Well wasn't that just magnificent. I've been out to QE2 plenty of times making our preview programs but I've never, I wouldn't have recognized it.
And I know sitting at home all around Australia, no matter whether you're in Perth or in Hobart or out in the middle of Australia, somewhere around the Alice or up in Northern Territory,
you would have got those same sorts of feelings, the hairs on the back of your neck standing up and when Rolf Harris sang Wellesley Matilda.
I for one felt very proud to be an Australian and certainly to be a Queenslander. It's tremendous the effort that's gone into this and let's just hope that the rest of the games continue with that spirit of friendship, patriotism and celebration really of the glory of sport.
Just let me go through our coverage over the next nine days. We'll be live wherever possible right throughout Australia. Only shooting and archery will be packaged into recorded highlights.
Each day we start at 9am. That's right throughout Australia. Eastern Standard Time by the way. You can work out your own times in South Australia, Western Australia or the Northern Territory except on Friday week and on Saturday week when we start early for the marathon and the road cycling race.
From 6 till 7 Gordon Bray will bring you highlights of the day in today at the games and at 7.30 after the news I'll be back with more live and recorded coverage.
We break for nationwide at 9 o'clock and from 9.40 I'll be back with more recorded highlights and live coverage until around 11.30. So there's 10 hours coverage each of the next nine days of competition.
Demonstration sport on tonight, table tennis at Chandler and we'll have highlights of that tonight in our coverage at 10.45.
And over 2000 athletes from 45 countries are competing in these nine days of competition. The first bowl will be rolled at 8.30 tomorrow morning at Moorooka and that will really get the ball rolling literally.
Tomorrow there will be badminton, weightlifting, diving, shooting, boxing and swimming.
The last games at Edmonton, Australia finished in third place behind Canada and England but with that huge team of 265 and on our home ground I think Australia might just be restored to the top of the tree this time.
But remember these are the friendly games, it's the spirit of competition, it's great just to be here and it's tremendous to see the barriers breaking down between all these countries.
So join us tomorrow won't you for day two of the games. If you thought the spectacle of the opening ceremony was good, stay with us over the next nine days for the biggest spectacle of sport in this country since the 1956 Olympics.
Gordon Bray will be your host for today at the games at 6 and again later on this evening at 10.45. Until then, goodbye from Brisbane.
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