- guardian.co.uk, Sunday July 8 2001 14.21 BST
It is always easy to make a climactic leap in Australia, but nothing could match the transfer the morning after Test victory for the Lions from tropical Brisbane to Canberra. The national capital was cold, and that was just the weather. It is laid out with chilling precision and we are not talking Versailles, but Bucharest circa Ceausescu.
It was a relief to find an Irish pub and settle down for a rerun on Sunday night of the glories of Saturday. They didn't fade on second viewing. I know we were in King O'Malley's but it, or he, reinforced just how well Brian O'Driscoll and Rob Henderson had played. And Keith Wood, of course, although not even O'Malley's most persuasive ales would let the hooker's drop goal land even close.
On Monday I found myself in the Canberra Reptile Centre. The bloke who owns the Reptile Centre, however, is a star. His name is Ross and he has, coiled in his glass cages, from the world's top 10 of venomous snakes, numbers one, two, four and six, all natives of Australia and all good mates of his. Inland taipan, coastal taipan, tiger and brown snake, in case you're interested.
Ross is on the side of the snakes. Of the 300 snakebites in Australia each year most can be laid at the door of that perennial trouble-maker, alcohol. Then there are the farmers in the bush who insist on going round in flip-flops.
But just how poisonous is poisonous, Ross? Well, the Aussie snakes don't go for all that huge local reaction around the bite that their African cousins might cause, but go straight for the central nervous system. Before the discovery of snake serum, there had only been one recorded case of a human surviving a bite by the number two, the larger of the two taipans.
George Rosedale in 1949 had been working in a carpenter's shop and had stepped back on a healthy specimen of the coastal variety, one who took offence and struck through his boot and bit into the back of his foot. George was saved because the leather absorbed some of the venom and because one of his mates rushed up and, with a chisel, carved out a chunk of George's heel.
Tuesday was a visit to the Australian War Memorial. It has become something of a ritual to combine sport and the sacrifices of our forefathers. The Canada rugby team in 1991 went to Vimy Ridge, the All Blacks have been to Ypres and the Australian cricketers recently went to Gallipoli. It is almost hackneyed now, but, boy, it works. Streams of us went up Anzac Parade to the memorial, joking and messing, to emerge two hours later not laughing.
I met Ivor Taylor there, father of Lion Mark and a former team-mate of mine at Pontypool. He said Mark had been told weeks ago that however well he played he would not make the Test team. We were outside the museum looking at 102,000 names. HMAS Sydney: all hands lost, 647 names. Ivor said there were more important things for a father to worry about.
That night the Lions were dreadful and then brilliant. Matt Dawson, the Pepys of Brisbane, slotted the conversion to win. The last act of the game. Fines one day, fanfares the next. He couldn't have written it better himself.
On Wednesday the camp moved from chilly Canberra to slightly warmer Melbourne. The weather was still a bit disjointed but at least the Stepford Wives had given way to a city of real people. The International Rugby Board held a press conference; so, I should amend that last bit. No, they said all sorts of interesting things, but for the life of me...
The Wallabies were in town, trying to drum up some green-and-gold support for themselves. They felt they had been ambushed by the red army in Brisbane, They had been complacent, they had worn the wrong studs and they had tinkered with their defensive structure at just the wrong moment. It had been a shocker on Saturday, but this, in Bourke Street Mall on Thursday, was a good performance.
On Friday I went to Melbourne Old Gaol where they once hanged Ned Kelly. I say 'once' because at least Ned went through the trap door at the first time of asking, as opposed to the execution of the first victims of colonial justice, a pair of Aborigines called Bob and Jack.
They were sentenced to death because the Brits were a bit twitchy about a revolt of the natives. So Bob and Jack were hanged as a deterrent.
Unfortunately, the gallows collapsed as Bob went through the trap. Jack had to wait while the carpenter did some repairs. And then down he went to join Bob. Both twitched for a long time on the end of their ropes. No doubt the local community felt much safer after that. They had rebuilt the scaffold by the time of Ned Kelly.
The spookiest things in the jail are the deathmasks in the cells. On one wall is written a brief history of this or that murderer and in a glass case on another is his or her face. My, they were small in those days. The masks were all to do with phrenology, to see if the shape of criminals' skulls is linked to their propensity to commit foul deeds.
I was just feeling my way round my own head - just checking - when a very Welsh voice said: 'Pontypool boys should feel at home in here,' and the very narrow, but very heavy cell door was pushed shut behind me.
