Sydney's Bicentennial Anniversary (1988)
There was no shortage of international acts in the 1988 Sydney Festival (America’s Twyla Tharp Dance, Japan’s Sankai Juku, Dublin’s Druid Theatre, Montreal’s Cirque du Soleil) but the main act was always going to be Sydney itself as Australia marked 200 years since the arrival of the First Fleet.
The mood for many was celebratory. An estimated 2.5 million people poured into a car-free city to watch the Tall Ships parade, the fireworks and to hear then Prince Charles describe us as “a whole new free people and a whole new free country”. At the same time ceremonies and speeches acknowledged the achievement of the Australian experiment, powerful First Nations protests cut deep into the ballyhoo. For a precious few weeks in January 1988, the Festival and the city united in a shared reckoning of what it means to be Australian.
Previous