Oh What A Night, As Visitors Make Themselves At Home.
The Age
Monday September 25, 2000
Sorry, but am I the only one here watching this? It's 9.16 on Thursday night and up on the TVs a pair of Australians are winning gold in the madison, that 60kilometre, slingshotpropelled riot on bikes. There's just been a giant bingle, wheels and riders flying everywhere, and we're taking the medal, but does anyone else care?
Slow realisation sets in. A collective ``Huh?" goes round the room, a few weak bars of Matilda. ``They're awesome, eh?," says a guy in a maple leaf shirt, but he's talking about his countrymen, Blue Rodeo, a Canuck pubrock outfit that's just poweredup on stage.
Well why not? This, after all, is Moose Lodge, the Canadiantheme nightclub at Cockle Bay. As the partyhard expats crush inside, the band sings, ``These are the days of your life".
Cockle Bay/Darling Harbour is the party epicentre of Olympics, Sydney, and Moose Lodge is one of its three most popular party addresses. But it and the other two, the Last Lap and Holland Heineken House, beg the question: whose party is this anyway?
7.15pm: The Moose, guarded by three stylised, fibreglass versions of the species and half a dozen notquiteright Mounties, is already pumping. There's a 40metre queue of locals at the main entrance, but VIPs and visiting Canadians slide through a back door. We decide to circumnavigate the bay towards its Dutch counterpart, Holland House.
Families are packed four deep around the water's edge, waiting for the 9pm fireworks, Daniela and Boyd McMahon, of Perth, among them. They're not partying tonight, says Daniela, her auntie's cooking a lamb roast. ``What could compete with that?" says Boyd. He may even be serious.
A couple of coppers give directions and hearty endorsement to the Dutch club: ``Do they know how to party! And the women, they're goddesses, though you're always looking up, 'cos they're all seven foot tall. We led a conga line there last night."
8.17pm: Inge de Bruijn is parting the waters in the 100metres freestyle and the joint is rocking. We are talking literally here. 3000 screaming Netherlanders and friends are pogoing up and down so hard the whole massive white beerhall is shuddering on the brink of collapsing into the Harbour.
Watched over by a replica of the illfated Batavia, Holland House is near impregnable. Antipodeans must cajole, beg or barter their way through a narrow gap in the heavily barred gates. We have breached the dyke, slipping through in the wake of a couple of wide bearded Dutchmen in the apparent national dress of orange Tshirts, shorts, black socks and business shoes, topped by inflatable windmillshaped hats.
``Goud for Nederland" flashes on the screen as Inky slams into the wall and the place erupts in choruses of, we learn, Bloem's Even Aan Myn Moeder Vragen, which translates as ``I have to ask my mother", though the song's connection with swimming escapes us.
Frieda Osinga, a DutchAustralian from Perth, is here with her sister Yosca and brother Douwe. They're here every night. ``We love it," she screams over the din. ``We get the best of both worlds. If Ian wins, if Peter wins - we win."
10pm: The Martin Place ``Live Site" is a little slice of suburbia in the CBD, a concreted beer garden under hot pink Olympic rings. The preferred drinks are VB tinnies, coloured coolers and UDL mixers and, at the Shakespeare Gourmet Pie van, the advertised ``banquet" is a pie and a drink. Already the place seems to be clearing, under the cold water of some uninspiring gymnastics on the big screen and the cancellation of the latenight dance parties there.
11pm: The pubs and clubs in Oxford Street are quiet, the restaurants nearempty. She's round and drunk and unhappy, swigging stubbies in a bus shelter on Oxford Street, under an ad that says ``Ian Thorpe's Choice" and asking: ``Wanna change me diaper?"
``No thanks, love, we're over that stuff. But are you having a good time?"
``Oh yeah," she says in a moment of sad clarity. ``Me, bein' an alcoholic."
Midnight: Back at the Moose, the queue of hopeful locals has lengthened, while inside smiling Canadian blondes wear big red caps emblazoned with the word ``Roots". A couple of slaps later, we realise it's the name of one of their sportswear companies.
1.30am: Inge made it to Holland House the other night, but this morning the crowd has to settle for Pieter van den Hoogenband's dad and coach. Good enough. Their appearance sets off a chain reaction of conga lines.
3.30am:This is the Last Lap, favoured postcompetition haunt of the Olympian gods themselves. Invitation only, with a $95 cover charge, it's a babel of languages and packed to the gills with big, beautiful, buffed young bodies. Anyone else, check your cameras and selfesteem at the door. Old, fat, short, grey media need not apply.
But we've stumbled on someone who knows someone who's getting someone to let him in. He palms us a couple of tickets.
Inside, an ersatz Olympic flame burns above a throbbing dance floor, dry ice machines spew vapour and the bass sets off heart palpitations. Linford Christie holds court in one corner surrounded by tall, black British track and field types and hopeful women.
Upstairs, we recognise Britons Donna Kellog and Sarah Hardaker from the badminton team. (OK we sneaked a peak at their accreditation.) How can you be out on the turps at this hour, we ask? They explain they were eliminated in the third round and we try to explain the concept of ``the turps".
It is time to go home.
© 2000 The Age