Before The Olympics
Australia first hosted the Summer Olympics in 1956 at Melbourne. The main venue used was the Melbourne Cricket Ground which hosted the ceremonies (opening/closing), athletic events, and the finals for both field hockey and football.
Sydney first made preliminary plans for the 1972 and 1988 Summer Olympics, but they were not followed through. Melbourne made a bid for the 1988 Summer Games, but withdrew in February 1981. Brisbane made a bid for the 1992 Summer Olympics, losing out to Barcelona while Melbourne finished fourth in the bidding for the 1996 Summer Olympics won by Atlanta. The first serious review for Sydney as an Olympic city took place in 1973 on rehabilitating the Homebush Bay area as an Olympic site though those plans were not taken seriously until seven years later when Sydney was making a preliminary bid for the 1988 Summer Games. Nick Greiner, who served as Premier of New South Wales from 1988 to 1992, led the effort to use the Olympics as a catalyst for rehabilitating Homebush Bay, forming a review committee on this in 1989. The Australian Olympic Committee endorsed this idea provisionally in December 1990 and officially thre months later.
In the bid package submitted to the International Olympic Committee for Sydney, all of the venues would be located within 30 minutes of the Homebush Bay Area where the Sydney Olympic Park would be constructed. Sydney was selected 45-43 over Beijing in the fourth round of exhaustive voting to host the 2000 Games at the 23 September 1993 IOC Meeting in Monte Carlo.
For site selection, 760 ha (1,900 acres) of Homebush Bay was selected for use though the area was not planned upon completion until 2010. Sydney's selection to host the 2000 Summer Olympics changed this. The States Sports Centre opened in 1984 and Bicentennial Park opened four years later. The Sydney International Aquatic Centre and Sydney International Athletic Centre were completed in 1994, but by 1995, it was determined by the Sydney Olympic Organizing Committee that venue construction needed to be accelerated. In 1995, Bob Carr was elected as New South Wales Premier with one of his first task was to develop a masterplan for venue construction. A plan was approved in February 1996 along with lessons learned from 1996 Summer Olympics led to modification of the plan in February 1997. Environmental consideration was taken during site selection and construction, including the planting of 16,000 trees around completed venues once construction was completed. Soil and water testing at Homebush Bay in the early 1990s determined that 9,000,000 m3 (320,000,000 cu ft) of domestic, commercial, and industrial waste was located on 160 ha (400 acres) of the land, resulting in remediation. Other items involved at the venues were the removal of electrical transmission lines, the development of rail lines near the venues, the construction of a new ferry wharf, and construction of vehicular parking sites.
Fifteen new venues were under construction by 1995 with all of them being completed in 1999. Temporary venues were added for beach volleyball and women's water polo in 2000 prior to the Olympics. 40,000 people were involved in venue construction for the Games.
Olympic Stadium was constructed on the site of a cattle stockyard before they were sent to the slaughterhouse. Construction was delayed twice before commencing in earnest in September 1996. The stadium was completed in March 1999 and official opened to the public three months later. The Sydney Showground was first used in 1882 as part of the Sydney Royal Easter Show, but was starting to show its age by the 1970s. Renovation of the Showground began in October 1997 and were completed for the 1998 Royal Easter Show. The NSW Tennis Centre was constructed on a former home of the Australian Jockey Club from 1841 to 1869. The Sydney International Regatta Centre was constructed near a quarry in the Penrith suburb of Sydney, opening in July 1995 with competition starting eight months later. Penrith Whitewater Stadium was constructed following pleas to the IOC from the International Canoe Federation and French President Jacques Chirac after the sport was nearly excluded from the games. Pumps totalling 14,000 L (3,700 USgal) per second delivered the amount of whitewater needed for the slalom canoeing events at Penrith. Holsworthy Barracks was the original site for the Sydney International Shooting Centre, but that was changed to the site not being available. This resulted in the organizers renovating an existing shooting range to meet International Shooting Sport Federation standards, a renovation that took eighteen months to complete. Bondi Beach was constructed as a temporary venue between March and November 2000 and took up less than twenty percent of the beach area used.
Test events at the venues ran from September 1998 to August 2000.
Read more about this topic: Venues Of The 2000 Summer Olympics