I have never seen so many people in one relatively small space in my life. I’m rather hoping to never see it that closely again honestly. Close to 1.9 million people lined up all along the harbour on both sides. Wait a minute, there were fireworks you say? Oh yes, those were incredible. The effects off of the bridge were unreal. But considering that was about twelve minutes of our five hour sojourn I’m more interested in the people watching. I have decided that people are crazy.
We arrived in Sydney in early December. Apparently this is pretty late to start making any real plans for NYE. All of the “good” places to watch the fireworks are ticketed and most were sold out. Yes, there are free places to watch all along the harbour but you have to be prepared to get your place around 3pm and wait. Ouch! This didn’t sound too fun so we decided to take the “let’s go down really late and just stand” approach.
Amazing!
We took the bus down close to Hyde Park and hopped off prepared to walk. They shut down all of the streets around the CBD (Central Business District) so walking was pretty easy. We started off thinking we would try to get as close to Mrs. MacQuarie’s chair as we could. Wrong. Sign said “full”. Now that I’ve done this once I can tell you that it was probably full of people for the 9pm Family Fireworks and that we should have stayed and waited for people to leave and then tried to cram in after. Lesson learned because that’s basically what we ended up doing down in the Rocks. But we did have an iconic view of the bridge and met some great people that had come from Perth to watch the fireworks.
The annoying light was just as annoying in person. But that's the Harbour Bridge behind me.
Sydney is such a mix of people you rarely know what language the people next to you will be speaking. So, to find out that the older gentleman from Perth had a daughter going to school in Huntsville, AL?! Well, we became mates and the last two hours of waiting went much faster. Plus, I have no idea what the other guy next to me was saying but he sure seemed happy. It was English because every five words or so I could pick one out but I just ended up smiling, nodding and saying random things I thought would fit in our “conversation”. I’m going to be thoroughly Aussie and say he was probably a Kiwi from New Zealand. It’s a well known fact here that you can’t understand a thing that Kiwis say but don’t worry because they never have anything worth hearing.
While waiting we heard choruses of Oh, Canada, chants of Barcelona, watched some wild dancing and singing by some men maybe from Turkey(?), heard the Italian national anthem and I played a pretty good game of solitaire on my phone. Then the fireworks. Then everyone trying to get out.
We walked about 45 minutes to an hour, shoulder to shoulder with people. In America, this would have brought on that funny guy who always wants to “moo”. You know the guy. Luckily, this crowd was just filled with drunk people and smiles. Oh yes, I was shoved. And then shoved some more but considering the amount of people, booze, and craziness, I would say it was a rather well-behaved mass of humanity. Sydney only had 97 arrests and that number is higher than last year. I’m hoping one of those was the guy that we saw wailing on another guy right in front of a bus but I’m not holding my breath.
This is a 360 degree view of people. So many people.
Needless to say it was absolute madness and I’ve already started making my plans for next year.
Oh and a quick update. We found Splenda at Costco (stay tuned for that story!) and I’m currently drinking my coffee with a sweetener called Natvia, which is a version of Stevia. Wait long enough and I just might find some sunflower seeds. A girl can dream.
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