Arriving in a country renowned for its outdoor lifestyle, it doesn't take long to find the source of this great sports culture. Drive out of Perth, the Western Australian capital on a Sunday morning, and you will witness a sporting nation on the move. Big, cumbersome old Holden cars groan slowly south, heavily laden with surf boards, en route to the beaches around the Margaret River which provide some of the best surf in the world.
Every oval you pass along the way is already well into the first session of play in the local cricket league. Perfectly manicured outfields look like they would put most Irish grounds to shame.
In a country where dress is strictly casual, the suburban ovals are littered with cricketers in sartorial elegance with their well-starched whites. The best I have seen Australians dressed collectively has been on a sports field. That's how serious they are about their chosen sports.
If I were to hang around here till the weather turned bad (winter average temperature here is 18 C) the cricketers would have made way for the Rules footballers, equally well presented in their tight kits. The oval is easily adaptable to the country's two most popular sports.
I'm cruising north to get away from the sporting life for one day and take in the Pinnacles, a geographical phenomenon about 250 km from Perth which look like small, dalak-shaped rocks sticking out of a desert area covering three square kilometres.
Well, I thought I was escaping sports. Leaving the metropolitan area the FM radio stations began to disappear with a hot crackle. I resorted to long wave and instantly hit upon ABC's (Australian Broadcasting Company) Grandstand program.
This is their Sunday special and their cricket jingle was in full flight when I finally locked on the right band. I settled back into the driver's seat, set my peripheral vision on alert to the rich red soil of Western Australia which was the "hard shoulder" of Highway 1 and disappeared into the wide world of Sunday Sport in Oz.
Walshie (his first name was a well-kept secret) was the host of the show, and if you didn't like cricket you were in for a long day. One team of experts were stationed down in an icy commentary box at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart, Tazmania, where the locals were taking on ACT (Canberra).
Rodney Marsh was on hold from Colombo, Sri Lanka, waiting for an opportune moment to tell us about the Australian junior team's progress in the world under-19 championships. Tim Lane told us that Australia had won the toss at the MCG for the second one-day match against Pakistan and were going to bat.
These two matches were providing the main bulk of the day's coverage, the side dishes were "The Tour Down Under" cycling race in Adelaide, and the Australian Open tennis at Melbourne Park just over the train tracks from the MCG. While half the spectators at the Bellerive Oval were busy trying to retrieve the match ball that Daniel Marsh had dispatched over a picket fence behind deep square leg, Walshie took the opportunity to have a chat with the batsman's father, Rod, in Sri Lanka.
Meanwhile the ball had been found from beyond the picket fence in Tasmania. Walshie interrupted the Tazzie commentator with a report from Melbourne Park by Tracey Parish. To the dismay of the entire world of male tennis enthusiasts, Anna Kournikova had been defeated in straight sets by Lindsay Davenport at the Rod Laver arena.
So Sunday sports accompanied me on my day trip around the environs of Perth. If I missed out on any details through the radio, which would be highly unlikely, I could catch the highlights later on television.
With sport omnipresent in this great outdoors, it's not difficult to imagine why the Australians are currently dominant in so many sports worldwide. Just ask Deano, Marshie, Walshie or Lanie and they'll give you an insight into the ubiquity of sports down here, and if your name is easily abbreviated you'll be on familiar terms in no time.
