A story of hope and fish, the Games open in Melbourne

First published in The Age on March 16, 2006

A story of hope – and fish

There must have been a time in the early chapters of the Commonwealth Games when the opening ceremony was presented as a far simpler and formularised affair, a triumphantly militarist set piece, a parade of soldiery, flags and athletes, conducted in the presence of the monarch and intended to set the spheres of competition rolling – while also demonstrating the breadth and subtly flexed power of empire.

None of which was traditionally likely to involve ducks, trams or small children, but then the modern Games opener requires more than bagpipes, bearskins and a volley of muskets for its effect.

The modern opening ceremony – a distinct, though still thankfully rare, dramatic form – is a complex and demanding beast: an ostentatious display of a host city’s capacity to direct civic resources that might otherwise have fed, transported, policed, clothed or educated its population towards a piece of only dimly comprehensible open air theatre; a lavish one-off production that invites its audience to suspend disbelief in everything other than the transporting power of pyrotechnics, nobly aired platitude and colourful, massed amateur performance.

Each host city must stage something bigger, louder, brighter and smokier than its predecessors . . . which in this case pits Melbourne against the likes of Manchester, Cardiff and Brisbane, so the bar is not insurmountable.

And how did Melbourne rate? Well, we may have lacked a vast child-stuffed kangaroo, but we did have several species of waterfowl, fish and a koala in its underwear. There was no Kylie, just Delta Goodrem (Kylie Lite), Dame Kiri and Steve Kilbey.

Where Sydney’s Olympics had the thundering hooves and flicking manes of the men from Snowy River we had the woosh of a white-winged tram. Not the pastel classicism of Athens, but ballerinas, marauding bike gangs, dirigible marsupials and an Arts Centre spire constructed from macrame.