The locals take defeat in their stride

This was the day Australians began to understand that the Olympics Games are not being staged entirely for their own benefit, and that the 199 other countries who marched in the opening ceremony did so for a purpose.

Day Three of competition produced no Australian gold medals, a development received sombrely at Channel Seven, the network which beat Kerry Packer's Channel Nine for the games contract and has so far mentioned non-Australian competitors both infrequently and reluctantly.

The mood at Revesby Workers' Club was more phlegmatic. This is Ian Thorpe country, the side of Sydney you would not have seen on your TV screens the last few days. They hoped he would win gold again; they did not demand it.

Most Sydneysiders, you may be surprised to learn, do not spend their days at Bondi and their nights at the Opera House. Sydney is a working town, a fact brought home yesterday when, after the weekend, commuters and Olympic crowds coincided on the transport system for the first time.

There are 800 named suburbs, stretching deep into the interior. And the Thorpes come from Milperra, out to the west, a fact that has received little attention during his 48 hours of global celebrity. It is with good reason. Milperra is a place whose very name sends a shudder through everyone here.

On Father's Day 1984 two rival gangs of bikers - the Comancheros and the Bandidos - came face to face in the car park of Milperra's only pub, the Viking Tavern. The resulting gun battle left six men and a teenage girl dead. The Milperra Massacre is now enshrined in Australian folklore. Twenty-one people were subsequently jailed for 10 years and upwards. The only person acquitted was one Philip Bruce McElwaine, a former Commonwealth Games boxing gold medallist.

Now Milperra has a rather more famous sportsman with an image far removed from the biker gangs: Thorpedo, with his size-15 feet and a mum who says he is a lovely boy who never tidies his room. The Viking has become the Milperra Palms Hotel, though it is still pretty rough. And the respectable locals head up the road to Revesby.

This is not the British idea of a working men's club: a couple of bars and a dartboard. It has 22,000 members, nearly a thousand "pokies" - one-armed bandits - several restaurants, a stack of bars, a gym, an auditorium and sporting sections for everything imaginable, except beach volleyball. Its annual profit is more than £1m. Frankly, it makes the Savoy look a bit seedy.

The club badge is a Soviet-style motif of a cogwheel, a hammer and a wrench. Perhaps the Western Suburbs are the real workers' paradise: affordable bungalows with their own garden plus an atmosphere, a climate and a diet that enables kids, if they do not turn into mass murderers, to grow into champions. Steve and Mark Waugh also grew up round here.

And the people are sensible enough to accept defeat as well as victory. There was not a huge crowd at Revesby last night. That has been the pattern since the Olympics began. The Thorpes and their closest friends are at the pool, of course; some of the youngsters have gone into town to the out- door parties; most are at home.

The big race was on pretty early, anyway - just after seven. But a crowd began to gather, as most - not all - the old ladies stopped feeding the pokies. However, a 200-metre swim is not one of the great spectator events. There were shouts of "Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy" and "Go" then "No" then "Yes, he's getting up." Finally: a collective "Oh!"

But pokie-players understand that victory is an optional extra. "Oh, yeah, I'm disappointed," said a lady called Edie. "But never mind. I've got to go next door to bingo now. Might win at that."

"He's such a very nice young man," said her friend Joan. "Everyone says so round here. I think anyone who plays sport like that must be nice. Oh, to be young and fit!" And everyone else drifted away, to bingo or the bistro.

The stoicism stretched across Sydney. At the big screen in Martin Place, in the city centre, people whooped and hollered when the cameras came round, and a young man stripped to his underpants. This is the party the police have threatened to stop, mainly because of the amount of broken glass.

But, when TV was not egging them on, the partygoers were much more serious and interested in the sport. They took in their stride the fact that, whatever was being shown, it seemed the Australians were being beaten. Some of us could hardly resist a small, silent gloat. It is probably temporary.