Last night I had the most amazing firework experience of my life. Leighton, Alina and I found a primo position right on the Blues Point in Sydney harbor. We had scoped it out the day before and although it was on the backside of the bridge it still afforded us an amazing view of the fireworks on the bridge and those on a barge not more than 20 yards to our right.
We left the house we are staying in at around 3pm and drove
to Rosevil station about 10 min drive away. Since we knew the trains would run late getting people home
we thought it safer to park at the station than chance finding a bus from
Chatswood to Frenchs Forest at two in the morning. When we got off the train at Luna Park I realized just how
crowded this night was going to be.
From the second we got of the train there were police and security
people everywhere. They ushered us
down and out of the station like cattle with fences on all sides and deposited
us out on the street with the hundreds of other people making their way to the
parks and apartments near the harbor.
Unfortunately for us the ferry was closed just min before we reached
Sydney so we were forced to walk about 3 miles around a small inlet and theme
park in order to get to the peninsula that we had chosen the day before. When we arrived at 5pm the peninsula
was already packed with people waiting.
Some had just a chair, many a blanket or tarp and a few even had tents
set up, one nice Indian couple that I met had set up their tent at 11am in
order to save a front row seat.
Since there were only three of us we chose a small nook back in the bay
to sit at and proceeded to waist the afternoon away watching the interesting
crowds around us. The worst part
about waiting that long for fireworks is that you have to guard your spot constantly,
standing legs spread in a slight squat watching every person that walks by so
that they don’t think they can scootch in on your little piece of beach front
property. So by 8pm I needed a
break hard core, and left Leighton to watch the stuff while I wandered around
for a bit. After marveling at the
dressy cocktail dresses, or lack of dress in some cases, that some of the local
girls were wearing I proceeded around the point and found a wonderful little sandstone
wall that I was able to get some bouldering in on. It was only a few move rout but it was pretty stout in
tennis (tennis shoes) and it ended on a ledge about 15ft. off the ground. All in all it was just the break I
needed and it turned out to be very helpful for our firework experience as well. After finishing my small rout I was congratulated
by an old Ossi local who yelled out to me “good on ya’ mate”, which Leighton
informs me is common lingo for good job, and proceeded to get into a very
pleasant conversation with me about climbing and traveling and the like. After a bit he and his wife let me in
on a local secrete that its best to be out on the point and not back in the bay
since they shoot many fireworks off of barges and they can’t be seen from back
in the bay. I passed this information
on to my comrades and we changed location to sit on the seawall just at the
point of the bay. This afforded us
a perfect shot of the bridge as well as a fair distance out into the harbor
where the local and assured me the barges would be located.
We passed a few more hours at our new location and than the
pre-show began. The barges shot
hundreds of fireworks into the air of the best varieties. Fireworks that sparkle and sizzle, the
huge rings of color and my favorite the ones that explode and trail copper
sparkles as they rain down to look like a willow trees. The bridge also created a
color-changing waterfall of sparks that cascaded from street level down to the
water and was so thick you couldn’t see the other side of the bridge. All in all it was like watching a
Moscow firework show 100 times while wearing kaleidoscope glasses, and that was
only the 9pm warm up. Needless to
say that tided us over for the next three hours until the actual new years celebration
began. The only part that was not
amazing throughout this whole experience was that they never counted down the
new year, at least not from where we were sitting. One moment it was 11:59 and the next they were launching off
so many fireworks my eyes hurt and we were so close to the barge my ears are
still a little sore.
The Harbor bridge
launched fireworks from the top, dropped sparks from the bottom, and even had a
large light display in the center that changed in to all sorts of strange
symbols. All the wile the barges
were continually belting out bursts of ten or more large mortars into the sky
and people everywhere cheering. It
was a very good firework show, the best I’ve ever seen I would say, and only my
friends and family could have made it better. The trip home was fairly uneventful minus being squished into train cars, which brought me back to times in Japan. If this trip continues as it has so far I think this blog will end up quite long. It was an amazing night and it is still just the beginning of my adventure.
you can see all the pictures at my picasa page.
Derp.
ReplyDelete