Dreamworks Exhibition - National Museum of Australia

There's a Dreamworks exhibition at the NMA at the moment - it focuses on the incredible cartoons from the company - they're responsible for everything from Shrek through to Kungfu Panda and How to Train your Dragon.

It was really interesting learning about the art and incredible skill and patience that goes into making an animated cartoon. Throughout the exhibition you had the opportunity to look at scenes and 'tweak' it by changing the lighting or sound and there was a good array of models that are sometimes fashioned so that artists working on a computer can accurately measure elements (arms, legs etc) of a character.

At the end of the exhibition was a really good animators room where you could put together simple drawings of your own - such as this one which I drew! I think I'm a long way from being called in by DreamWorks though unfortunately.

Garlic progressing well

I planted garlic over winter. Canberra's a good climate for garlic as the temperatures sometimes drop below freezing. It's been a dry winter though and a bit more rain may have helped. It was also the first year I've tried elephant/Russian garlic (the photo is of just standard garlic) and that's grown really well too.

Acidification of the Oceans

There's a lot of press about climate change and global warming but as Audrey looked into acidification of the oceans I think this is actually one of the major issues that nobody is really discussing in the media. It is significant and can also be evidenced. Audrey explains more in this video she shot for school...

Japanese mini-food

We brought several packs of 'mini food' back with us from our trip to Japan. It's essentially mini food you can fashion out of confectionery using tiny moulds, There's hundreds of videos on YouTube and some people have gone to extreme lengths - even making miniature kitchens to make the miniature food in!

Two of our kits made noodle soup, sushi and dumplings. It was actually loads of fun and of course the kids loved eating the resulting food!

Canberra Raiders Grand Final

For the past few years (five now I think) the three of us have been Canberra Raiders members.

For the uninitiated, rugby has two codes; rugby union which has a strange and complex set of rules but is generally viewed as more of an upmarket sport, and rugby league, which is a simplified version of union, still with the odd confusing law but generally viewed as the more ‘working class’ sport .

The schism between the codes occurred in the late 1890’s due to a debate about professionalism.

League has its origins in the north of England whereas Union is predominantly south. There are differences in terms of the number of players too (15 in union, 13 in league) and points for tries and penalties, scrums etc but I won’t go into that here.

Canberra Raiders are Canberra’s rugby league side. We currently have a Union side too – the Brumbies, but whenever we’ve been to see them the crowd is so quiet it’s been akin to sitting in a library.

Our love affair with the Raiders has grown over time. The club has a highly effective community outreach programme and as well as all the home games we attend almost all of the ‘meet the Raiders’ sessions throughout the city.

The players are always polite and friendly, and the kids quickly established favourite players. Rugby league has a bad reputation for players misbehaviour – with catalogues of drug and drink misdemeanours, but Raiders (generally) has a good record in terms of that, with coach Ricky Stuart not tolerating poor behaviour either on or off the pitch.

Sadly, over time our favourite players have come and gone, but when you watch a team for a while you realise that the club truly is bigger than its composite parts. In short, the three of us genuinely do #bleedgreen.

In terms of success, the last few years following the Raiders has been a bit barren. A semi-final defeat against arch-rivals Sydney Sharks was all we had really had to shout about.

This season was different though. The club had a new spring in its step. Rough and tough English-import John Bateman was brought in at the start of the season, Josh Hodgson (another English import) had missed a lot of the previous season through injury but was now fit, Jack Wighton (who had been disgraced for fighting in Canberra town centre) had a new role of five-eighth and fan-favourite Josh Papalli led from the front piling on the distance with each Canberra possession. Raiders captain, local boy Jarrod Croker was also to be an ever-present.

I think we missed one home game throughout the season.

We realised throughout that it had been twenty five years since Raiders had last tasted glory, but after negotiating a tricky qualification (during which they defeated a very strong Melbourne Storm 12-10 and then beat Rabbitohs 16-10 in an exhilarating Preliminary final) they found themselves in the Grand Final against Sydney Roosters.

Roosters are a glamour side. Funded by wealthy Sydney businessman Nick Politis they are a team of stars and (many say) overpaid stars. The odds were against Raiders, not least as the game was played in Sydney – effectively the Roosters back yard.

The three of us travelled up to the game early. The atmosphere around Sydney Olympic Stadium was fabulous and, most notably everywhere seemed shrouded in the green of the Raiders. We soaked up the excitement then ventured to our seats high up in the packed stadium. There were just shy of 90,000 people there.

It was a terrific experience – the sort that still gives you goosebumps for months afterwards when recalling it. The Raider's fans do a 'viking clap' at the start and it was phenomenal.

We'd all decided the first fifteen minutes were vital. If Roosters got away then Raiders would never come back, but instead it was a much more even contest. An awful decision gave the Roosters the perfect start, the ball rebounding off one of the Roosters trainers but the Roosters were bizarrely given the resulting feed in from which they scored.

A penalty then gave the Roosters an 8-0 lead half way though the second half. Jack Wighton scored a cracking try and the score was 8-6 at half time. The second half was similarly tense - Roosters bad-guy Cooper Cronk was sin-binned and Raiders scored the resulting penalty to tie the scores at 8-8

Raiders didn't take advantage of the extra man, and with only six minutes remaining the referee made a howler calling 'six again' (i.e six more passes for the Raiders) then changing his mind. This gave Roosters the psychological edge and Tedesco (somewhat criminally) ran away and scored a try that gave the Roosters the Premiership at 14-8.

So we trudged back to the station. It was a sad ride home, but I was glad that we had gone along. I’m sure it won’t be another 25 years until we’re watching another Raiders final. #Bleedgreen