. Australia Day commemorates the anniversary of the landing of the first fleet in 1788 and the beginning of British Colonization of this land. I’m guessing the Aboriginal people here do not celebrate with quite the same level of enthusiasm as the rest.

We were able to catch a bit of Irish dancing, pipe playing, and traditional music on Saturday. Today I watched a bit of Ladies Hurling, which sounds like a sorority post-party regurgitation ritual but is actually a traditional Irish sport, supposedly the world’s fastest field team sport. I missed the men’s play but it was interesting to see the ladies have at it. The Hurling match was followed by Men’s Gaelic Football, which looked like a combination of rugby, soccer, and a bit of volleyball. You get the impression they were just making the rules up as they went along, but apparently the game’s roots date back to medieval times.