It's all on thisevening. I'll be at work but watching it on TV with luck. Then again, I have to pass through the leftovers latter tonight to get to our city office so I might see some fallout. We're pulling extra hours at work because as a towing company we're part of getting events ready. Make sure nobody's parked where they're going to be in the way!

So, starting from Princess Bridge all the way along the 1km stretch known as 'Birrung Mar' we've got these 'fish' in the middle of the Yarra river as mentioned earlier.

This is a picture of the end of the procession. The last fish is the English roach before this layer-cake dais. Last time I looked there was a gap between the Roach, the dais and a set of stairs leading up out of the water to the Swan st bridge. The MCG is just a little ways off to the right of this picture.
Along the banks there are these signs telling you about the kinda 'fish' you're seeing out there from your side of the river.

These little signs wont mean bugger all tonight when the banks will be throbing with 600,000 people or so. Therefore, it must be intended that this fish business will be a permenant display for the course of The Games.

They're not to shoddy either, these fish. Must have cost an absolute shirt load for all the work that's gone into just this.

Allong the northern bank of the Yarra there are several towers of scaffolding spaced out. I would take it that these are for cameras to watch what happens below.

From what I've heard, the athletes (ours at any rate) play a small role in all this. They're out there for 27mins and that's inside the MCG itself. Like the Games at Turin there'll be all hooting and hollering and expensive nonsense in the name of art and then the athletes with their flags will hatch out smiling all the way.

The role the fishies and the flag platforms play is purely decorative. There's no chance of standing on them as the next pictures show.

These are some shots a couple days ago of these flag-things out of the water. NZ has a flag but no fish-thing of our own. I couldn't make sense of the order, sure ain't alphabetical. But I now understand that they're grouped from start to finnish by continent. We're in the third quartile.

You can't see these flags from the banks at all, just the name on the side. They're clearly designed for the TV cameras from those towers and from helicopters above.

As this picture shows, they're simply floating structures full of shiny reflective tin-foil with a flag stretched over the top like a drum. There can be no standing on them.

Ergo, all the jazz and kerfuffel will involve folks on boats juggling and dancing and throwing up fireworks making their way between the bridges. Then the athletes pop out, along with the help of CGA Assistents in some cases. Blogger Ruth Nossek, for example, gets to carry the flag for Botswana. Lucky girl!

And what this "giant flying tram" thing at the G is, I do not know. Probably no more than that!

Come to think of it, since fireworks are part of this thing it'll still being in full fling at 9pm when I'm trying to get from one depot office to the other. What fun I'll have trying to manage that...

Oh, and in other news I heard on Newstalk ZB that the Kiwi team are a bit pissed off that they have no feed of all these goings on tonight. They're just cooped up waiting to play their part and don't get to see anything of what comes before them. No TV for the athletes? They're not going to put it on the big screen at the MCG? Bit rough isn't it.