II - A Legacy of the 1984 Olympic Games

quality Australian wines, serving a range of local reds and
whites for discerning torchbearers and celebrating guests.
Local athlete Jennifer Peel lit the cauldron and eight white
doves were released to fly over the 8000 who had gathered
for the event.
The Olympic torch was relayed through Cessnock and around
the wine growing district of Pokolbin before moving on to
Maitland where high-profile Australian entertainers Christine
Anu and Monica Trapaga entertained the lunchtime crowd.
Maitland is the centre of Les Darcy country, the 'died young'
boxer who ranks with racehorse Phar Lap amongst the
country's foremost sporting tragi-heroes.
Due to the distances to be covered after this stop, the relay
continued via motor convoy between a number of towns,
in each of which the flame was handed back to the
torchbearers. It travelled north along the New England
Highway, reaching Muswellbrook for an overnight stop.
On 1 September, the torch reached Dubbo, where next day it
did a circuit of the Western Plains Zoo, heading south for
lunch at Orange before going on in the afternoon to Bathurst,
famous for motor-racing. The city maintained this theme for
its torch experience, with nine-time 'King of the Mountain'
racing-car driver Peter Brock carrying the flame to the
Mount Panorama racing circuit where Australian touring-car
champion Craig Lowndes waited for it in his Holden V8
racing car. The flame was transferred to a miner's lantern
specially fitted to the car, and taken for two fast laps around
the circuit.
On 3 September, the 'Lithgow Flash', Marjorie Jackson
Nelson, made a triumphant return to her mining hometown
and did a lap of honour with the torch on the modest athletic
track where she had first trained for her gold medal
performances. It is a cinder track, built by the people of the
town to assist her training for the Helsinki 1952 Olympic
Games. Jackson usually trained at night, the track lit by car
headlights. She repaid the town's efforts with magnificent
wins in the 100 m and 200 m in Helsinki. On this day,
accompanied by 11 other Lithgow Olympians and the Polish
Olympic canoe team, who were training nearby, Jackson
watched as a bronze statue of herself was unveiled.
The torch proceeded east across the Blue Mountains, where
the cauldron was lit at Katoomba's Echo Point, with the
Three Sisters, a spectacular rock formation, looming in
the background. The rock outcrops are the subject of an
Aboriginal Dreamtime story, in which three sisters are turned
to stone by their witch doctor to protect them from a bunyip.
This mountain pass was also the means by which the white
settlers broke out of their coastal isolation in 1813.
The torch relay came within 45 minutes of Sydney when it
stopped overnight at Penrith. There 50 000 people gathered
in a local park where Kane Towns lit the cauldron in memory
of his late father Ched, a blind athlete and adventurer who
had died in the Himalayas earlier in the year. The huge
crowds on the streets and at this celebration gave an
indication of what could be expected when the relay reached
Sydney, host city for the Games, just over a week later.
On Day 90, Tuesday 5 September, the relay ran south to
Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory. Canberra, the
nation's capital, is a purpose-built city, elegantly landscaped,
with innovative architecture. Canberra is also home to the
Australian Institute of Sport, where many Olympic athletes
have trained. Many athletes, including Olympians and
Paralympians amongst their ranks, carried the Olympic torch
throughout the Canberra region.
There was a cold early start to the torch relay on Day 91, as
Olympic rowing gold medallist Megan Marcks, nee Still and
her husband Gordon rowed the Olympic flame across
Canberra's Lake Burley Griffin in their double scull shell.
Still in Canberra on the morning of 7 September, Day 92, the
Olympic torch relay stopped briefly at a private Reconciliation
gathering at Government House in Yarralumla, home to the
Governor-General, Sir William Deane, who would formally open
the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games in nine days' time. Attending
the gathering was former South African President Nelson
Mandela. Dr Mandela held the Olympic torch with Sir William
before passing it onto Michael Quail, an indigenous Australian
and the Australian Capital Territory's young citizen of the year.
Olympic softball player Sally McCreedy then took the torch and
continued the relay through the streets of Canberra.
By early afternoon the relay was well on its way towards the
Snowy Mountains. September is nearing the end of the winter
JOURNEY OF THE FLAME
The Olympic
Torch Relay
Volume Two
Chapter Two
56. Nelson Mandela
accepts the Olympic
flame from Governor
General Sir William
Deane at Government
House in Canberra
57. Residents of Broulee
line the streets to watch
the torch go by
56
GREG GARAY/SOCOG
GREG GARAY/SOCOG 57
2. Journey of the Flame 45