While a lot of perplexed visitors will tell you that Australian rules is the oddest team game on earth, Melbourne boasts an even better candidate for entry into the weird sport hall of fame. Trugo was created by workers at the Newport railyards in the 1920s and was first played as a formal sport in 1925. A sort of hybrid between croquet and lawn bowls, participants use a mallet to whack a round rubber disk (the "wheel") at a set of goals 20 to 30 metres away.
The game never caught the public imagination outside Melbourne, but it has survived into the 21st century thanks to a handful of diehards in the inner northern and western suburbs.