New Year’s Eve + Sydney = FIREWORKS!

As everybody knows, NYE is cause for a big celebration and arguably the most famous firework display in the World is Sydney’s, so it was a no-brainer that Nicola and I would head to the Harbour to see the firework display to see in the New Year.

We had done a bit of research and agreed that the best bet we had for a good view was at Yurulbin Park, a very small park near Birchgrove Ferry Wharf with a capacity for 400 people. Sydney has a useful NYE website which outlines where the fireworks displays can be seen, the capacity each venue has and also the entrance fee (if any) plus what facilities are on site. I say Yurulbin was our best bet because it was free and had a view of the Harbour, we just did not realise how good a view we would have until we arrived.

We left our house at 09:00 and arrived at Yurulbin at 10:00, we had to travel into the city and then back out to the Balmain area. We passed Birchgrove Park where a lot of people were stopping (large park close to shops) instead of heading on to Yurulbin (which was good news for us). We had heard that the parks would get busy quickly so we wanted to head to Yurulbin early to avoid disappointment. One of the reasons we have stuck around in Sydney so long (after realising our employment prospects are extremely limited) is because we wanted to see the fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

Once we found our spot we set up camp as our housemates would be meeting us later on. As we would have to wait around 14 hours before the fireworks we had a lot of time to kill, so we brought books, kindles, food and towels to nap on. Where we had chosen started to get extremely windy after a few hours so we moved spots from where we were close to the ferry wharf to the other side of the park (about 40 metres away behind a rock wall that afforded protection from the wind).

Fast forward 14 hours spent in the sun reading, eating and relaxing we were ready to see in the New Year. There is actually a shorter firework display at 21:00 for the families with young kids so they can go home but it’s really not as good. There were also single burst fireworks released on the hour up until midnight after the 21:00 firework display as an explosive countdown.

What we were surprised about however, was no actual countdown at midnight. The bridge was lit up with a lip image on a large screen but as midnight arrived the fireworks started without any countdown. There followed a few moments of people wondering if the fireworks were the build-up or the actual event – as we were expecting a countdown.

Despite no countdown, the firework display was the best I have ever seen. I recorded the whole thing on camera and it lasted around 13 minutes. As there is more than one firework display along the river (the central point is the Harbour Bridge) we found ourselves in a triangle of fireworks; one directly behind us (so close we could feel the noise of the explosion), the Harbour Bridge in front of us, and the one over the city to our right. It’s truly hard to explain how impressive it was so maybe it’s best to rely on the photographs we took.

The only downside to the day was the transport afterwards. We waited two hours for a ferry to arrive (the first one at 01:23 only picked up a handful of people out of the 300 or so queuing) before we were taken to the city. We eventually arrived home at around 03:30, tired, starting to feel hungry again but thoroughly impressed with our once-in-a-lifetime New Year’s Eve in Sydney.

Happy New Year’s Eve everybody and hopefully 2013 will bring good fortune to everyone.