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and last updated September 19th., 2000.
WELCOME TO MY DAY..
IT IS NICE TO HAVE YOU SHARE IT WITH ME...
Well, the years of waiting, and hearing about, and planning and arguing, and running that torch around Australia are over at last, and Sydney is playing Happy Host to the Year 2000 Olympic Games.And doing it rather well, it seems, with none of the disasters so direly forecast having as yet come to pass.
And Mr Gates' Yacht in the bay has been joined by many, many others, and Sydney's Bankstown Airport is chocablock with the private jets of the world's millionaires and billionaires...
Hey, don't they realise it can all be watched on TV?
Photo from the Geelong Advertiser, September 5th., 2000.
Other pictures from the Melbourne Age, and the New York Times Online.
Nice to see, too, that the organizers weren't afraid to make this a show only Australians would fully understand..and demonstrate, too, that Australians have the confidence to laugh at themselves..
But of course, the Opening Ceremony, unlike moist sporting events these days, was designed, for once, for people who had paid to BE THERE!
Sure, it could be followed on TV..in fact I watched it on the Big-screen set at my "local"..but the choreography was clearly designed to be viewed from above and the atmosphere must have been unforgettable.
And what a brainwave to give each member of the audience a reflective wristband, so that every clap, (and there was a LOT of clapping), sent back the beauty of the strobe lights in flickering, constantly changing fireflies of light. 
At jokes like our corrugated- iron worship, and the bouncing woolbales, and the hundreds of Ned Kellys running around pretending to be characters in a Sydney Nolan painting...
I mean, would any other country send itself up by forming the Olympic Rings with dryzabone-clad stockmen...and then with hawaiian-shirt clad Victa Motor mower pushers?
And I thought the concept of turning the arena into a giant aquarium was an inspiration..
It was at that point that I began to watch and my mouth was open...
"This CANNOT be SYDNEY", I thought.
."Where is the brashness, the crassness, the cultural cringe, the pseudo-Americanism..?
This is worldclass. This is sophisticated. This is technically advanced. This is....quite magnificent!
It was pointed out in the press that the ceremony borrowed heavily from more than a few musicals and stageshows..
In that case, Walt Disney would have been very happy indeed with the Australian-flora tribute to Fantasia
And then, after all the furor about the organizers having invited American Marching Bands over here to perform in OUR Olympics, and the officials caving in to the lobbyists and cancelling all the invitations, and then the Band Supremo, Bill Lutt taking the Committee to Court for Breach Of Contract, so that they relented and kept the Americans but included more Australians, and other countries, too, till the band numbered 2000...and the Wall of Sound promised by Master of Ceremonies, Ric Birch, was just that..just...just...WOW!!!
And it seemed so RIGHT to have the other countries there..but I had to think...Eat your heart out, Edinburgh Military Tattoo!!
After all that, as everyone said, the Games were going to have to be VERY good if not to be considered an anticlimax.....
And the best-kept secret of all, just WHO was to light the Olympic flame, and HOW......
And if you thought the cauldron seemed to have changed its mind about its ascent heavenwards, you were right..and spare a thought for the engineers sweating as they overrode computers and fixed the thing, even managing to make it look as though the delay had been dramatically intended!
But, of course,there is still the CLOSING CEREMONY to come..
and I have a feeling Sydney still has some surprises for us....
But I'll keep you posted!
WANT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
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OLYMPIC GAMES, SYDNEY 2000
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©Robin Knight, 2000.
