Cleaver's Games: March 9

Australia awoke yesterday with a collective sense that someone had died after the withdrawal from the Commonwealth Games of Ian Thorpe, the world's greatest active athlete (according to Australian newspapers anyway).

That scene was repeated this morning in Apartment Three of our Prahran lodgings, and although his gaunt face stared up at us from the front page of three newspapers, it had nothing to do with Thorpedo.

No, it literally smells like someone has died in here.

The tell-tale signs were there from the start. When my co-habiter and I were shown to our digs, the back door was wide open and the air conditioning was belting out its monotone song.

Once the place was shut up for the night the smell kicked in and this morning it has left enough of a tang on the nostrils for us to conclude the poor soul's final resting place must have been within two square feet of the television.

It's natural to conclude, then, that whoever it was died while fixing the TV, which would also account for the grainy picture on all but one channel.

This is clearly the first major challenge of the Games but it won't be the last.

Navigation to Geelong, a city about an hour southeast of Melbourne where the swim team is based, looms as the next.

When assignments like the Games come up there are normally a few hoping their name will be called. Sometimes your editor will even ask you for compelling reasons as to why you should be the one.

There are a number of stock answers that normally satisfy, and which I cannot divulge here for obvious reasons. Suffice to say, one of them is not: Because the freebies we will be given will save hundreds on Christmas presents at the end of the year.

However this has been, and will probably always remain, the single greatest motivating factor for going to big events.

Imagine the disappointment then yesterday to be handed our promisingly heavy "glad" bags and to find the only thing weighing it down was promotional guff for a number of tourist attractions we'll never visit.

The sight of hundreds of journalists' faces dropping in disappointment will make for some haunting images as they drift into this city over the next few days.

The one wearable item, aside from the backpack, was a bright little cap designed, it would seem, by a kindergarten student let loose on a packet of crayons.

Again, for those of you that think we're on a "soft" assignment, these are the sort of challenges we face every day.