Oh, Nothing Much: The Year Goes Out with a Bang

Christmas in Oz might have been lackluster, but New Year’s completely made up for it. The best part is that we left our plans to chance and everything just came together on it’s own.

As with all big New Year’s firework celebrations, people start queuing up at the best spots early in the morning. Dan and Marc, however, still had a lot of the city to see and we didn’t want to waste an entire day just sitting around holding a spot in front of the Opera House or at the Observatory all day.

We decided to go hit the sites and have our trip double as a scouting mission to find the less trampled spots for firework watching and then take our chances.

Everywhere we went near the harbour, the mobs we assembling. Meanwhile, we had a great time walking through the Rocks, got beers, walked over the bridge, and had a lovely day.

Once we got to the other side of the harbour, our plan began to take full shape. The crowds at the base of the bridge near Luna Park were substantially thinner. Our target for the night was set and messages were sent out to the troops with the plan.

In the evening, the troops assembled at our place for pre-gaming. The champagne flowed freely and by the time we set out to battle the mobs everyone was appropriately “hydrated.”

The funny things is that once we managed to get through the crowds in the streets and on the trains and made it to our target destination, we had no problem finding a spot at all. We found a great spot right near the bridge with a perfect view of the Sydney Harbour. Sure, there were crowds, but not of the kind that leaves your humanity trampled in its wake.

The city had set up bars in their sectioned firework viewing zones, so we were good to go on that front too. We didn’t even have to bother with sneaking in and hiding alcohol.

Sydney is the first major world city to ring in the year, so they really try to own it. They have several fireworks shows throughout the city and there was even a citywide theme for the night – they were all about the blue, supposedly to match the blue of the water. To match the theme, they were even going to have blue fireworks – supposedly it was the first time blue fireworks were going to be used anywhere. It’s kind of weird to consider that in the long history of fireworks, they’d never managed to work out blue until so recently, but there you go.

New or not, they definitely know haw to give a good show. The fireworks were truly spectacular, and the show seemed to go on forever. Every time we thought they’d hit the climax, they just kept going and got bigger and bigger.

It was perhaps my best New Year’s to date and it was the perfect end to our amazing stay in OZ.

I got a good chunk of the show on video. I’ve put a way too long chunk here, but even this is only about a quarter of the entire show. You can definitely tell from our screaming and jabbering that we’d had a few by this point.

Just a quick little extra. Before we headed out to see the fireworks, we had champagne at our place. The girls, true to form, were all dancing around. A lot of songs played, but for whatever reason, La Roux's Bulletproof is the one that sticks out to me and will be forever associated with the night for me.