Photos New Years Eve

New Years Eve in Sydney

New Years Eve in Sydney

New Years Eve in Sydney is definitely one to remember, although I don’t think anything will ever come close to the excitement we used to feel when we were kids. We work up on the last day of the year at 10:30 from speaker announcements in the hostel that they would be leaving to secure a spot for the midnight fireworks in half an hour. Not wanting to spend 13 hours waiting for the big event near the Opera House, we had decided to go to a different spot, a little further from the city centre, later on in the day, which left us with a lot of time to explore the city. After a slow start we headed for the Harbour Bridge to walk across it, which offered some great views of the crowds gathering in the parks on both sides of the bridge. After getting some food and alcohol for later in the evening, we went back to the hostel to relax, whilst the TV news was showing regular updates of the shores of the Sydney Harbour getting busier and busier. At around 6pm, we left the hostel to catch a bus to Balmain, a peninsula west of the city centre, where we were meeting Garrett and Andrea (the two Canadians we also celebrate x-mas with) and their friend Becca. Having arrived a little earlier they managed to secure a pretty good spot, in a crowded little park on the shore, which offered great view of the Harbour Bridge. The atmosphere in the park was brilliant, and as the alcohol kept flowing people were getting very chatty with each other, leading to most ‘interesting’ conversations. However, it wasn’t until this morning when we were looking at the pictures that we realised we had missed the most coincidental encounter we could have had – René’s random shot of the crowds featured the South African couple we met on our wine tour in Perth! Time passed quite quickly as we were playing cards, watching the 9pm kiddies fireworks, drinking wine, eating bread & dips, queuing for the toilet and talking to each other and strangers and before long it was midnight. The fireworks display was pretty spectecular with 6 barges along the harbour that held the same display, plus special action on the bridge. After wishing everyone a happy new year, we headed back with the crowds to the buses which were packed with people. Not wanting to wait for a bus for hours, we decided to walk back into the city, which took just over an hour and turned out to be a pretty heavy exercise to start the new year with. Tired but happy, we arrived back at the hostel at 2 where we concluded the night by watching some obscure music videos (Wat is it with tv channels broadcasting weird music videos on NYE? The Belgium channels last year had lots of dodgy 80 disco stuff going on as well.)