OLYMPIA AND GOLD COAST: ON DIVINE SISTERHOOD

Upon learning the glorious news that hallowed Olympia and the Gold Coast have become sister cities, one experiences the same satisfaction that attends the discovery that two hitherto unrelated members of one’s extended family are in fact distant cousins, explaining in retrospect a host of otherwise inexplicable physiognomic and behavioural similarities. Certain affinities, hitherto dismissed as coincidence, reveal themselves as manifestations of a cultural relationship almost three millennia in the making. That it has taken so long to formalise the relationship can only be attributed to deficiencies in ancient municipal diplomacy and the failure of the Eleans to establish a properly funded Sister Cities Subcommittee.

The greater mystery is why Pausanias never noticed. In the fifth and sixth books of his Description of Greece, that indefatigable second-century traveller records Olympia with the forensic enthusiasm of a man constitutionally incapable of walking past a statue without finding out who paid for it. He tells of temples, treasuries, altars, athletes, cheats, obscure customs and forgotten wars, while a statue reminds him of a king, the king of an oracle and the oracle of something that happened in Arcadia. Somewhere between the Temple of Hera and the stadium, however, the geographical trail goes cold. Had he continued south-east for another fourteen thousand kilometres, his account might have been considerably enriched.

“Beyond the lands of the Antipodeans,” he could have written, “there lies a land called Queensland, in which lies a sacred coast which the inhabitants call Golden. There are many temples and many images of beings larger than mortal men, among whom are Batman and Superman. The women called Meter Maids appear to be priestesses of Aphrodite, although others say they regulate wheeled conveyances, and concerning this I cannot speak with certainty.” Such confusion would have been characteristic, for Pausanias records competing explanations even when he considers one ridiculous, a scholarly generosity particularly useful in determining why anybody decided meter regulation was best accomplished in gold bikinis.

The sporting connection would reassure him that he had reached the correct place. Olympia gave humanity the Olympic Games, while the Gold Coast hosted the 2018 Commonwealth Games and now resides within the wider sacred geography of Brisbane 2032, meaning that both places understand the peculiar civic alchemy by which running, jumping and swimming become infrastructure, urban mythology and arguments about who paid for everything. Ancient Olympia operated a cheaper awards programme. The victor received a wreath of wild olive, sparing organisers the expense of precious-metal medallions and suggesting that Queensland could address future Olympic budgetary pressures with a pair of secateurs.

Competition on the Gold Coast hardly requires an official festival. Anyone attempting to secure a parking space at Pacific Fair on the Saturday before Christmas has entered an agon worthy of Pindar, involving endurance, feints, tactical positioning and appeals to gods who have otherwise received little devotional attention since childhood. A pedestrian carrying shopping bags becomes an oracle whose every gesture demands interpretation as two vehicles follow at walking pace with the concentrated solemnity of rival charioteers approaching the turning post. The ancient victor received the sacred olive wreath. The modern victor receives P2 near David Jones, an achievement for which nobody has yet commissioned an epinician ode.

Pausanias would probably proceed from there to the beach, where the deeper kinship becomes impossible to ignore. Greek athletes famously competed naked, the disciplined body becoming an expression of beauty and arete, while the Gold Coast has preserved the underlying philosophical proposition subject to sunscreen and Queensland law. Few places since classical Greece have invested comparable cultural meaning in the bronzed torso. If the sculptors of Olympia pursued ideal proportion in marble and bronze, Surfers Paradise has expanded the available media to spray tan, protein powder and tattoos of clocks surrounded by roses. Classical traditions survive most securely when nobody consciously realises they are preserving them, and in this context Schoolies becomes less an aberration than an extraordinary instance of cultural continuity.

At regular intervals large numbers of young people travel considerable distances to a famous destination, gather in an atmosphere of heightened excitement, celebrate physical vitality, participate in contests of endurance and progressively remove their clothing. Whereas Ancient Olympia boasted the stadion, wrestling and pankration, Surfers Paradise has disciplines for which records are less systematically maintained. The absence of the discus is probably fortunate, since bronze projectiles and Cavill Avenue after midnight would require amendments to Queensland occupational health and safety legislation. The Olympic ideal, suitably adapted to local conditions, is apparently alive and well.

All this leads inevitably to the Olympic ἐκεχειρία, the sacred truce permitting competitors and spectators to travel safely to the Games despite the Greek states spending much of their remaining time devising ways of injuring one another. Its genius lay in modest expectations: Athenians and Spartans merely had to stop killing each other long enough to watch the wrestling. The Gold Coast performs an analogous Pan-Australian function during school holidays, when Victorians, New South Welshmen and Queenslanders temporarily overlook disagreements concerning football codes, daylight saving and whether a thin disc of fried potato is a potato cake or a potato scallop. The truce generally survives until somebody attempts to merge onto the M1, whereupon Thucydidean realism rapidly reasserts itself.

The M1 would eventually lead Pausanias towards Q1, where the religious character of the relationship becomes apparent. His benchmark for enormity was Pheidias’ colossal Zeus, fashioned from gold and ivory and so immense that Strabo remarked that, were the god to stand, he would unroof his temple. The Gold Coast solved this architectural difficulty by giving the gigantic object the roof in advance. Where Pheidias employed chryselephantine technique, Queensland employs glass, concrete, strata title and investment capital. Both cultures understand that if something is made sufficiently large, visitors will travel considerable distances, stand beneath it with their mouths slightly open and pay to ascend it.

