'Know Your History' - Remembering the 1985 Australia Games with Shannon Gill (20.02.25)

think of a world where tickets are at bass the tony batuccio dancers are the number one drawer at a glittering glittering opening ceremony and the sponsors are eso and kodak and this is why we need shannon gill in our lives shannon

hello morning jared morning jared uh this is so going right way back to 1985 this was a time the 150th birthday of Victoria.

And there were a few things happening at this time.

Last year, we actually spoke about a standalone Essendon Hawthorne grand final replay that started the footy season.

There was also a world championship of cricket around this time, which was seven test playing nations, all coming for like a mini world cup that was played predominantly at the MCG and was the first um first event under lights at the mcg but this is the thing that stands out most to me at this time 40 years ago so to be precise it was a couple of weeks ago so it ran from the 26th of january through the 4th of february There was this thing called the Australia games.

And as you said, you've got no recollection.

I'm too young to have any recollection.

This sounds like the sort of thing that we're just making up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We just, we're just inventing.

Nevermind the Olympics games or the Commonwealth games.

Just have the Australia games.

So this does have sort of bureaucratic idea written all over it.

So just before we delve into all the layers, how did this, how did you stumble across this rich nugget in

our history? Okay.

I can't exactly remember how, but probably about 12 or 18 months ago, I was talking to a couple of other people.

Shout out to Andy Ballez, could have been champion.

I was talking to this about, and we went down a rabbit hole on this and wondered what the hell it is.

Like, is this a fever dream that this even happened? So, um, that's how I, that's how I came across it and was thinking about things just last week.

And we were actually going to do a different topic, which we might revisit at another stage.

And then we changed horses because I remembered that this was 40 years ago and let's do a bit of research into it.

So this is,

I'll show you this.

Stephen Quarterman is showing is that he has an accreditation for the Australia Games.