Bondy's cup win put us up there

THERE weren't many dry eyes in the room at yesterday's 30th anniversary America's Cup lunch. Hawkie, Bondy and Johnny B(ertrand) caused a bigger sensation than a surprise appearance by the Rolling Stones. Grown men and women teared up at videos of the races and everyone wanted Hawkie back as PM, even for 12 months.

An hour and a half in I made a terrible mistake. I texted a photo of myself standing next to the replica America's Cup to my family. Within two minutes my 18-year-old son texted back: "What's that?"

What was it about winning the cup that so affected just about everyone in Australia born before 1977?

Australians were suffering from a lack of confidence. We had experimented with change under Gough Whitlam, didn't like it and rushed back into the comforting embrace of a very conservative Liberal-National Coalition helmed by a pre-Damascus Malcolm Fraser.

An Asian prime minster had warned us about becoming white trash and like today, there was a feeling of unease, about something being not right.

To top it off Australia had just endured the worst drought of the 20th century and more than 70 of us had died in bushfires.

And we always worry about our place in the world. Australians can tell you what companies have been successful overseas and more importantly, all the ones that have failed. We love Qantas because it's one of the few local brands recognised internationally.

We know we need a strong partner to defend ourselves. We relied on the Poms but they let us down so we turned to the Yanks. We're grateful, but it still doesn't sit right.

So our feelings about the 1983 America's Cup weren't to do with sailing, particularly, in what was then one of the most esoteric sport events in the world. To put it in perspective, more people watched the first race of the 2013 America's Cup than all the America's Cup races in 161 years.

But sport brings Australians together in a way nothing else can. Throw in Australians as underdogs and it wouldn't matter if it were underwater dominoes, and as long as we were coming from behind you wouldn't be able to find space in front of the television in any front bar in Broken Hill.

And this wasn't a sport we were good at it. This was a toff's contest. The Yanks had taken it off the Poms and kept if firmly bolted to a plinth in the midtown New York Yacht Club, a mini Vatican near Grand Central.

The usual contenders were eccentric English gentlemen fighting an even more eccentric NYYC race committee (even Ralph Lauren wouldn't dress people like that).

Later in its history eccentric Europeans turned up, and some mildly eccentric Australians such as Frank Packer, and did their best.

But for a property developer with a naval architect who had never been to university to take on the most powerful nation on earth in a sport it had dominated for 132 years, that used some of the same technology that had just put some of its men on the moon, was to do the impossible.

But Alan Bond, John Bertrand, Ben Lexcen, Warren Jones and a small team of Australians did just that and it did unite the country and it did change the place forever.

Australia had come out of the shadow of not just America but the whole of the old world. And Australians knew it.

That west coast property developer and his motley team of irreverent Aussies had made the impossible possible.

John Connolly, a keen ocean racer at the time, covered a number of America's Cup campaigns for Australian media. He also acted for Australian and other foreign challenges in their dispute with the NYYC.