Finnish Petanque Magazine 3/2002
Petanque in Australia
When I visited Australia in June/July 2002 I get to know their petanque culture. Australia is one of 52 countries (in the year 2002), which belong to the International Federation of Pétanque. In the year 2000 they had 839 licence players (while Finland had 708) and their neighbour New Zealand 495. Australia joined the International Federation 1993, while Finland joined already 1983. Based on Internet there are petanque clubs but not very many. . Based on population and size of the country petanque is a very small sport. Lawn bowls game is instead played a lot more.
In a city of more than four million Sydney there are two petanque clubs, from which the other one has 25 members and is in suburban area. The members of the other club are mainly from Mauritius. In a city of almost 4 million Melbourne there were three clubs. In other places there are usually at most one club. In Melbourne, with the population of the second biggest city, I could arrange with Internet the possibility to get to know one local club and their place and actions.
Melbourne Petanque Club plays at Middle Park Bowling Club area .It is one of the oldest clubs in Australia and is founded 1982. They have about 100 members and their age is form 7 to 70. There is a club house lanes were like normal sand fields and rather hard.
In my visit at Finnish Midsummer Eve I spend there about four hours, and I could play four gams in double and tripple games with varying roles. Three games were in male-female double team. All games were wins. Only the last game against two very joyous bear drinking guys (not standard members of the club) was a little bit difficult. Once again you could see that sometimes is luck also for all kinds of throwers - it was anyhow a win with one point.
June is wintertime in Australia, when playing is less active. They play once a week relaxed Friday games. Compared to Finland the temperature in Melbourne was anyhow quite enough warm. After a cold morning the day temperature was around +15 degrees Celsius or a little more continuing rather warm also in the evening.
During the evening there were near by 20 players. They were more men but also several women were present. Only the juniors were missing. Their status was quit reasonable. Their members are quite international group from people coming from different parts of the world. So the Australians from many generations do not play the game very much. I suppose they play more lawn bowls game...
So petanque is played also there. The basic comments were among others "bad luck", "great shot", "well done" and I could here a personal and smiling comment "go back to Finland" after a few good shots from opposite team in one of those victorious games. Thank you Melbourne Petanque Club for the possibility to play petanque in Australia. If anyone is going to visit Australia as a petanque tourist than at least in Melbourne games can be arranged.
Esko Riste
