High Fliers,
The Boeing 737 touched down at Bauerfield International Airport in Port Vila just before 11:30pm on the Saturday night.
During the three hour flight from Sydney, the Swans were in the process of whimp-sawing and whumping St Kilda at the SCG.
As much as fever pitch ever gets in Australian Rules football circles in the Emerald City, there was some keen expectation that The Red and The White would come back from a 0-6 season start, then win 10 out of their next eleven, giving themselves a red hot go of making the finals with five games to play.
The Good Lady Wife decided to wear a Swans team shirt on board just to make sure everyone knew that she was Loud and Proud, even though we were already aware that Air Vanuatu was yet to discover a way to connect the aircraft to the internet; everyone was in the dark about the wash-up at the game as the plane hit the deck.
As the jet rumbled along the taxi-way, got a clear view of the bloke waving the paddles to bring the Big Bird into its parking spot at the terminal.
He must have spotted the GLW as we disembarked, because by the time we'd gotten to the bottom of the gangplank to the tarmac, he was waiting at the stairs, and with a smile on his face said without any introduction, and much to our astonishment -
"Do you want to know who won?"
"Ah, yes. That'd be great! Who won?"
"YOU WON!" said Paddle Man over the din of the winding down turbines.
We high-fived.
"How much did they win by? Do you know?"
"Too many", he said, with a look of faux sadness on his face.
Turns out this chap was an Australian from Melbourne - he was a FIFO worker, and an avid St Kilda supporter.
He was a happy kind of a fellow, and after we offered our thanks for the info and our commiserations, he just said "yep, you thrashed us", and we we're on our way.
Small world, eh?
Welcome to the great Republic of Vanuatu.
It wasn't until the next day that we learnt that Callum Sinclair kicked a bag, and the Swans punted on to a very comfortable 42 point victory.
During the week, we happened to be driving in from east Efate, and came past the brand spanking new athletics/sports stadium they are flat-out building, in time for the 11th edition of Pacific Mini Games to be held in the first and second weeks of December.
It's been literally carved out of an old cow paddock on the outskirts of town; the architecture is quite interesting and the superstructure is in - but there's still a lot of heavy concrete pouring work to be done out the back of the stands and in the seating...and they were getting on with it, as hundreds of workers crawled all over the thing.
Right next door, we spied eight distinctive poles - a dead giveaway - and remarked almost in unison "look! there's a footy ground!"
The bus driver pointed out that it was the not only the only Australian Rules Football ground in Port Vila, but the only one in all Vanuatu.
It is a big ground, well marked out and maintained, and appeared as lush as anything in the dry season.
It had the regulation four posts at either end, there was no grandstand or bleachers, but there was a mighty fine spectator's hill all along the northern boundary, that is heavily shaded by large banyan trees and cocnut palms, and it's been graded up to a fairly sheer volcanic rock face.
One of the more picturesque football grounds in the world, you would have thought.
A small group of boys off in the distance at one end of the ground were playing soccer, using the space between a goal and a behind post as their goal.
On cross-examination, the bus driver intimated that the ni-Vanuatu were prepared to give Aussie Rules a go, but it didn't really catch on and is now played mainly by ex-pats, as rugby union was more their thing [they're playing rugby sevens and soccer at the Mini Games], and they have a side interest in the rugby league that's played over there in Polynesia.
Right next door to the footy ground there were four well-appointed cricket nets, all going in full swing.
There are many cricket grounds in the 87 inhabited islands of Vanuatu, which has a proud history and love of the game.
It was something to do with the British trying to establish their superiority over the French, after they found themselves in the appallingly impossible position of jointly ruling the archipelago as the Condominium of the New Hebrides for more than 70 years.
The Poms and the Frogs didn't get on, so how they worked that one out was with crazy stupid duplicate bureaucracy gone mad.
But that's another story.
However, as us Colonials in Australia did, the locals fell for cricket, and pinched the game off the Poms.
It's particularly notable that cricket was first played by ni-Vanuatu women, before the men, and even today the serious top-class female cricketers are apparently considered better and more stylish than the men, and have a very good following.
