It is a ''F--- the Olympics'' T-shirt (big, bold, black letters on a bright white shirt) sold at the time in an irreverent Darlinghurst emporium. Olympic Games do disrupt a city and agitate some citizens and the manufacturers of these novelties must have been trying to exploit that angry niche.

Olympic Games generate a blizzard of objects (Google ''London Games Memorabilia'' and you'll find everything from Union Jack egg cups to snazzy Games' umbrellas in white and blue and pink) and the National Library's collection of official and unofficial Sydney 2000 items, some of it shown to this columnist yesterday, is wondrous.

Treasures the Library will be able to display one day include lots of official items of clothing including a complete relay torch carrier's blue-and-white ensemble (complete with big, baggy, bloomery blue-and-white shorts) and dashing and dinky-di Akubra hats worn by officials of all kinds.

And just as the London Olympics has soft-toy mascots Wenlock and Mandeville we had, in 2000, Syd the Platypus, Millie the Echidna (with, controversially at the time, long flowing golden hair like a blonde yak instead of its species' true spines, and with Barbie doll blue eyes) and Olly the Kookaburra. The National Library has the top-of-the-range Millennium Collection cuddly example of each. In 2000 they cost (the price tags are still on them) a gob-smacking $69.95 but then as their cloth labels proclaim each is ''hand crafted, to give it a true inner expression''. Then there is a bright green plastic Closing Ceremony Fly Swatter, decorated with a Sydney blowfly.

Catherine Aldersey of the library's Australian Collection Development Unit (yesterday having as much fun among the boxes as if they were presents around a Christmas tree) said the library would have systematically gone about collecting 2000 Olympics matter.

''These things may not be preserved elsewhere. And these incidental things help preserve the look, the feel of the Olympics. The torch runners' clothing will get people saying 'That's what they looked like when they ran through my town.' You don't know how significant things are going to be. They might look really unremarkable now … but in 20 years' time they're going to be really fascinating. Holding the actual item in your hand is a direct link back to the event. It's terribly valuable.''