If you happened to tune in to ABC Grandstand's coverage of the first Test over the weekend, having woken perhaps from a deep coma or just jetted in from Guinea Bissau, you were entitled to feel a tad confused.

Australia was playing an Ashes series at home - we knew that much because Kerry O'Keeffe was on the air - and yet ... all the noise coming through the microphones sounded, well, very English. As though someone in the ABC studio had mixed up the audio and had patched through chanting from the north bank at Highbury or The Kop or The Shed or any of those fabled English footballing terraces.

The din was constant and leavened only by a bit of bugling. That could mean only one thing, of course. The Barmy Army was in town.

And they were singing ‘We are the Army, the Barmy Army' to the tune of ‘You are my Sunshine.' And then they were singing 'Rule Brittania' and 'Jerusalem' and then, on Monday morning, when one of their number appeared at the ground wearing the mask of the Queen, and regal-looking robes, they launched into another lusty rendition of 'God Save the Queen'.

They were having a gay old time and there wasn't much they didn't sing. Apart from maybe Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi - perhaps the least creative, most oversung sporting dirge ever composed.

The point is this - and it's a worrying one for Cricket Australia: we were not only badly outplayed over the last half of the Test, we were outsupported, too.

The official attendance figures at a ground with a capacity of 42,000 were:

Day 1: 35,389
Day 2: 34,045
Day 3: 34,615
Day 4: 21,677
Day 5:   7,088

Which begs the question: where was everyone? Or, more specifically, where was all the Australian support?

Surely the prospect of a long day watching England at the crease hadn't deterred the brave Queenslanders from fronting up. Have we become such fair-weather supporters that we only sing when we're winning?

Four years ago, the Gabba boasted record crowds for the first three days of the opening Ashes Test, beating the previous record set during the Bodyline series. So the bar had been set high. On the first three days in 2006, the overall attendance was 117,603; this year it was 104,049 - and that was before the dramatic drop-off on Sunday and Monday.

When the ABC sent a reporter out into the barmy throng to speak to a few footsoldiers on Monday, and it was put to them that they were making a lot more noise than the home crowd, one northern-sounding visitor said: ‘I'm disgusted with the Aussies - there's no-one here.''

And it's true. Of the 7000 there on Monday, maybe half were dinky-di home-team supporters; the rest were draped in St George flags, getting sunburnt or singing. Or all three at the same time.

A similar situation unfolded with the first one-dayer of the ‘summer', in freezing conditions in Melbourne a few weeks ago, when the local supporters were heavily outnumbered by the Sri Lankan contingent. They also made more noise than the Australians.

In fact, if it wasn't for the visiting team's fans, Cricket Australia might have been seriously embarrassed once or twice about the paucity of its attendances. The MCG that night attracted 19,309; the SCG that week 11,495 for the second ODI against Sri Lanka and the dead rubber (Australia was trailing 0-2) at the Gabba resulted in a turnout of 9037 - a scarcely believable figure given the popularity of one-dayers even five years ago.

Sure, the English do make a disproportionately loud racket with their carry-on, Billy Cooper's bugling and footballing chants. Even the mild-mannered Sri Lankans can turn up the volume, too, as they showed when Angelo Mathews got going in Melbourne.

So where's the passion gone from our cricket fans? That's the question - among many others - Cricket Australia will be pondering this week.