You know when you tell people you\u2019re moving to Sydney, they think of three things. 1) Christmas Day on Bondi Beach eating BBQd turkey. 2) The legendary New Year fireworks over the harbour. 3) Spiders.<\/p>\n
Well, let me tell you, I\u2019ve witnessed the first two, and either I\u2019ve picked a bad year to come over here, or people who have raved about them in the past were just seriously inebriated. The third thing is not as common, but just as big as you hear.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not the first of my family to travel; my older brother did Australia nearly ten years ago now, and made the front page of the national paper for his Santa hat\/swimming trunk attire on Bondi.\u00a0 There he was, looking all slim and tanned and drunk, with a turkey in one hand and beer in the other.\u00a0 Hearing his stories of a crazy party with a small army of backpackers was making me pretty excited for my first Christmas away from home.\u00a0 Except, someone came along and pooped all over my version of events, and Sydney had a big injection of anti-fun.<\/p>\n
Alcohol is now banned in most public places, including Bondi beach.\u00a0 They had police on patrol, on Christmas day, peering into people\u2019s picnics and scowling if anyone seemed to be having too much fun.\u00a0 And bikini\/santa hat attire? HA. I went in a woolly jumper, boots, and a blanket and spent the whole time wishing I was in front of a nice roaring fire with a Yorkshire pudding.\u00a0 The beach was deserted- a group of us huddled in a beach hut, ate our sandwiches as fast as possible, necked a bottle of wine, and went home.<\/p>\n
Going home is never that straight forward after a bottle of wine though, is it?\u00a0 Two buses and a train ride later (we do NOT live that far from Bondi), I found myself standing solo, in the dark, in a Wisteria Lane style suburb, while Sean and two adopted Scottish backpackers attempted to Carol sing their way to\u2026 what? Money? Food? Beer? All they got was some polite \u201cthank yous\u201d and the clicks of several doors closing.\u00a0 One household, who didn\u2019t answer the door, were \u201cpunished\u201d with some petty crime; I woke up the next day with a crystal swan in my handbag.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now then, LONDON, I\u2019d like to have a word.\u00a0 For years and years you\u2019ve tried your hand at pyrotechnics, only to be out-sparkled time and time again by Sydney.\u00a0 I hate new years, as a rule. I\u2019ve spent it being dragged to family parties, on failed and expensive nights out, or being completely shunned by society altogether and eating twiglets with my dad (actually one of my favourite new years).\u00a0 So, this year, living in the party capital that is Sydney, I had high hopes.<\/p>\n
A plan was set; I was working until 3, so Sean and a small crew of other orphans (that\u2019s what the Aussies call Brits around Christmas time because we have no family, mean) were to set out early in the morning with several boxes of wine and blankets to secure the best spots in the house.\u00a0 What we failed to account for? Japanese bloody tourists.\u00a0 THEY CAMPED OUT 45 HOURS BEFORE THE FIREWORKS STARTED.<\/p>\n
Plan B: take a bus ride to Balmain, and watch the fireworks from there. No worries.\u00a0 It was alcohol friendly so we found a lot of like-minded people set up.\u00a0 Wine, doritos, party mix, sunshine, poker, view of the harbour.\u00a0 In what I can only assume was an attempt to attract some publicity to the city, Sydney let Kylie have free reign of the celebrations.\u00a0 I think the results of this are nicely summed up by Sean\u2019s tweet at the time \u201cSydney just gave Kylie an iPod and told her to make things pink\u201d.\u00a0 The music was random and disjointed, in stark contrast to London\u2019s cleverly mixed and very London<\/i> playlist.\u00a0 The harbour bridge didn\u2019t look anywhere near as impressive from our backwards view, although reports from Circular Quay suggest that the bridge was only used in the finale anyway. \u00a0I would\u2019ve thought golden hot-panted Minogue would have gotten the hang of using your best assets, apparently I was mistaken.<\/p>\n
To give Sydney its due credit, it has a rather squiffy coastline.\u00a0 The harbour really does split the city in two, and it\u2019s not a clean line, it\u2019s an \u201cI\u2019m erosion and I\u2019ve had one too many rums and am going to wander inland in any meandering manner I bloody well want to. Fankyou\u201d line.\u00a0 So about a dozen boats were stationed down the harbour and each one given a matching, perfectly synchronized set of fireworks.\u00a0 Which meant, from our viewpoint, we had one set immediately behind us, one just in front, plus the harbour, and another boat in the distance.\u00a0 It was all a little Armageddon. We oohed and aahed, missed the countdown, kissed at midnight +25 seconds, and waved sparklers (I held mine gingerly at arm\u2019s length, still afraid of everything).<\/p>\n
The afterparty at ours was a bit of a washout; sun-stroked, inebriated, exhausted from the trek home, we attempted a half-hearted drinking game while my housemate Beckie snoozed on the sofa (she woke up every ten minutes or so to shout \u201cI\u2019m having fun!\u201d) before heading to bed, leaving a scattering of sun burnt backpackers across the living room.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That was a bit of an epic post.\u00a0 If anyone is still reading, HI MUM.\u00a0 Tomorrow (maybe not tomorrow, I might go and get drunk tomorrow), I shall come back bearing good news.\u00a0 A lot of it. \u00a0Night chaps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You know when you tell people you\u2019re moving to Sydney, they think of three things. 1) Christmas Day on Bondi Beach eating BBQd turkey. 2) The legendary New Year fireworks over the harbour. 3) Spiders. Well, let me tell you, I\u2019ve witnessed the first two, and either I\u2019ve picked a bad year to come over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.seansimpson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.seansimpson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.seansimpson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.seansimpson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.seansimpson.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/travel.seansimpson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/travel.seansimpson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.seansimpson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.seansimpson.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.seansimpson.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.seansimpson.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}