Olympia’s Temple of Zeus, Heraion, Metroon and innumerable sacred precincts also prepare Pausanias admirably for Dreamworld, Movie World, Sea World and Wet’n’Wild, although the gods inhabiting the latter possess more complicated intellectual-property arrangements. The ritual structure would nevertheless be reassuringly familiar. Pilgrims enter through monumental gates, join processions and encounter beings larger than ordinary mortals while children demand refreshments. Ancient visitors left votive objects; modern pilgrims return with refrigerator magnets and Batman drinking vessels. Given two thousand years underground, a Surfers Paradise bottle opener bearing the inscription “Mick’s Bucks 2026” will inevitably be described by archaeologists as a ceremonial object associated with male initiation rites, which will be substantially correct.

Sacrifice, on the other hand, has migrated into the economic sphere. Anyone purchasing lunch for a family inside a theme park understands the ancient sensation of watching valuable property consumed before one’s eyes pursuant to ritual obligation, while the timeshare presentation offers an even purer survival: the victim is separated from the herd, conducted into a designated precinct and attended by specially trained officiants until an offering is extracted. Ancient sacrificial animals at least enjoyed the consolation of never being asked whether they wished to extend their holiday accommodation entitlement for another forty years.

At this juncture the Eleans may derive considerable comfort from the Gold Coast’s attitude towards prophecy. The ancient Greeks had oracles, seers and diviners who inspected birds, entrails and sundry natural phenomena in order to determine whether an enterprise would prosper. Not to be outdone, the Gold Coast has real estate agents. The methods employed by both are remarkably similar. Both examine signs unintelligible to the ordinary person before confidently predicting future abundance, although the ancient μάντις at least occasionally conceded that Apollo’s meaning was ambiguous. An Elean contemplating the purchase of an off-the-plan two-bedroom apartment in Broadbeach would consequently feel entirely at home upon being informed that the signs reveal strong capital growth, excellent rental yield and an unprecedented opportunity to secure a premium lifestyle precinct before settlement.

The practice of ornithomancy does, however, present a uniquely Australian difficulty. It is challenging to imagine Tiresias deriving anything useful from observing an ibis methodically disembowel a McDonald’s bag beside Cavill Avenue, although Aristophanes would undoubtedly have found employment for it. Since the Australian white ibis has acquired the appellation “bin chicken,” an ancient Greek visitor might reasonably assume that this constitutes some hitherto unknown hybrid creature, rather like the Chimera. If demi-god Heracles required twelve labours, retrieving a kebab from an ibis at three in the morning could comfortably have constituted the thirteenth.

All that remains is to determine which deity should preside over the new sisterhood. Zeus has the obvious historical claim, although appointing a serial philanderer who habitually assumed animal form in order to pursue women may send an unfortunate message about the values underpinning the relationship. Poseidon would seem more appropriate to the Gold Coast, save that his recorded dealings with coastal communities generally involve storms, earthquakes and the occasional sea monster, none of which Tourism Queensland is likely to include in its promotional material. Hermes, patron of travellers, merchants and thieves, offers a more comprehensive portfolio, especially once accommodation prices during school holidays are taken into account.

Aphrodite has much to recommend her, given the amount of exposed flesh, although her appointment might lead the Meter Maids to demand recognition as an established priesthood. Dionysus presents a perhaps even stronger claim. As god of wine, intoxication, ecstatic dancing, altered states of consciousness and people behaving in ways which seem entirely reasonable at the time and inexplicable the following morning, he already exercises something approaching de facto sovereignty over Surfers Paradise after 10 pm. The principal difficulty is that acknowledging him formally would require Schoolies to be reclassified as a religious festival, with consequences for public funding that neither sister city may yet have considered.

Perhaps, then, the most appropriate patron is Hermes. Pausanias tells us that his statues stood in gymnasia, while travellers invoked his protection upon journeys and merchants prospered beneath his gaze. He was also the god of boundaries and their transgression, which seems particularly apt for a relationship that has managed to extend the sacred precinct of Olympia fourteen thousand kilometres into Queensland. Most compellingly, Hermes was the divine trickster, capable of stealing Apollo’s cattle on the day of his birth and then talking his way out of the consequences. There can surely be no better supernatural qualification for navigating a Gold Coast body corporate.

The formalities can then commence. A sacred embassy should leave Olympia bearing an olive branch, cross the Antipodes and proceed directly to Surfers Paradise, where the envoys can deposit it before the statue of the Meter Maid and await an omen. Should an ibis immediately seize the branch and drag it into a bin, the augurs will have their answer. Should it survive, the sisterhood has divine approval and the ancient Olympic ideal may safely enter its Queensland phase.

Pausanias would record the result with his customary caution. “The inhabitants say that Olympia and the Golden Coast are sisters, and in support of this they relate many things which I have already described. I myself saw the sacred ibis take the olive branch, though whether it did so by command of the gods or because there was half a souvlaki attached to it, I cannot say.”

For once, there would be no reason to doubt him.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 19 September 2026