A joy to be part of a world class event

Diane Elston
I WAS a volunteer for the lawn bowls.
I am a third year physical education student at Victoria University and as team and individual sports are part of my course it was a great opportunity to get some first hand experience.
Also, having world class games on our doorstep gave me, and others the opportunity to be involved.
I attended a number of training sessions including an orientation session at the State Lawn Bowls Centre in Thornbury.
We were told that as the Commonwealth Games were not being held during university holidays volunteers were older than those during the 2000 Olympics.
Travel to Thornbury on a daily basis was one and a half hours by car as the train and shuttle bus would have meant an even longer day.
I was a spectator services assistant which meant I checked bags and swiped tickets and showed people to their seats.
I met a lot of volunteers from all over Australia who had particularly selected lawn bowls as they had tickets to sessions when they were not working.
I didn’t realise how many people followed the sport.
The centre, which held 2500, was booked out every day.
We had Prince Edward visit and he came to see the volunteers during my lunch break.
The teams were very excited to be involved and the Australian men’s team had an average age of 29 years and they painted their hair green and gold to be involved in the games.
As a spectator I attended the Thursday evening athletics session at the MCG seeing John Steffensen, Jana Pittman, Scott Martin plus EAD athlete Heath Francis win gold medals for Australia.
Watching women’s pole vault, women’s high jump, 200 and 800 metre semi finals in a stadium I had only ever seen football and cricket in was absolutely great.
This was an experience I really enjoyed and I would not hesitate to do it again.