Opinion: Gold Coast’s turn to be all grown up in the eyes of the world

BRISBANE was different in the eyes of the world, and its own eyes, after the 1982 Commonwealth Games. The same will happen with the Gold Coast, writes Sallyanne Atkinson.

IT WILL not have escaped your notice that we’re about to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Expo 88, when according to general wisdom, Brisbane came of age.

But six years before Expo, we had the Commonwealth Games. And that’s when Brisbane really came of age.

The Commonwealth Games of 1982 were different from the Gold Coast Games. They were held in a sweeter, simpler era. Then, for example, there were 46 countries against the 71 currently competing on the Gold Coast. There were about 1500 athletes, compared with the current 4500.

Our opening ceremony featured a kangaroo and schoolchildren dressed in red, white and blue. When they formed a map of Australia, we had left off Tasmania. We had none of the wonderful technology of last week at Carrara.

But when the party was over, Brisbane was a different place.

Mascot Matilda on the move during the 1982 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony

We were enormously proud that we had done it. We had put on the largest event in our history and efficiently managed all that was necessary – transport, accommodation, communication, entertainment, the environment and all the city’s infrastructure. People from all over the world had come to town and liked what they saw. And they told us so.

So I’ll be very interested to see what difference the Games will make to the Gold Coast and the people there.

The City of the Gold Coast was established in 1959, but it’s a city by name rather than by nature. In reality, it’s a string of coastal villages, with a lush and mountainous hinterland.

As a local authority, it’s the second largest in Australia. Its present form came into being in 2008.

I grew up at Labrador on its northern end and as far as we were concerned, Coolangatta could have been another country.

Surfers Paradise was different from Southport and Southport didn’t want to know about Burleigh Heads.

But when the Gold Coast was bidding for the Games, I predicted the greatest benefit would be the uniting of its disparate parts. And I think that’s what will happen.

Locals have got used to talking about the Gold Coast Games so that the city’s name now trips off the tongue. People from all over Australia have long regarded the Gold Coast as a collection of beaches and theme parks, as they thought of Brisbane as a large country town.

Migaloo the white whale soars above the opening ceremony at Carrara Stadium last week. Picture: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

When then lord mayor Bryan Walsh went to the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976 and came back with the Commonwealth Games, the rest of Australia scoffed. Brisbane hosting the Commonwealth Games? That provincial backwater?

But we set about the planning with the determination of the underdog, and managed to build facilities such as the Sleeman Aquatic Centre at Chandler and QEII at Nathan.

The facilities were ready so ahead of time and so much in use that people used to joke they’d be worn out by the time the Games happened.

In the years between getting the Games and staging them, it was the Brisbane City Council that was in the driving seat. After Bryan Walsh, Frank Sleeman took on the complex role of negotiating with state and federal governments, mainly about money.

He retired in early 1982 and it was Roy Harvey who donned the mayoral robes for the opening and closing ceremonies. These were very much the council’s Games and politicians were not much in evidence.

The chairman was Sir Edward “Ned” Williams, who was later to star as the commissioner general of Expo 88. He was a Supreme Court judge and a hearty character.

Security didn’t seem to be much in evidence, either. I was a backbench alderman in opposition at the time and I seemed to be able to go anywhere. So I had my first exciting experience of actually meeting athletes, and one of my clearest memories is of going to the cinema with a group of them to see Gallipoli.

There’s a nice link between the Games of 1982 and 2018. The Athletes Villages for both have been at Griffith University. In 1982, when the university was just a few years old and “in the bush” at Nathan, the athletes were housed in the students’ residential accommodation.

This week, they’re living in new accommodation at Griffith’s Gold Coast accommodation – just up the road from my old home at Labrador.

And the next Commonwealth Games will be held in Birmingham, England, which competed against Brisbane way back in 1976 to host the Games of 1982. But the greatest link of all is the excitement. Back in 1982, we saw athletes running in our streets, which we’d never seen before. There were Africans and Asians, and in those days we weren’t used to seeing either.

Now we’re more sophisticated. But for folk down on the Gold Coast, the buzz is there. And it’s not the excitement of our great medal tally.

It’s the excitement of being a grown-up city in the eyes of the world.

Sallyanne Atkinson was lord mayor of Brisbane from 1985-91