Concluding Performances
The Boy and White Duck from the opening ceremony returned and the boy, who was holding the duck, went down a trapdoor at the centre of the stage and disappeared from sight, symbolizing the closing of the 2006 Games.
Casey Donovan, the winner of the 2004 Australian Idol, performed Better To Love.
Michael Klim then came on stage to respond on behalf of the athletes. He was interrupted, mid-sentence, by Barry Humphries (as "Dame Edna Everage"). Michael Klim's interrupted speech was never finished.
"Dame Edna Everage" read a message, and a poem and then sang a song in tribute to Melbourne, via video, while 1,000 so-called "Commonwealth Dames", wearing various costumes, some from the beginning of the show, performed on the circular stage, waving gladioli and dancing. During this, many fireworks were set off, finally ending in a large human formation in the shape of Dame Edna's trademark glasses.
The stage then cleared, with the volunteers surrounding the centre platform, with Australian King of Music John Farnham singing his hit Age of Reason, followed by a set of Farnham songs, finishing with his anthem song, You're the Voice.
The athletes danced and partied around the centre stage, many of them taking advantage of the informal procedures to take photos, and celebrate in the festivities. Then a select number of outer circle volunteers speared inwards to form a heart-shaped enclosure, while Melbourne's larger skyscrapers set fireworks alight - mirroring the opening ceremony. The floating fish of the Yarra River were illuminated one final time. The official goodbye was announced, and the ceremony ended.
The President of the Commonwealth Games Committee, Mike Fennell, declared to the crowd, "Melbourne, you are simply the best!" Whether he meant the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games was the best games ever is, however, unclear.
Read more about this topic: 2006 Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony
Famous quotes containing the words concluding and/or performances:
“The lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences. In our hands it develops and changes, through more or less arbitrary and deliberate revisions and additions of our own, more or less directly occasioned by the continuing stimulation of our sense organs. It is a pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention. But I have found no substantial reasons for concluding that there are any quite black threads in it, or any white ones.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“At one of the later performances you asked why they called it a “miracle,”
Since nothing ever happened. That, of course, was the miracle
But you wanted to know why so much action took on so much life
And still managed to remain itself, aloof, smiling and courteous.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)