I GOT a taxi from Bondi to Blacktown. I'd left a pleasant lawn above the pounding waves of Bondi Beach where I'd been talking to the Swans' Lewis Roberts-Thomson and gone to see the street in Sydney's outer west where the AFL says footy will live one day.
Blacktown is not old Australia. It's new Australia, possibly the next Australia. It's the melting pot, early in the melting process. The Greek taxi driver surprised me.
He liked footy, preferred it to soccer, knew of Daicos and Koutoufides.
He thought the game could take off in Sydney's outer west. "There's lots of kids out here," he said.
I'm not sure there's anything quite like Blacktown in Melbourne. It felt different to me in the way that Footscray does in the sense that it's different to the Australia I grew up with, but it's far less established than Footscray and also more diverse.
Blacktown is the first place in Australia I've seen a Bollywood Fashion Store. I don't mean a place for people wanting to dress up for a fancy dress party looking like a Bollywood actor or actress. I mean people who want to dress that way, period.
Blacktown has a couple of sex shops. Near one is some graffiti about being saved by Jesus and going to Heaven, beneath which some wit has summarised Christian theology as, "Enjoy your Life after your Death", and a third has written, "You will go to Hell for that".
Then there's a Halal restaurant and a place called the Persia Butchery. Blacktown's not a wealthy part of town. It has a number of those shops that sell boxes of tissues for one dollar, bunches of coathangers for two dollars and doormats for four.
There's a train service but a taxi fare from here to the city costs as much as a cheap air flight halfway across Europe. Sydney traffic is even worse than Melbourne's. It's a long way from Blacktown to Bondi Beach and all the images it summons of Australians as a beach-loving people.
I went into the office of the local state Labor member to ask his view on footy's chances of taking off in his electorate. A tired-looking woman behind the desk was dealing with a complaint on the phone.
I was a couple back in the queue, an overweight young woman with a baby in a pram in front of me. I waited a while, looking at the photos around the wall. Most were to do with sport, portraits of people such as Muhammad Ali and Cathy Freeman, but none to do with footy.
When I couldn't be bothered waiting any more, I went back out into the street and passed a group of Somalis sitting outside a cafe having sweet cakes and coffee. I saw some graffiti which said, "Don't f*** with Samoas", which I took to mean Samoans, and had a kebab in a Turkish place.
The man running it had heard "something" about Blacktown being the base of a new AFL team in Sydney but for the past two years, since he opened what he called "the business", he didn't have time for sport. If pressed, he was a Parramatta supporter.
He relaxed briefly and said football — by which he meant rugby league — was good. It was a subject people could have fun with each other about.
Blacktown sits inside a triangle of rugby league clubs — Wests Tigers, Parramatta and Penrith. The National Rugby League is seriously unhappy about the AFL entering what is described as the NRL heartland, but the race is on between the football codes for growth.
The code with every card in its hand but one — its best locals still choose to play overseas — is soccer.
But exactly what sort of local base will Australian football be building on when it arrives in Blacktown?
I'm beginning to think the figure is even lower than Brendan Nelson's approval rating when I enter the TAB and speak to Rodney and Ted.
Ted is the older of the two, grey hair tightly curled, slightly nervous-looking grin. Nonetheless, he concentrates upon my question and thinks before replying. I'd asked him what percentage of people who pass through his TAB follow Australian football.
He discusses the matter with Rodney, who is younger looking but no less reflective. They agree on a figure of 40%! I'm amazed. I thought the figure would be much lower.
"Oh no," said Rodney. "There's a lot of support out here for the Swans." Then, with the slightest of smiles, he adds: "Of course, they do like winners." This is, after all, a TAB office.
I ask how many people who pass through the office follow rugby league. The answer they give is 80%. I ask how many people actually bet on the AFL? Five to 10%.
I am at the end of what appears to be the main street of Blacktown. The Bollywood store is to my left. I also see an Anglicare store.
Sam Mostyn, an AFL commissioner who lives in Sydney's inner west, says the race for support in the outer western suburbs of Sydney will be won by the code that best provides a sense of community.
"Our old notions of football development won't work here. It's about working with the social melting pot in the formative stage of its melting."
On my right is a pub, or what I would call a club. It has two big screens in its main bar. One is showing A-League soccer, the other is showing motor sport. Beside the screens is a big poster advertising rugby league.
I go down a silver staircase that could belong to a nightclub and emerge in a bar with a series of screens showing race results and a young man and woman standing behind the bar. I declare my business.
They, too, are contemplative and think before speaking. The male, I can see, is a traditional rugby league man.
Then we are joined by a tall young man with a shock of black hair and a big grin on his face. He grew up outside Wagga Wagga barracking for the Swans.
His father, Tad Obudzinski, played for them in 1973. He's all for the AFL bringing a new team to Blacktown.
"There's a big following in the AFL up here now," he said.
The other two bar staff don't argue with him when he says grassroots participation levels for kids in Australian football are getting better while rugby league's are weakening, but I also look into his happy face and know I'm speaking to the converted.
