30th & 31st December 2009
Yesterday we spent the day travelling, first from our lovely spot at Halfmoon Cottage back to Christchurch where we enjoyed our final Kiwi meal of fish and chips (what else!), then onto the airport to catch the plane to Sydney.
We arrived at the Hilton on George Street in Sydney, arguably the best hotel we’ve stayed in so far with its modern room, comfy bed and great view over George Street. After checking in, the priority was to do a bit of a recce in preparation for the New Years Eve fireworks tomorrow so we wandered down to Circular Quay and around the Opera House where preparations for private parties and public areas were in full swing.
The morning of the last day of 2009 started with a fabulous buffet breakfast at the hotel since we weren’t sure what food would be available to us during the day. Then we set off to the Opera House where we had decided to install ourselves for the 15 hours while waiting for the midnight fireworks.
The first camp Loveridge was right in front of the Opera House steps, but after a while we noticed a lot of people making a beeline to a spot further down towards the back of the Opera House. After a quick word with a kindly security guard we moved ourselves down towards this area which would be shut off once it was full. We had an uninterrupted view of the bridge, right against the railings.
After setting up camp Loveridge mark 2 the waiting began. To be fair the time passed quite quickly because there was loads to see, people watching to be done and stuff going on on the water, like when we saw a large container ship leaving port and when Matt Damon’s boat, the World (he was apparently on it!) appeared. We also got chatting to the people around us who included Australians, Dutch, English and Japanese to name a few.
The preshow entertainment started at 5pm, with various fly bys by Pitts Specials and Tiger Moths. Then at about 8pm an Aboriginal boat performed a smoking ceremony around the harbour to rid it of evil spirits. At 9pm we were amazed by the family fireworks, if the main event was half as good we would be in for a real treat.
The next few hours were taken up by the Parade of Lights where the boats in the harbour, lit up with various designs paraded around the bays on both sides of the bridge. At the same time the bridge pillars were illuminated with the message ‘Awaken the Spirit’ in different languages which was this year’s theme. A burst of fireworks went off on every hour and the bridge projections changed. Then in the final hour we had a half hour and fifteen minute burst.
Before we knew it, after 15 hours, we were counting down to the stroke of midnight and the fireworks started. WOW! We didn’t know where to look, the bridge was the main focus but there were also barges in the harbour and fireworks coming off the top of the buildings in the CBD. Amazing, stunning, awesome, fabulous, imaginative, unbelievable, noisy, so many words to describe the 12 minute display.
Afterwards we walked back to the hotel through the city centre which was closed to traffic. It was like Cardiff on match day, a river of people flowing back to their various hotels except no red jerseys and many, many more people. The Millenium stadium holds about 75,000 people, there were about 1.5 million in Sydney to watch the fireworks!
A fantastic experience, well worth the wait (and I’m not just talking about the last 15 hours, but also the years since August 2008 when we booked the hotel!).
As you can imagine, we took quite a lot of photos, so if you want to see more take a look under Photos above and choose the Australia album.