Anzac Day

The atmosphere was rawcus. It was a little after 6 o'clock yet it seemed a long time after midnight. It felt like we had just gate crashed someone else's party. I followed the shouts and screams throughout the busy pub and found myself looking at peoples backs. I could see nothing. People were standing on chairs, tables, plant pots, stairs, in fact anything. I was intrigued. There must have been well over a hundred people gathered in a circle cheering and shouting at something. I managed to squeeze onto a ledge and what I saw really took me by surprise.

There were two guys in the middle tossing. Apparently they had been doing this since 2pm and would continue to do this late into the night. The faces surrounding the 12ft circle were transfixed with passion, a sense of nervous excitement and showing the signs of eight previous schooners. Then silence. The heads in unison dropped down and focused on a small area in the middle of circle. The focus switched to the two balding beer inflated chested men who picked up two silver coins. Both pointed to their heads. The crowd erupted with cheers and groans. This I was to find out was the game of Two Up.

This pub game was fascinating. It is only allowed on Anzac day and it seemed that every pub in Australia took advantage of this gambling amnesty. The beauty was in the simplicity. Get a pub and sell lots of beer. Get loads of drunk people to stand in a circle. Preferably provide chairs and tables so that most people can be elevated. Employ two local looking rather plump men to toss two coins at regular intervals (They must be good at pointing at their head and arse). Get the audience to wave a selection of bank notes in the air whilst pointing at their head or arse. This is best done with a crazy expression on your face or making a lot of noise to get attention. Get at least two drunk people who don't know each other to agree on a bet and exchange money. Then wait. Essentially the two coins must be both 'heads' or 'tails' to produce a result.

Statistically there is a 50/50 chance of winning but I did'nt want to tell the punters that. I felt guilty that I could walk in a straight line that night, that I could stand on a table without falling off and that I did not bet more than five dollars at a time. I could have spent hours watching people fall off chairs, try to juggle 6 plastic cups of beer, lose two hundred dollars but it was time to go. I left the pub thinking that a game like this would never work in England. Instead of raucous cheering there would be polite applause. Instead of getting seven random strangers huddled together on a bent table you would get one person sitting crossed legged on a chair saying “Sorry, can you see alright?”. Instead of saying “Wanna a bet ten mate” they would be saying “would you be so kind to exchange five pounds”. Indeed this was gambling in the Aussie way. Unreserved, sociable, enjoyable and without a care in the world. Everyone was doing it, the young, the old, families. Even the young mum next to me was sending her little boy out in the crowd as a runner to arrange bets with random punters.

What a great way to spent the whole day in the pub. The 25th of April is Anzac day. It was a day the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed in Gallipoli in 1914 to help the Brits fight the turks. It was real basic fighting which resulted in huge losses. As a result there are parades in Sydney where young and old military folk don their uniforms and head for the streets. Admittedly I had never heard of Anzac day but I was realising just how big it was here. If you wore military uniform you had free access to public transport and everyone else had Australian flags and t-shirts.

I had the slowest bus journey ever coming from Bondi that day. As is common practice to let old people take your seat, the whole bus seat quota ended up being filled by these fellows. Like a stack of dominos from the front every person under fifty alighted as we collected more and more old folk along the 380 bus route. More often than not they would stumble as the bus pulled forward causing the surrounding public to fling to their aid. Most talked about the fact that this was their only time of the year that they had a beer. “Great pub that one George, three dollars for a beer. Go back there every year” was the normal conversation. Despite the the prolonged bus journey I got to hear first hand stories of the war which was enthralling and though provoking.