Eternal flame

JESSICA MONTAGUE, deputy editor, Vogue Australia

BACK IN 2000: Basket carrier at the athletics

There’s a favourite podcast I listen to every now and again. It’s not particularly trendy or sexy and caters to the history nerd deep down rather than the zeitgeist-obsessed part of my personality. It’s called Witness History, and is produced by the BBC World Service. The premise is simple: short episodes that re-examine a moment in time by digging up an old interview from the BBC archives. “History as told by the people who were there.”

While I’ve never written about my own ‘witness moment’, there is one I can genuinely call my own. It was the night Cathy Freeman won her 400-metre-race gold medal at the Sydney Olympics Games. I was there in the marshalling area before her race, felt the crowd roar as she stepped out onto the track for the first time, and stood – teeth chattering and hands shaking from excitement – as she zipped up that famous green and gold Lycra bodysuit.

I was present that night thanks to my own athletic pursuits. As a teenager I competed at a national level in track and field and was one of a few dozen juniors chosen to be ‘basket carriers’ at the Sydney Games. Wearing that famous royal blue volunteer’s uniform, we walked out with athletes at the beginning of each race, stood dutifully behind their blocks as they stripped off their tracksuits, then marched off in formation carrying their gear in