Celebrating 2016: Why this year has more in common with the Year 2000 than you realise
IT’s hard to believe the Sydney 2000 Olympics were 16 years ago. But there’s plenty which hasn’t changed. Find out why 2016 is just like the Y2K year
Gold Coast
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IT’s hard to believe the Sydney 2000 Olympics were 16 years ago.
It was a lifetime ago for the students who are in Year 11 this year but they might be surprised at how similar that Olympic year was with this year’s.
Here’s 16 reasons why 2016 should be full of flashbacks for those of us who lived through the first year of the new millennium.
1: Pokémon
Pokémon Go has taken the world by storm since it launched on July 3 but Gold Coasters were also going Pokémon mad back in the early days of the new Millennium.
Game Boy smash hit Pokémon Red/Blue hit shelves in late 1998, the popular trading card game flooded school yards in 1999 and episodes of the television series brought in viewers to Cheez TV each morning before school.
So anticipation was high for the launch of the second generation of games — Pokémon Gold/Silver which flew off the shelves ahead of Christmas 2000.
2: Tax
July 1 2000 was the day the GST began in Australia and it was all the talk of financial boffins as the way we did our finances change drastically overnight. Fast-forward to 2016 and the Federal Government again talked up changes to GST before shelving them before the election.
3: X-men
Australia’s very own Hugh Jackman became Hollywood royalty in 2000 when he burst onto the scene as the X-men’s clawed mutant Wolverine, a role he still calls his own 16 years later.
Jackman played the role again in this year’s X-men: Apocalypse.
He is expected to reprise the role of Logan a final time in the upcoming third Wolverine film currently being filmed.
4: The Gold Coast City Council.
If you hopped in a time machine and went back to the Year 2000, you might be surprised to see the names Tom Tate and Gary Baildon appearing on ballot papers at the local government elections.
Cr Tate made his first run for the Gold Coasts mayoralty in 2000 when he went up against Cr Baildon, who had been in office for three years.
While he was not successful that time, the then-Surfers Paradise Chamber of Commerce boss would try again in 2008 and was finally elected in 2012. He was returned with a record primary vote in March.
5: US politics
Bill Clinton was in the final days of his eight-year presidency in 2000 with the race to replace him dominating the year.
While George W Bush would ultimately triumph over the incumbent vice president, Al Gore, the world had not heard the last of the era’s first family.
Rarely out of the news, Hillary Clinton is now the frontrunner to succeed Barack Obama as US President following the November election.
6: Reality TV
If there is one thing that has grown since 2000, it’s the Australian public’s appetite for reality TV.
The year 2000 brought the first two reality series to Australia — Popstars which produced the music act Bardot and The Mole (16 year old spoiler — it was Alan).
While Bardot soon disappeared and the Mole has been off the air for years, the TV revolution they began reshaped the modern television landscape.
7: Online gaming
In the year 2000 most of us could never have conceived how much the internet would become a part of our day-to-day lives.
Back then Sega were still a major driving force of video gaming after their big successes in the late 1980s and early 1990s with Its Master System and Mega Drive consoles.
But by the late 1990s the giant was on its knees after the disappointment of its Sega Saturn console and launched the Dreamcast as its last role of the dice.
But the Dreamcast did bring the world SegaNet, a system which allowed the console users to play online against others.
SegaNet lasted trust two years but its legacy continues today when online gaming on the PlayStation and Xbox systems is common.
8: Blink-182
They were one of the hottest bands of the late 1990s and early 2000s, scoring a major hit during the Y2K year with All the Small Things.
But Blink-182 are back and this year put out their first album in more than five years, giving music fans another taste of their musical brand.
9: Bringing Out the Dead (formats)
Laser disc never really took off. Despite having plenty of the advantages that would come with DVD more than a decade later, audiences of the 1980s and 1990s baulked at their expense and having to play movies on a disc the size of a vinyl record.
Long after being surpassed by VHS and later DVDs as the preferred format of home viewers, Martin Scorsese’s underrated film Bringing Out the Dead 2000 marked the final major film to be released on laserdisc.
And it’s happened all over again in the past week when the final VCR player rolled off the production line in Japan, nearly a decade after the final major studio released a film on VHS.
10: Online piracy
No matter how many services like Spotify or Netflix are available, illegal online downloading remains a popular habit today.
But back in 2000 it was an industry in its infancy, with music program Napstar the big game in town.
That year Metallica took the service to court in a bid to shut it down.
In 2016 Napster is gone but its legacy lives on in the booming Torrent network.
11: Prince
The late, great purple one passed away earlier this year from a drug overdose and was widely praised for his highly influential albums.
2000 marked a major turning point for him as a performer after a rough 1990s when he changed his name into an unpronounceable symbol and called himself “the artist formerly known as Prince”.
That year he reclaimed the name made headlines as well as great music.
12: Midnight Oil
They were an iconic act of the 1980s and 1990s and Midnight Oil started the new millennium with a bang, performing their hit Beds are Burning at the Sydney 2000 closing ceremony.
Always political, the band made a statement against then-prime minister John Howard by wearing black tracksuits with the word “sorry” written on it, a commentary on the then-current indigenous reconciling movement.
Fast-forward 16 years, a lengthy political career as the Labor member for Kingsford-Smith and an autobiography later, frontman Peter Garrett is back and released a solo album this year while talking an Oil reunion.
13: Movies
Remember Hollywood stars of yesteryear Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe?
Of course you do, because they’re still scoring successful films this year.
In the year 2000 all three appeared in the year’s top box offices draws — Gladiator, Mission Impossible II and Cast Away.
Now, 16 years later they are all older and a little greyer (except Cruise), but are still headlining big hits in the age of the Superhero franchise.
Hanks is returning to his Cast Away disaster genre this year in the film Sully, due out in a few months.
14: Sharks
Gold Coasters love the ocean and one of the realities of aquatic life is sharks.
Sharks were making headlines in 2000 after a shocking shark attack at Main Beach.
While shark attacks remain rare on the Gold Coast, there have been multiple incidents in nearby northern NSW in the past 18 months, and the creatures remain a common site in the city’s waterways.
15: Olympic Games
The Rio Olympic Games kick off tomorrow with its long-awaited opening ceremony. It comes nearly 16 years after Australia was shown off to the world with the glorious Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.
The memorable opening ceremony ended with Cathy Freeman lighting the Olympic flame.
16: Brisbane Broncos
The Brisbane Broncos had a big 2000 where they ultimately triumphed during the NRL season, which was altered because of the September staging of the Olympics.
The team, which has been on a resurgence the past two years since its coach Wayne Bennett was rehired and are hoping to secure another grand finals berth.
After coming runner-up last year, the Broncos are hoping to repeat their 2000 form and make it back to the top.
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