HAPPY NEW YEARS 2011

We spent New Years Eve in Sydney Harbour watching the fireworks, just not quite in the fashion we had planned. Our buddies Liz and Mike from Argonaut we supposed to join us and we were going to spend the day and evening on the boat in the harbour fending off other boats and experiencing the fireworks on the water. For two days leading up to New Years Eve boats had been anchoring too close to us and so when our friends said they were unable to make it we decided not to move Cat’s-Paw IV and possibly put her in harms way, but to walk to the Botanical Gardens and watch the fireworks from there.

We thought it was a wise move, just us and 20,000 other people, ahhhhhhh!! We thought we might mosey on over about 7:30 P.M. and get a good spot. Good thing I checked on the internet. It talked about needing sunscreen and lots of water and I figured we had better head out a tad earlier. We got in the queue to get into the park at 11:50 A.M. and 2 and ½ hours later we make it into the park. It was nuts, the line must have been a kilometer and a half long. Once we were in, I squeezed into a small opening on the grass with a half decent view of the harbour bridge, the other half of the bridge was obscured by trees. We spent the next ten hours getting to know the folks around us. It was quite the experience; it was like the population of Yellowknife was squeezed into this one small peninsula. It was one big party in the park. The crowd would start chanting in every different language you could imagine. A Canadian boy named Mark took it upon himself to stir the crowd up with clapping, chanting and other alcohol fueled antics. About 11:15 P.M. the sidewalk in front of us which had been kept clear by the security guards became overrun. People started shoving and getting belligerent and walking over our spot so we packed up and moved to a different place. We stood for about 40 minutes and had a decent view of the spectacle. Our pictures did not turn out very well as we did not have a tripod this year.

It was all worth it, they were the best fireworks we have ever seen. We probably would have had a better view from the water but we did not have the worry of people running into the boat. If we had been on the boat we would not have rubbed shoulders with people from all over the world who wanted to see a fantastic fireworks show in one of the most stunning settings in the world. It was a great start to 2011.