When it was announced that the Logies would be held on the Gold Coast in 2018, it felt like Australia’s most prominent ibis had finally found the right overstuffed council bin. Surely there’s no better home for “Australian television’s night of nights” than a place best known for dodgy nightclubs, dodgier property deals, and gold-bikini-clad meter maids who are somehow still a thing in 2022?
Given the similar impurity of the Gold Logie and Gold Coast, I was shocked to hear that after just three iterations, the event’s contract is up, and Destination NSW is rumoured to be swooping in like a sandshoe-clad developer snapping up a prime condo site.
Who would want to hold the Logies? Here’s Shaun Micallef trying in 2010.Credit:Penny Stephens
Nowadays, the Logies are best known for lasting far too long and being impossible to host. I’ve no idea why we’d want them, except that Queensland does, and a win here would lessen the pain of that last Origin series.
Knowing Destination NSW, it’s planning to combine the Logies with Vivid, and project the ceremony onto the Opera House sails – but the image of a 50-metre-high Richard Wilkins towering over Sydney Harbour would cause maritime accidents. And while the Logies may feel a tad déclassé for Bennelong Point, they’d still be less cheesy than The Phantom of the Opera.
But the most iconic Sydney Logies would be a harbour cruise, which provides the event’s standard experience of being trapped in a venue with dangerously unlimited drinks, only on a craft that continuously rocks from side to side. The lucky winners toppling over on their way up to collect their awards would add some welcome Ninja Warrior-esque injuries to an otherwise tedious ceremony. The one toilet aboard would be clogged within half an hour or leaving dry land, but no doubt that’s happened before at the Logies.
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Cockatoo Island might be an interesting option, protecting our city’s streets from being clogged by limos and inebriated soapie stars, and harking back to its days as a prison. If only the winners were allowed off the island, I’d watch.
Or, for a real Sydney Logies, why not give the Australian TV industry the unusual experience of travelling west of Leichhardt and interacting with the people who watch their programs? Panthers and the Rooty Hill RSL boast all the gambling-powered vastness of the Logies’ long-term home at Crown Melbourne without the risk of tipsily falling into any bodies of water, while the Qudos Bank Arena would be the one venue vast enough to contain all the egos in the room.
Perhaps all those celebrities would feel right at home in one of Sydney’s hundreds of prestigious VIP lounges, where the pokies’ loud beeping would helpfully drown the ceremony right out. And most attendees only turn up so they can go to those notorious after-parties. Where else in Sydney would stay open after 8pm on a Sunday night?









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