Sports correspondent & historian with Sideline Sid

Last week's Sideline Sid contribution ended when a North Queensland tropical storm disrupted the cruise he and his long-suffering wife were on.

At the top of our memories from our 15-odd trips to the Land of Oz are the 2001 flights across the ditch to meet our first granddaughter and attend an international sporting festival—on the day the world changed forever.

After all the cooing over our newborn granddaughter on the Sunshine Coast was done, our attention turned to the Goodwill Games in Brisbane, which ran from 29 August 2001.

The Goodwill Games were an international sporting competition created by American television broadcaster Ted Turner in response to the political tensions surrounding the Olympic Games in the 1980s.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led the USA and other Western nations to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics, while the Soviet bloc retaliated by staying away from the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Turner established an event that mirrored the Olympic cycle every four years, fostering athletic competition between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies during the Cold War.

History tells us the Brisbane event was the fifth and final Goodwill Games.

We selected weightlifting, basketball, triathlon and boxing as our chosen events to witness some of the world’s best athletes in action.

Weightlifting is electrifying, as competitors and their coaches shout ‘stop the clock’ while adjusting their nominated weights as the contest intensifies.

We watched Russian Valentina Popova stroll in after all other competitors had completed their three regulation attempts and set three world records in the women's 69kg division.

Our second live event saw us lucky enough to secure tickets to the USA Dream Team’s commanding victory over Mexico in the basketball preliminary rounds.

The triathlon, which wound through the heart of Brisbane, saw Kiwi Hamish Carter narrowly miss out on first place, while fellow New Zealander Craig Watson secured the bronze medal.

As the Goodwill Games concluded in early September, no one could have predicted the event that would change the world as we knew it forever.

On the morning of 9 September 2001 in the United States, the two new grandparents, preparing to return home that day, awoke to the shocking news that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Centre.

Brisbane Airport was in chaos, with reports that flights worldwide had been grounded. Police patrolled the terminals, and television news crews scrambled to capture stories.

Eventually, we confirmed that New Zealand flights would resume, and with a great deal of trepidation, we flew home on the day that would live in infamy.

The memory of 9/11 will stay with me forever, alongside Covid-19, as the two events that brought the world to a standstill in my lifetime.

While sport will continue to play a significant role in many people’s lives, we must never forget that nature, human reactions, and responses can end a life in an instant.