Happy Belated New Year!

So, another year has come and gone, and for the first time in my life, I spent the first day of a new one in a new city. Having heard that Sydney has one of the largest NYE extravaganzas in the world, I planned my trip home such that I would arrive back in Sydney the morning of NYE, thus presenting me with the challenge of imminent exhaustion in an attempt to stay up until midnight having only received about 3 hours of mediocre sleep in about 36 hours. But a steady intake of sugar and movies assisted in my powering through the day to make it to the evening festivities - which, as it turns out, - included one of the most spectacular fireworks displays I've ever seen.

I ended up meeting a few friends and we wandered over to a park near Wooloomooloo Wharf to set up camp with a good view of the city / Harbor Bridge. Needless to say, things work a little differently around here (in one of the pictures below), but the show ended up being phenomenal, after which I promptly walked home and went to sleep...

...for roughly 3.7 days.

We actually had to wait in line to get into

the park. A public park. With a line. Go figure.

The CBD skyline at sunset. If you can't make

them out well enough, all of those little specks

in the sky are bats. The leave the trees in the

Royal Botanical Gardens at dusk to go hunt.

Thousands of them - it's an incredible sight.

More of the city skyline at dusk.

There were actually 2 fireworks shows - one at 9 pm for the kiddies, and another (appropriately) at midnight. The latter was the more sensational of the two, so here it is for your viewing enjoyment. The first video is the longest, but the second contains the big finale.