The Sydney Olympics buried in a yellow suitcase

The look of the games is what immediately drew my eye.

While there have been many Olympic Games hosted over the decades with creatively distinct iconography and merchandise (see: Atlanta 1996, Mexico City 1968), none, in my opinion, rival that of the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics. With its garish primary colour schemes — characteristic of the late ‘90s — striking visuals, and iconic characters, the 2000 Olympics reign supreme.

I was a mere three months old when my parents took me to the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics. Everyone in attendance went home with a briefcase full of printed programs and Olympic-themed freebies. My dad pulled down the case from its shelf in his office and blew off the dust, accumulated after years of neglect and a lack of Y2K nostalgia — the mustard yellow faded to a pale, off-white thanks to sun damage.

My obsession with the memorabilia and the imagery of the games only surfaced a couple years back. While working at a charity store, a stranger donated an Olympics volunteer shirt alongside a pair of gold and green socks. I later found a Coogi shirt with a Sydney Olympics patch on the sleeve, and from there, I would spend my days saving every depop find and eBay link I could, of merchandise, collectibles, and knick-knacks.

The look of the games is what immediately drew my eye.

The emblem, consisting of a humanoid athletic figure with a boomerang for legs, was influenced by First Nations designs, with its stripped back shapes and bold primary colours. Dots and circles signify the Australian landscape, and the sharp spikes above evoke both the Opera House but also the torch relay that commences the ceremony. I am reminded of the vibrant, polychromatic scribblings on bus seats or movie theatre carpets.

The loose brush strokes of the salient athlete carries over into the amorphous shapes that appear on the tickets, shirts and stickers. Pools of ink of various arrangements bleed and meld into each other, reflecting the shores that border our country; a vague outline of the Opera House is prominent on the volunteer uniforms.

The mascots — Syd, Ollie, and Millie — were composed of a duck-billed platypus, a kookaburra, and an echidna; forming a palette of the various Olympic colours. Their cartoonish designs make Australia more fitting to host an ABC3 show instead of an international sporting event. It’s a shame they were only around for a single Olympic games, they could have been a great addition to tourism adverts and graphic tees.

Flicking through my Dad’s case on my bedroom floor, I am transported back to an era with turn-of-the-century aesthetics. I swim in a sea of tickets, Kodak camera coupons, and torches that are expired, broken, or both. I can never return to this place, and I doubt Brisbane will either. We can only hope that by 2032 there will be enough 2000s nostalgia to reanimate the long dead Syd, Ollie, and Millie.

Until then, I’ll always have my Dad’s yellow briefcase.