Born in 2000

If you were born in 2000, you arrived in the year of the Sydney Olympics and nothing in the country's modern history had quite prepared it for what it felt like. The opening ceremony on September 15 — Cathy Freeman lighting the cauldron, the water effects, the extraordinary management of Australian history and mythology — was watched by four billion people and Australians sat in their lounge rooms with tears running down their faces for reasons they couldn't entirely explain. Then Cathy Freeman ran the 400 metres in the stadium on September 25 in front of 112,000 people, the entire country frozen in front of its television, and won gold, and the noise was something you could feel in your chest.

Australia won 58 medals. The organisation was flawless — the IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch called them "the best Olympic Games ever" and the country quietly agreed. The Tampa affair was still a year away, 9/11 was a year away, the long Howard years of culture war were still forming.

For this one golden fortnight, the country was united and joyful and extraordinarily proud of itself. The barbie was on. The beers were cold.

Cathy Freeman had run the fastest 400 metres anyone had ever seen at the Olympics and the whole country was weeping. It was the best year.