Homebush
Bay
Olympic Village
Stadium
Tours
Olympic Tickets
HOMEBUSH BAY
Since it's the Olympics which are the cause of all this frenetic activity,
you might start with a visit to Homebush
Bay - home of the Games and the place where 70 per cent of events
will take place.
If you've been before, the main difference will probably be the Stadium
Australia tour and the completed transport links. The best way to visit
the Olympic Park is to take a Rivercat from Wharf 5 of Circular
Quay up the Parramatta River (£6 including bus tour of the site at
Homebush Bay).
Leaving behind the familiar sights, you're quickly among moored yachts
and harbourside houses it would take a lottery win to buy. Originally
an important aboriginal meeting place, where a horse racing track was
established in 1840, the site has most recently been an abattoir, brickworks,
and finally a dumping ground for industrial waste.
Your first sight will be the specially constructed jetty: then it's
straight on to a bus to the visitors' centre. The figures are as impressive
as the clean-up operation.
OLYMPIC VILLAGE
The Olympic Village is the world's largest
solar-powered community; the train link can deliver 50,000 visitors per
hour; there will be more than 110,000 employees and volunteers working
in the run-up to the Games, and Stadium Australia can seat 110,000 people.
Nothing has been left to chance.
The guides are real characters. Ours had regulation wide-brimmed hat,
practical shirt with several pockets and a healthy respect for free enterprise.
The hotel on site welcomes "everyone from backpackers to Kerry Packer,"
he said. The four circular ramps from which spectators leave are not only
wide enough for emergency vehicles to access each of the six levels of
the stadium, they also allow football supporters to be wheeled out after
drinking too much.
We would be seeing each part of the stadium, from high in the grandstand
to the players' changing rooms - but if we attempted to run on the newly
laid track, we would be arrested. No one did.
Since Homebush Bay is also where the Paralympics will be held between
October 18-29, everything is wheelchair accessible, with plenty of lifts,
ramps instead of chairs and low counters on the various food stalls ("burgers,
hot dogs, pies, pasties, fish & chips, noodles and Buffalo Wings").
"Don't ask me what Buffalo Wings are - but Americans like them," said
the guide.
STADIUM TOURS
Hour-long tours depart four times a day, at 9.30am, 11.30am, 1.30pm
and 3.30pm - adults £8, children £4, family £22. For more
information, call: 00 612 8765 2300, mail tours@stadiumaustralia.com.au,
or visit www.stadiumaustralia.com.au
OLYMPIC TICKETS
Sportsworld (01235 554844, brochure hotline 01235 550904, www.sportsworld.co.uk/olympics/programmes.html)
is the sole UK ticket agent, offering everything from a ticket to an individual
event to packages. Ticket prices range from £6-£600.
