Dec 2006

At 8am on New Years Eve I was queueing at the Botanic Gardens with Simon, Kirsty and Becky to get a good spot at Mrs Macquaries point - overlooks the opera house and harbour bridge. The gates didn't open until 10am and already there were thousands in the queue. We reached the gates about 11.30 and after having our bag searched for alcohol (had to buy it from the beer tents only) Simon gave his bags to us so he could run ahead and get us a place with a good view.

By the time we reached Mrs Macquaries point the best places were pretty much taken, with people sprawling their towels as wide as possible to reserve their place for the day. By 2pm the gates closed and 25,000 people were in for the day. The beer tent opened at 2pm, but surprisingly the queue's never got too bad!

It was a really high atmosphere, with everyone chatting to everyone else around them. We played cards with people on the towels behind us and shared food with others.

Entertainment began at 1pm with a canon going off, then every hour on the hour something else, like an air show, laser light show and at 9am the childrens fireworks. They were just as spectacular as the midnight fireworks only it was a shorter show.

The fireworks at Midnight went on for about 20 minutes. This year was the 75th anniversary of the harbour bridge. It was lit up in green like a coathanger (the bridges nick name is the coathanger). The fireworks were worth waiting for, they were spectacular.

No one hung around after, as soon as the fireworks finished everyone gathered their stuff and made tracks. We walked back through the park to our local 24 hour bar and had a few bevvys in there. I got back to the hostel at about 5am and went up to the roof terrace. From the terrace I could see there was a party going on in the apartments opposite, it looked quite good, with disco lights and music.

Made my way back down stairs and sat with the staff and a bottle of red...until Deborah walked in at 6am from her night out. I dragged her back out to see if we could blag our way in to the party over the road. We walked to the secure building and a girl was coming out of the block so we just walked in and mentioned to her we were on our way to the party 'what floor is it on again?'. She confirmed it was level 6, so up we went. It was easy to tell which door it was from the noise. The front door wasn't locked so we just walked in and before I could shut the door behind me a guy (who we discovered was called Alan) started talking to us. We didn't give anything away, just said we were looking for Dave (random name - don't know a Dave) and finished our chit chat, a few steps further in to the hall way and a guy asked who we were (turns out he was the owner of the flat, called Eddie), we just mentioned we'd been talking to Alan, and he said, 'oh you're with Alan, make yourselves at home' so we did. This 2 storey penthouse apartment was amazing, they'd even hired a professional DJ in their lounge for new years eve! and the large balcony had a small pool. Although the music was good and we enjoyed the dancing, we didn't stay long, only an hour and left. Me and Deborah were too normal to fit in, everyone was either gay, lesbian or pilled off their heads. Deborah pulled though, a nice ginger lesbian took a fancy to her and became quite clingy - time to make our exit!

Back at the hostel we had a quick cuppa and laughed about what had just happened. Finally got to bed at 8am ish.

8am queue for Botanic Gardens

Our view from the Botanic Gardens