This past month, Sydney has been awash in Olympic nostalgia – and for good reason. It’s been 25 years since that magical fortnight in 2000. A whole generation has grown up since then, and yet the memories still glow like embers.
We’ve all seen the TV montages and reruns. The golden finishes. The voice of Bruce McAvaney calling Cathy Freeman’s race. But this year’s anniversary has stirred something deeper than sporting pride – a wistful longing for a time when society felt lighter, freer, more friendly and more unified.
Back then, I was a uni student living at home in West Pennant Hills. All our neighbours and friends were scrambling to get tickets to the big events in Homebush. Somehow, I scored the men’s and women’s 100-metre finals.
Each morning, I’d run onto the front lawn to unpeel the latest Sydney Morning Herald Games lift-out. Trains left from Beecroft to watch events on the big screens, with volunteers from the Hills filling the carriages.
At night, our family would gather around the TV for Roy and HG’s The Dream, a masterclass in Aussie humour that probably left overseas visitors scratching their heads. Then I’d jump on the landline to chat with friends – but only after Mum had hung up the downstairs receiver.
Some memories are indelible: Cathy Freeman’s “400 metres of reconciliation”, Ian Thorpe’s golden streak in the pool and Tatiana Grigorieva’s silver in the pole vault – slow hand-clapping the crowd and conducting the stadium like a symphony. It wasn’t just about winning. It was about who we were, and how we backed each other.
Even earlier, in 1993, I remember my whole school staying up late to watch the Olympic bid announcement, highlighted by presentations from our “secret weapons” Annita Keating and teenager Tanya Blencowe. When Premier John Fahey made his infamous leap, it felt like the whole city – the whole country – leapt with him. Horns blared through suburban roundabouts. Lounge rooms erupted in cheers.
Looking back, Sydney 2000 was probably our last global moment of innocence before everything changed. The symmetry was shocking: barely a year after I’d raced up our fluffy-carpeted staircase at home to celebrate the Olympics with friends on the telephone, I made the same trip to wake my family – this time to tell them the Twin Towers had been hit.
It was a different era. No social media. No smartphones. Email was clunky. People still knocked on their neighbours’ doors and held street parties on cul-de-sacs. Families lived within 10 minutes of each other. The Hills felt smaller and simpler, more local, more familiar.
Migrant families like mine were present, but far fewer. Our community today is vibrant and multicultural – and that’s something to be proud of. Yet in recent years, a gnawing fragmentation has only accelerated through lockdowns that segregated our city, the inward turn induced by technology and a housing crisis that has separated grandparents, parents and children.
Where it was once common for neighbours to drop over with a casserole or spare mulch for the garden – or even welcome in the Amway salesperson going door-to-door – today, who can say for certain what’s going on behind those same four walls?
Now, the real challenge is social – a creeping loneliness, a quiet disconnection. We order UberEats. We chat with ChatGPT. We’re led down rabbit holes by algorithms.
The Sydney Olympics gave us a different vision of ourselves: confident, kind, open-hearted. We didn’t just host the world – we invited each other in.
Change is inevitable. There’s no turning back the clock. But I’ll always remember those weeks in September 2000 as the best of us. When Sydney stood tall, the Hills leaned in, and we all believed in the same dream.
Of course, life has come a long way since then – hasn’t it? Maybe it’s best not to ask the question too deeply. And maybe that’s why we hold onto the memory of that magical time.
Alan Mascarenhas is a former journalist, political speechwriter and state Labor candidate for Epping. He works for Business Western Sydney.
