Lawn Bowling

On Saturday, a crew of us decided to try out lawn bowling. Every weekend on the telly, there are professional lawn bowlers competing so we figured we'd give it a shot. The game is like a combination of bocce ball and bowling. Here are the basic rules.

1. Object of the game is to get as many of your team's balls closest to the "jack" (white ball).

2. The jack is at the opposite end of the lawn and we take turns rolling our balls towards it. Rolling the ball is actually quite difficult because the ball is weighted so that one side is heavier. Therefore, you need to aim the ball to the right or left of the target with the heavy side placed correctly. Even after an hour of playing, a couple people would still accidentally roll incorrectly.

3. In the end, the team with the closest balls near the jack gets points. The number of points you receive is the number of balls that is closest to the jack before another team's ball is closer.

We ended up dividing into 6 teams where 3 teams were playing on each field. The ends of the field had benches, but we were in the sun the entire time, which was quite exhausting. Here we are getting ready to start playing.


Casey and Matt are either debating which ball is closest to the jack or they are organizing their balls to start the next game.


Casey showing us how to do it.


Kim's dressed in all white like a professional.


We played for 2 and a half hours and all of us loved it. Too bad they don't have anything like this in the US. It's becoming so popular in Australia, that we had to reserve our booking 3 weeks in advance. I can't wait for our next outing.

On our way to the lawn bowling site, we walked a coastal walk from Bondi to the site. There was an art project along the walkway called "Sculptures by the Sea". I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked, but this was one of my favorites. It's a tree and the leaves are actually peapods.


Australia's interesting fact of the day: "Good Onya". Australians have the most interesting phrases. "Good Onya" is said relatively often and it's the equivalent of good job. They even have the saying on some Australian souvenirs. I haven't been able to ever use the phrase, but maybe one day it'll slip into my vocabulary.