Lawn Bowling

Last week, I organized an outing with a group of Yankee transplants (and a few Aussie partners) for a day of Lawn Bowling at the North Sydney Bowl-O. Normally the clubs are the exclusive domains of elderly leagues of bowlers wearing tidy white uniforms, but once a week the greens are open to the general public for barefoot bowls.

Unlike ten-pin bowling, lawn bowling requires no particular skill or strength and is therefore well suited to the co-consumption of massive quantities of beer...not to say that I haven't consumed massive quantities of beer while playing ten-pin, but in this case, I did not have to wear ugly shoes and was treated to glorious views of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.

The play is quite similar to Bocce Ball, except the balls are weighted on one side, which results in a perfectly thrown ball wobbling off in wonky directions at the last minute. Teams alternate turns chucking different colored balls down a turf field toward a target ball (the jack). The object is to get as many of your balls as close to the Jack as possible without spilling your beer or falling over. There were some subtle rules regarding fouls and scoring, but I couldn't be bothered with those, as they only interfered with the play.

Perhaps I should just let the video explain the rest: