A cardboard box on the cold, hard ground was the bed Theresa Gray lay in the night before the 2000 Olympics closing ceremony.
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"We camped out to get tickets because they hadn't all been sold yet," Mrs Gray recalls of that night.
But the rough night proved almost in vain.
"I remember I came back about mid-morning after I'd gotten my ticket," Mrs Gray said.
"The line was gone by then and I ended up getting another ticket for my brother. I remember thinking, 'why did I sleep out all night when I could have gotten one anyway'."
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Then aged just 19 years old, Mrs Gray had been one of its youngest volunteers.
She had managed to acquire one of the sort-after positions a year before.
"I saw an advertisement in the Sun Herald about volunteering, but [at that stage] I wasn't 18 yet," she said.
"I turned 18 eight days after the cut-off but I made it in and I would have been one of the youngest."
From where she was stationed for the 17 day Olympics, Mrs Gray had a front-row seat to the comings and goings of some of the world's most powerful people.
"All I wanted to do was work in the Olympic Village," she said.
"They put me in the guess pass centre. Everyone who visited the athletes had to come through and get a pass."
Among the more notable faces to come through the centre were Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea, who Mrs Gray recalls was at the height of her personal fame back then.
The cavalcade of famous faces and sports superstars led the volunteers to establish a simple challenge for themselves.
"Anyone that had a gold medal we would try to get a photo with, it didn't matter which country they were from," Mrs Gray said.
But before the days of mobile phone cameras, grabbing a selfie with a celebrity was a much harder endeavour.
"We weren't allowed to carry a bag with us," Mrs Gray recalls.
"Everything had to fit inside the official bum-bag we were given, so if you had a camera, it had to fit in there."
Even if photographic evidence was hard to obtain, days spent inside the visitor centre left Mrs Gray with lifelong memories of rubbing shoulders with the world's elite athletes.
"Everywhere you looked there was someone famous, you sort of got used to that being the norm," she said.
"You'd be sitting having lunch and on the next table would be a gold medalist from somewhere."
Training began a year before the games started. Volunteers were instructed in etiquette and manners for interacting with the world's athletes.
One of the most exciting parts of the training period was when Mrs Gray was fitted for her uniform.
That uniform became her ticket to the sidelines of history.
"There was a warehouse full of the uniforms and we had to go through to find our size and which colour we needed for the area we'd be in," she said.
"During the games, public transport was free for volunteers as long as you were in your uniform."
Working at the Olympics was a goal Mrs Gray had been working towards since she was in late primary school.
She remembers vividly the moment her home city of Sydney was announced as the coveted winner of the millennium games.
"In 1993 when we won it, I was in year 6. We made a sign in class and went out to show it. The cars were honking, we were so excited."
Fortune aligned for the now-Wagga resident to be a part of the historic event seven years later.
"I'm very lucky to have been able to do it. I'm so glad I did it," she said.
Send your Olympics memories to emma.horn@dailyadvertiser.com.au.