They're the stars of the game.
But the boys aint bad either; Vanuatu has an excellent chance of playing in the ICC's Division 5 World Cup.
Didn't see any cricket being played, but social games by all reports are generally free-for-all free-wheeling mixed-sex affairs, but the women batting in the much favoured social uniform of the ol' Mother Hubbard dresses are allowed the advantage of using their calf-long bell-bottom garments as very effective fly swats against the LBW rule.
In those get-ups, slow bowling would appear to be de rigueur.
But back to the next question at hand - what's the score, Jimmy?
Fast forward six days to the following Friday night and me and the GLW found ourselves around sunset gazing out over the limitless azure of the sparkling south-west Pacific Ocean, as gentle waves broke over the reef.
After a quick saunter down the darkening road to the dingy, dimly-lit, dirt-floored kava bar for a couple of shells of the really good gear they serve there - just to get in the mood - found myself wandering at a much more leisurely pace back to the place where we were staying, which was in a small cove on the Pango Point Road out there, sheltered from the constant sou'easterly trade winds - the weather it was fine, and it was about 25°C all the time, 24-7.
Perfect.
[Kava certainly makes being an idler easier, and it's true, the stars do shine brighter for one thing; the Milky Way appeared to stick out like dog's balls...that sort of thing.]
However, the joint boasted but one small colour television set which was situated in the appropriately named "TV Hut"; but most fortunately, it was somehow linked by two tins cans and a piece of string to the satellite-thingy that brought in the AFL telecast through Channel Seven's digital transmitter in Darwin, of all places.
So with the GLW again donning her Swans merch, we settled in to watch Sydney go around against the evil Hawthorn side, away, at the MCG.
We were soon joined by a goddamn Hawks fan, for chrissake - wouldn't you know it - but he was a magnanimous man who knew his football onions - and couple in their 60's from Hobart -- the husband barracked for the Saints, while the wife - for some reason which was never asked for and of course never explained [how could it be explained?] - was a Port Adelaide fan.
As the match meandered in the second quarter, the bloke from Hobart - slumped on the lounge with a stubbie holder of Tusker beer in his grip - began to wax lyrical about how he played against the"Riewoldt boys" in the Hobart U-19s comp back in the day, and claimed he could have gone on with it to greater heights, if only he hadn't become more interested in girls and the drink.
He described the Riewoldt's as a bunch of hard bastards, but noted that that was back then, when what happened on the field stayed on the field.
"And, Christ, could they drink piss after a game", he said in passing.
And who knew that Jack Riewoldt's father Chris [eventually a Tassy AFL Hall of Famer - 297 games for Clarence] went by the nickname of "Cabbage".
"Jeez, that's an odd one. Why was he called Cabbage?"
"Because he had this big head on him that looked exactly like a cabbage, but he was built like a brick shit house, mind you - great ruckman".
After a slow start the Swans were in trouble at quarter time and then in real strife at half time - four goals down in a low scoring game - as Hawthorn dominated the mid-field, and played man-on-man to a tee in their backline, and anxiousness was starting to set in as the kava began to wear off.
At half-time, the Hawks supporter said "there's really nothing in it, you know, your blokes could be in the lead in four minutes".
And so it almost came to pass as the Swans got off to a blinder in the Championship Quarter, and despite Hawthorn not scoring a goal in the stanza, the Bluds were then ground down to a halt and forever had to play catch-up football for the rest of the night and that was that; they fell short - the distant sound of the Fat Lady singing could be heard amid the barking of the local dogs about ten minutes from full-time with the Hawks getting up by single solitary goal, after earlier in the season beating Sydney by a single solitary point - a bloody point.
Hawthorn are a '17 hoodoo side now, with form going back decades, so it's little wonder we hate them with a passion.
The Hawks fan shook our hands and said "A good game, that - your blokes will take some beating in the finals".
"That's if we make the finals".
"Oh, you will make the finals, don't you worry about that".
Mr Hawthorn then added offhandedly "aaah...I think I'll stay on for the team song", but it was nearing midnight, that was beyond the pale anyway, and for us, the carnival was over...for now.
