2000

The magic of Bondi Beach was thrown into the world spotlight during the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics when the Women’s Beach Volleyball Tournament was staged on the beach’s famous sands. The party atmosphere that surrounds the sport turned to euphoria when Australian duo Natalie Cook and Kerri Pottharst won the gold medal.

Before the event, however, many Bondi residents furiously fought against using the beach for the competition, because construction of the 10,000-seat stadium – the Bondi Beach Volleyball Centre – had a hugely negative impact on local businesses and roads as well as on residents’ ability to access the beach, and people feared a lasting impact on the local environment.

Beach volleyball was introduced as an Olympic sport at the Atlanta 1996 Summer Olympics, for which it was played on a human-made beach located a long way from the ocean. Determined to use one of Sydney’s amazing beaches for the Sydney 2000 competition, the members of the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) reviewed Cronulla, Manly and Maroubra beaches but ended up choosing Bondi Beach because it was big enough to hold not only the 10,000-capacity stadium but the ‘overlay’, including athletes, media representatives and security officers, and its sand would be deep enough to hold the enormous metal pylons that would be part of the $21 million engineering marvel the stadium was slated to be.

Waverley Councillors were happy with the decision at first, but ferocious public outcry became more evident as the Games grew closer. During the months of the stadium’s construction, residents had to put with restricted access to the beach, driving and parking on the local roads were nightmarish, and the businesses in operation around the Pavilion suffered huge trading losses. Environmental advocates feared long-lasting damage to both the sand and the surf conditions.

In the two years before the beach-volleyball event, former rugby-league player turned events manager John Quayle was responsible for dealing with the outcry as the public organised and attended many rallies and protests. Actors and Bondi residents Jack Thompson and Michael Caton fronted a 1000-plus rally, and protestors chained themselves to bulldozers and buried themselves in the sand to make their objections known in the strongest-possible way. The police had to be called in, and the beach-volleyball ‘test event’ had to be cancelled. The protests eventually subsided, however, and the Waverley councillors affirmed they had no legal power to stop the event.

A lone protestor showed up on the day of the event, but the beach’s magic spread worldwide once the competition started, the atmosphere started to buzz and the glorious beach was on show. An announcer dressed as a surf lifesaver pumped the crowd, a dee-jay played some cool sounds, and for 10 days the world’s most renowned crescent-shaped beach was ‘party central’.

The euphoria culminated when Australian beach-volleyball duo Natalie Cook and Kerri Pottharst secured the gold medal in front of a legion of fans.

Courtesy Fairfax Media and the Waverley Library Local Studies Collection.