Showing posts with label australia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label australia. Show all posts

Sunday, 13 July 2025

Things I didn't know #4

The name Australia was given to the Southern continent by Captain Matthew Flinders, whose remains were among those of about 50,000 people exhumed from St James's cemetery next to Euston Station and reburied in Brookwood in Surrey. To make room for the London terminus of the UK's High Speed 2 railway. Which may never be built. Should've stayed in Oz.

Flinders was the first to circumnavigate Australia. He is of course memorialised there: there's the Flinders Range, Flinders Island in the Bass Strait, Station and Street in Melbourne, the University in Adelaide, the Flinders Chase National Park on Kangaroo Island and many statues.

One of the most well-known (although not by me until now) statues is actually in Euston Station, erected in 2014 (the bicentenary of Flinders' death) and is of Flinders and his cat Trim. ChatGPT tells me Trim is "beloved by many Australians", although of the many Australians I have met over there (including my elder son, his wife and her family) not one has ever mentioned this cat. You can check out much more about Trim here:


This picture of the Euston statue is from an interesting website London Remembers:


Trim is nowhere to be seen but is probably snuggled up to the sleeping traveller. This from the Mitchell Library in Sydney will have to suffice for you cat-lovers:


Wednesday, 18 June 2025

16,540 miles

Auckland City are the current champions of the New Zealand National League. Football is the third most popular sport after rugby union and cricket in that country. By winning the league the club, who play in a stadium with a capacity of just over 3,000, qualified to compete in the OFC (Oceania Football Confederation) Champions League against clubs from Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. In April this year they actually won it. In fact they have won it for the last four years in a row and in 11 of the last 13 years.

They’re not even the best team in Auckland. Auckland FC play in the Go Media Stadium which has a capacity of 25,000. But they can’t play in the OFC Champions League because they play in the Australian A League and Australia is in the Asian Football Confederation. They actually finished top of the A League in 2024 but were denied the opportunity to play in the Asian Champions League because they are based in New Zealand which, as we know, is in the Oceania Football Federation. In fact, although they finished 1st in the league phase they didn’t win it because 1st through 6th compete in a series of playoffs to decide who wins the title and they were beaten by Melbourne Victory.

I hope you’re keeping up.

Anyway a couple of weeks ago Auckland City flew 8,270 miles to Cincinnati to take part in the FIFA Club World Cup.

And got beaten 10-0 by Bayern Munich.

Why bother?

The answer: $6.25 million. Just for turning up. Theoretically they could get an extra $2.5 million if they win a match. In a couple of weeks' time they will take the 8,270 return journey home. Maybe they could buy a new stadium.