We woke up at 5am, packed our packs with our french stick sandwiches, various snacks and “orange juice” to catch the 5.30am bus to town. When we arrived we joined the queue of other people waiting to go into the Botanic gardens. Whilst we were waiting alot of people choose to catch up on the sleep they missed by getting up early and Kev and I did a McDonalds run to get a Sausage & Eggs Sandwich for those in our group that wanted one. Whilst we did that John went and grabbed a few throws we could use a blankets, good job otherwise we would have spent the day sitting on grass. Whilst we were waiting the queue grew extremely large with anyone trying to push in getting boo’ed back out of the queue.

We eventually got in around 12pm and head to Mrs Macquaries point, an area we had scoped out earlier in the week, it provided us with a great view of the harbour. Until the fireworks started we lazed around drinking our “Orange juice” and getting the occasion $7 beer from the the bar, playing cards and catching up on the sleep we missed getting up so early (some people really need their sleep).

As the evening went on and the sunlight slowly faded away the grandness of new years eve started to become evermore apparent, with all of the boats crowded in the harbour around the bridge awaiting the fireworks.

The 9pm showing for families was spectcaular; Adam, Dane and I were interviewed for a radio show afterwards asking what we thought of the fireworks so far. Our review unintionally gave the impression we thought they were a bit rubbish, no doubt they would have been put in the drunken rant interview pile.

After this initial showing we decided we needed to get a good position early for the main event, so we packed up our stuff and headed for the fenceline where we could get a much better view of all the fireworks. Come midnight the sky became alight with fireworks on the bridge and from barges along the river and the noise of our party poppers and party horns (there were a few funny looks from the nearby security guards…) filled the air. For the next 11 minutes there was alot of oohs and aahs as the varing and more grandure fireworks went up into the sky. We all took absolutely tones of photos, some are included below and Dane recorded the entire 11 minutes on video, which is also below.

[video removed from youtube, uploading again somewhere else]

After the fireworks were done, we lit up our sparklers and headed for the exit in the hope of finding another drink, unfortunately we weren’t quite dressed up enough to get into alot of the clubs - so we headed home to continue drinking there.