New Year's in Sydney, Australia 2011

Several years ago, I wrote an Associated Content article about New Year's Eve fireworks in Naples, FL and also posted a slide show highlighting some of the local aerial explosions. Given the size of our Naples community, the display was quite impressive (as it usually is for either New Year's Eve or Independence Day). Kudos to our local officials for their efforts.

But, this year, we opted to try a New Year's fireworks extravaganza "down under." And I have to admit that this display easily rated a 400 on a scale of 1 to 10!

The first part of our adventure keyed on finding an affordable hotel in downtown Sydney. Exactly on the 330th day before New Years (many hotels and even airlines work on a 330-day advance booking schedule), I checked rates. We got lucky! We landed a room at the Shangri-La (Fig. 1) that was later going for upwards of $600 (all numbers in U.S. currency since the exchange rate for the Australian and U.S. dollars are close to par). We paid only about a third!

Even better, we only had to book for a single night, not two or more.

Since we were touring southeastern Australia for about a week before New Year's Eve, we turned in our rental car at the airport, delivered most of our bags to the hotel near the airport at which we would stay for our last two nights in Australia and then took the train into the downtown harbor area. The train system in Sydney is extensive and quite well run. We purchased a multi-day pass that also gave us access to harbor boat ferries and bus transit.

This was a great transportation choice because most roads into the inner parts of Sydney were blockaded on New Year's Eve. After all, there were some 1.5 million folks either in the downtown area or across the harbor watching the festivities.

We did not realize that there was a preliminary (family-oriented) fireworks display at 9:00 pm Sydney time. Luckily, we had checked into our room about 30 minutes earlier and got to watch the show from our 25th floor harbor view room (Fig. 2). This was a great primer for what was to follow at midnight.

After room service (restaurants were off limits that night due to crowds and costs), we headed out to the Observatory Hill Park, a raised knoll area to the southwest of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Phil, the concierge at the Shangri-La Hotel provided directions and other advice. Although our view to the Sydney Opera House was blocked, the view to the bridge and western harbor area were not. In short, we could easily see 6 of the 7 choreographed fireworks launch sites (Fig. 3).

People (mostly of a younger genre) were out in force. Despite the best screening efforts of police, alcohol flowed far too freely. Still people at the park were well-behaved. Fences and barricades controlled foot traffic and there were an ample number of portable toilets to handle the effects of alcohol on the human digestive system (Fig. 4).

The only drawback to the 12-minute (one minute per each month of the new year), 11,000 explosion extravaganza was the smoke. Because the fireworks came almost non-stop, smoke could not clear between explosions. Thus, many of the firework effects were at least partially hidden from view.

Still, the show was awesome (Fig. 5) and my wife and I had a blast watching the revelers.

Now that we've done this, we are already talking about where in the world we want to go on New Year's Eve 2012. Stay tuned for clues, but don't expect Matt Lauer to accompany us.