Day 90 – Australia (5 September, 2000)

Crowds and Media Motorhomes:

As we got closer to Sydney and the Opening ceremony date of 15 Sept, the crowd grew and grew. Some days were out of control with crowds swamping the roads and extra police called in to allow us to keep moving forward and on time. And as we got into these bigger crowds I tended to stay more within the safe confines of the media motorhome. This was for a number of reasons.


Crowds were getting bigger every day

 

otrnday54r307

Photographers and TV crews shooting from the back of the Media Motorhome as it crosses the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne

 

otrnday90r095

On a 12 hour day - media crews took naps whenever the relay was going through a less than exciting stage...

In the early days of the relay I could shoot most of the day then drive ahead to the hotel to connect to a phone line and email 4 or 5 images out to newspapers and news agencies. But now newspapers were demanding more images and more frequently as they published multiple editions of their papers.

otrnday52r150

A shot of me editing photos and then attempting to transmit them via mobile phone in the Media Motorhome (the headset is not me manning the call centre - I'm listing to the two-way radio for what is going on throughout the convoy team)

And higher numbers of famous and noteworthy Torchbearers were running though out the day. It was impossible to leave the relay to get to a hotel and back again without missing too much of the important action. So I had my lumbering laptop and mobile phone connection set up in the media motorhome permanently and spent the whole day running back to it every 30 minutes to try and send another image. It was always a frustrating experience trying to connect via mobile phone at 9.6k or slower and being kicked off the network at 90% of the upload and then having to start agin for zero – but that was what was required.

The main objective of my role was to help generate media interest in the event. I was succeeding in that – but feeding the beast was an exhausting exercise.

The main media home for the 100 days around Australia was relatively comfortable. It was weather proof and had power.


We were the envy of the convoy - being the only vehicle that could make their own coffee!

 

otrnday59r115

We'd even make coffee for others in the relay convoy. Here is a shot of Michael Klein delivering two cups to the command vehicle - before sprinting back to catch up with us again (all while the relay is still running!)

Some of our other ‘media trucks’ were not quite so comfortable. On the Oceania islands it was any flat bed truck or ute (pick up truck) available. On some remote sections of Australia where we flew into and out of there was a random selection of vehicles. The funniest was in Dalby, Queensland where they provided us with a semi-trailer truck – and there was just 4  of us riding on it! It tended to obscure the view for the public too…


A Semi trailer for built for 4!

 

day 072 001

Another makeshift media vehicle used in place of the real one on day 72 in a remote part of NSW

Here is a photo gallery devoted to the wild and crazy variety of ‘media vehicles’ we used…

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *