America's Cup love affair stretches back to Gretel II Alan Bond and crew celebrate winning the 1983 Americas Cup on Australia II A sunny optimism permeated everything and possibilities seemed endless. British author Ian MacDonald was reflecting on the Beatles and their time, but those words could equally have applied the day an Australian yacht won the America's Cup off Rhode Island, on September 26, 1983, exactly 30 years ago. But there were undercurrents too. Long before 1983, I had been fascinated by the America's Cup. My interested was piqued as a nine-year-old by the contest between Australia's Gretel II and the US defender Intrepid in 1970. In a contest where the Americans had barely lost a race, let alone come near relinquishing the silver ewer, for more than a century, the Frank Packer-bankrolled Gretel II actually took a race from Intrepid. The 1-4 result would have been closer had the Australian 12-metre not been stripped of a win after colliding with the defending yacht at the start of a race. Something in that piece of hometown refereeing offended my childhood sense of right and wrong, and I wasn't alone. Outrage spilt over on to the front pages of Sydney's afternoon newspapers, The Sun and Daily Mirror. I was at a peak of interest in the Cup, which I was learning had been a magnet for fascinating personalities, such as Baron Bich, the Frenchman who made his fortune from cheap ballpoint pens, and Thomas Lipton, the tea merchant and founder of the Liptons brand.The names of the yachts seemed impossibly high-falutin' and exotic (Weatherley, Dame Pattie), and the opposing skippers too: Bus Mosbacher; Jock Sturrock. It's funny what fires a kid's imagination. Or was it just me? But by 1983, my interested in the America's Cup had long faded. It was 13 years on from Gretel II, and the Australian challengers had won only one race out of the interim three rubbers. I was living and working in Melbourne. I recall the puff of smoke and the news ticker that Australia had won. Much cheering by my housemates in Brunswick. I didn't tarry though - I had to drive 50 kilometres to work, and I wasn't so sure of my job to want to bet on my employer being swayed by our prime minister's taunt that any boss who sacked a worker for not turning up was "a bum." But that night I joined a swarm of revellers in Lygon Street, Carlton. The atmosphere was one of utter jubilation - perhaps the happiest I have ever seen my fellow Aussies. There were plenty of idiots around too, as illustrated by the sad fate of a red Lamborghini whose bonnet was smashed in with a rock. In fact it was a pretty nasty night, with one reveller dying from a fall in the same street. The Age reported that the man died after falling from scaffolding in victory celebrations. Two others were injured and 10 were arrested as the celebrations turned sour. The Age also published a piece scolding the nation for its delusions. "At a time when Australians need to worry deeply about the political and economic future," wrote Geoffrey Barker, "they seem far too ready to bask in the vacuous glory of a sporting triumph that was, however enjoyable, the result of a sustained and expensive campaign by a self-indulgent millionaire." Meanwhile I returned to Sydney for a job at The Manly Daily, which was having none of that Melbourne doomsaying. My new employer had seemingly spent a month in a state of ecstasy, having in its circulation area (Sydney's northern beaches) a fair spread of actual contestants in the Cup. I did think one front page, quoting Robert Louis Stevenson in big type ("Home is the sailor, home from the sea" was a little overcooked). I guess the Cup stopped being fun not when Australia stopped winning, but when the eccentric plutocrats, the Monopoly board tycoons, gave way to faceless lawyers. Yes the Cup was a rich man's plaything, but there is something satisfying about rich people blowing wads of their own dough, not ours, and yet letting us get all patriotic. A sport for rich white blokes? Sure beats a sport for us skinny-walleted taxpayers. It's poignant to think of taxpayers forking out $43 million to garner one vote for the hosting of the soccer World Cup; when Frank Packer and Alan Bond did it, it was their money (it was, wasn't it Bondy? Can you remember?). And Barker's words as read today? Thirty years on, his warning that that "the Lucky Country could become the poor white man of Asia" sounds absurdly anachronistic but has generally been avoided. Barker's warning that young unemployed people "not only have a very poor self-image and opinion of their political worth as citizens, but they also hold a generally low opinion of the relevance of the Australian parliamentary system and its relevance to them" is less easily dismissed, considering a 2012 survey found that many young people do not automatically favour democracy as the best form of government, and the low turnout among young people at the 2013 federal election. As for our yachting prowess, I can't say I've really noticed. I doubt I am alone on that score. If you were to ask me what's happened in the America's Cup since those wondrous days in 1983 I would say (no Google-cheating), err, Fremantle, we lost, um court case, Kiwis come in, didn't the Italians do something, err, more court cases, those well-known seafarers the Swiss stuck their oar in, wasn't the Cup decided in a courtroom at least once? Err, apparently you now have to win 10 races. I'll always have that memory of what to me is the real queen of Australian sailing, Gretel II, which, incredibly, I had been walking past every day without knowing.