You’ve all seen pictures on the news of the fireworks in Sydney, right? (My family saw them live on TV, so if they played in Indiana, I figure they played everywhere.) Here’s one from this year that I grabbed from the Sydney Morning Herald. See the bridge there? The Snook and I – along with several friends – were on the right (north) side of the harbour, not far from the big pilon that holds up the right side of the bridge.

Here we are about ten minutes before the big event. The row of lights you can just see above us run along the front of the bridge. There were people everywhere. They normally do a 9:00 pm fireworks show for the kids, but it was too windy so they cancelled it. We were hoping that meant we’d get a double show at midnight. (In the end they decided to save the extras for later in the month.)

It took me a while to realize I’d need to turn off my flash in order to get pictures of the skyline and fireworks. (I’m so not a professional photographer.) Here’s my attempt to get a “before” picture of the bridge and city. Isn’t it nice? That small blurriness on the left side is an old sailing ship that had beautiful lights in the rigging.

I tried a couple different shots, this one using the Snook as a tripod. Unfortunately he had the hiccups. I think the results are really cool though.

The countdown to mightnight was flashed in big numbers on the side of the bridge. This is my attempt to capture the “zero” moment. They did a big shot off the bridge, and then the show moved to more conventional fireworks on either side. It wasn’t until the finale that they lit up the bridge again.

Another surreal shot of the bridge with contrails of color.

Finally it was time for the big finish. The finale started with rockets being shot straight up and out from the bridge. We were all screaming and cheering.

Here it is, the big crazy explosive end. If you look right in the center of the front of the bridge, you can even see the animated dove that lit up. There were so many fireworks, more than I’d ever seen at once in my life. From the front they were spread out along the length of the bridge, but from our angle they all appeared on top of each other. It was spectacular.

After the show we cornered a nice looking older man to take our picture. As you can see by the fact he cut off half our group, he was DRUNK. But so it goes. We headed back to our friend’s house to drink some more homebrew and listen to classic rock. I hope your celebration was as good as mine!