Karen's Millennium Photos
"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine." - REM
New Year's Eve, 1999 - Midnight show!
As midnight approached, Andrew and I kept a closer eye on the
time. At 5 minutes to go, people around us were still talking and drinking
like there was still hours to wait. At 2 minutes to go, I said "Do you
think people will count down? There has to be a mass count-down, right?"
At 30 seconds to go, no one was counting down, and I said to Andrew, "Will
it embarrass you if I try to start a count-down?"
Andrew said, "No, I think we should be counting-down too." So like
a typical loud and obnoxious American, at 15 seconds to go I started chanting
the seconds in a loud voice. People immediately around me looked at me like
"She's had a bit too much to drink." At 10 seconds I started shouting
the numbers, and Andrew joined in. People still ignored us. Just the two of
us, we yelled, "five, four, three, two, one, Happy New Year!!" and
just as we yelled Happy New Year the fireworks started, and the crowd cheered.
It was incredible.
Earlier Andrew has said that he wanted to kiss me "proper" at midnight, but unfortunately all he got was a peck on the lips because I was too busy yelling and jumping up and down. I really wish there was a good way to express in words the magnitude of what happened during the celebration. There were fireworks going off, in-synch, from four places on the river as well as from the Harbor bridge and the Opera House. It was so huge, you had to spin around 360° to see everything that was going on. There was a huge roar coming from the crowd, like we were all part of one large organism. And I felt an incredible sense of solidarity with everyone there, like we had all travelled so far to experience this special moment together. (And no, the lights in the condos across the harbor did not go out).
Because the camera can only take a photograph of one spot at one time, and since we were on the ground, I'm afraid that the following pictures really do not capture the experience of having this huge fireworks display in all directions at once. Also, most of the pictures are taken with a wide-angle lens, so objects look smaller and farther away then they really were. A photo from the air at the New York Times website does a bit more justice. There's also a bit written about the celebrations at the BBC millennium website, including some good photos. The midnight fireworks were scheduled to last 24 minutes, but by my watch they really lasted more like 35 or 40 minutes. It felt like a lot longer though.
Some of the opening fireworks, including the smiley face on the Harbor Bridge (which winked):
 |
 |
The fireworks were timed so that the same type of firework was going off in all four river locations at the same time. This photo shows the two river locations in front of us (with the Opera House barely visable at the bottom) - there were also two river locations behind us doing the same thing.
A better picture of the smiley face on the bridge:
