Locals making dream a reality
JOHN Witheriff, a man who took his first breath in the old Southport Hospital, sums up best how it feels to be a Gold Coaster sitting on arguably the most important board the city has ever assembled.
“We got criticised by people in Sydney and Melbourne and some uninformed people in Brisbane that there was no way in the world a regional city like the Gold Coast could stage an event of this type,” the highprofile businessman recalled late yesterday after an all-day GOLDOC board meeting.
“We’ve been the butt of criticism from know-it-alls from elsewhere for as long as I can remember and we’re going to take great delight in demonstrating we can put on one hell of an event and one hell of a party.”
That party will explode to life eight weeks from today.
The 2018 Commonwealth Games, a spectacle 11 years in the making, will finally be a reality and for Witheriff and five other proud Gold Coasters, it will be the climax of a journey in which they have had frontrow seats as GOLDOC board members.
“People often think ‘Who’s running these Games’,” board chairman and former premier Peter Beattie said.
“Well, they’re being run by a board that has six locals in partnership with a CEO (Mark Peters) who is local. That means the Gold Coast flavour comes through in everything we do.”
Twelve board members assembled at GOLDOC’s Ashmore headquarters for yesterday’s marathon sitting.
Half had travelled from out of town, the likes of Beattie, Australian Commonwealth Games Association supremo Sam Coffa and Department of Commonwealth Games director-general Damien Walker.
Then there were arguably the board’s greatest assets — the six directors who have called the Gold Coast home for a collective 175 years.
“I’ve always loved the Gold Coast,” former Bulletin editor Bob Gordon said. “I was the classic kid coming down here (from Brisbane) in school holidays.”
Gordon set up home in the city in the 1990s. Little more than a decade later, he answered a call from then premier Anna Bligh to form the steering committee that would push for a Games bid — and change the course of the city.
“The Gold Coast had fallen behind, especially in terms of infrastructure,” Gordon said. “I once ran a front page of (a virtually unused) Carrara Stadium with two white elephants in it. Now with only eight weeks to go (to the Games), it feels great that we’ve got all this infrastructure that puts us ahead of the game.”
For Glynis Nunn-Cearns, the road from former star athlete to bid team member and now foundation GOLDOC board member has done more than grant her an intimate insight into the most complex event her city will ever deliver.
It’s also shown her why fellow locals Witheriff, Gordon, Peta Fielding, Dale Dickson and Bronwyn Morris were entrusted with sitting alongside her in the boardroom.
“It’s been amazing to see another side of them,” the Olympic gold medallist said as she headed home to Mt Tamborine.
“You see the professional side of them but getting to talk to them and understand where they’ve come from is a privilege. The knowledge they bring to the table is outstanding.”
Then there’s Witheriff, a man as Gold Coast as the waves that stretch from Snapper to The Spit and who doesn’t hesitate when asked what inspires him to put up his hand for gigs such as GOLDOC director and chair of light rail operator GoldlinQ and, for 10 years, AFL’s Suns.
“I’ve spent a lifetime working to ensure there are opportunities for my family on the Gold Coast and ensuring it remains a liveable city, notwithstanding how many people have moved here in my lifetime,” he said.
“When I was born the population was about 50,000. It’s now about 650,000 and growing so the city faces incredible challenges to ensure the place
THE CITY FACES INCREDIBLE CHALLENGES TO ENSURE THE PLACE REMAINS LIVEABLE AND WHAT THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES HAS BEEN ABLE TO DELIVER ON THAT FRONT IS EXTRAORDINARY JOHN WITHERIFF