New Years Eve

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Today is a day we have been waiting for a very long time, for me (Clare) I have watched the pictures of New Year in Sydney every year on the news on New Years Eve in the UK at lunch time, and longed to be here, and here we are…

We met with Charlotte and Dyce at 11.00am with plans to buy a picnic for the day ahead, only to find good old organised Charlotte had already done it infact! So we headed off for the Harbour (along with 1 million other tourists!)

We arrived at Mrs Macquaries Chair at about 11.30 only to queue for over 2 hours just to gain entrance to the park land. We get through the gates after our bags are checked for any alcohol etc we are not allowed to bring our own on this particular stretch of the Harbour river.

We did a bit of a searching for some good spots to place our bums for the rest of the afternoon and finally settled on what appeared to be ‘the best view in the house.’ We spent the following hours looking directly at the Sydney Harbour Bridge with the Opera House on the left- exactly as we would have seen it on TV. The hours past: eating, chatting, playing cards, playing chess etc. On the hour every hour the city had laid on something to amuse the hoards of people, with fly-overs by several types of planes, not very interesting to me, but it gave us something to look at for a while!

At 9.00pm there was the first of 2 fireworks displays, this one was the ‘family fireworks’ this year themed on the Wizard of Oz, encouraging children to click their heels together and make a wish. The fireworks that followed were amazing, lasting about 10 minutes and were loud, colourful, huge, just awesome, we just couldn’t believe these weren’t the ones for midnight, I was already overwhelmed and shedding a tear or two, I just couldn’t believe we were here.

The following 3 hours seemed to drag now as we all waited in anticipation of the big show its self. Then it came… we all screamed with the giant clock projected on the bridge 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 and the bridge erupted with colour, noise and images. Then the firework barges up and down the river erupted with the bridge and then one more surprise, the skyscrapers on both sides of the river erupted with colour… it was just all too much to take in, the whole city seemed to be coming alive with fireworks… well that was it, I was just too over come by it
all and shed a few more tears!!

They continued for about 15- 20 minutes all of us with our mouths wide open unable to say anything, maybe just the odd ohh and ahh escaped, but there are just no words to explain the whole effect, it just grabbed every sense: you could feel the heat of the fireworks on your face, the explosions in your chest, the sounds were amazing… oh I could just go on!

Finally once they ended and the massive applause died down, we all turned to each other to wish one another a Happy New Year and started our walk back to our hostels, finally getting our heads down by 2.00am.

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