Padded Swords and Goat Skulls

Recently I took a ferry trip down the beautiful Brisbane river to New Farm, a riverside suburb between the city and the airport.

I stepped off the ferry to the sound of a band playing “singing in the rain” and people absolutely everywhere. The winter sky was overcast and threatened a little rain, but mild temperatures mean people here can enjoy the outdoors all year around. There were people picnicking, relaxing, smelling the roses, celebrating birthdays, sleeping and hundreds more playing sports from Frisbee to soccer and rugby, and in a small field at the back where the trees are ringed by fences, they were trying to place a goat skull on a stick.

I have never seen this game before and found it on the Internet. It is called “Jugger” and is a medieval game where two teams of five battle it out with padded weapons and a plastic ball on a chain and try to get their goat head onto a stake at the other end of the field to score a point.

It looks like a lot of fun.

The hits are intended to be touches (not great wallops) and the game lasts as long as it takes for someone to throw 100 stones against a gong. When players are hit they then kneel down for a predetermined number of gong hits.

Apparently it has been played in four major Australian cities since 2001, we sent teams to Berlin in 2008 and the team will return to Germany this year to play the Germans, Spanish, Irish, Americans and Dutch. . How cool is that?

Once I could tear myself away from the people whacking each other with great big padded weapons, I continued to explore the surrounding park and found;
A huge fenced area just for dogs. (The land here has to be worth million dollars easy)

A wonderful, (and fun for kids), way to show the river flood level.

An Ibis looking for a cigarette butt.

And a notice worth noticing

It’s a wonderful and magnificent world with still so much to learn.

If you haven’t subscribed to my blog yet, please do so because I can bet you anything there are many, many more surprising things for me to write about yet. Or leave a comment. I would love to hear about your most surprising find.