Greetings from 2020! We survived New Year’s Eve in Sydney without incident.

Before we headed out we thought it best to clean out our pockets and only bring essentials. We packed our new beach towel, our half-zip pullovers, snacks, water and some Australian cash just in case.

We made it to the train station and made our connection easily. We were a little surprised at how few people were on the train. We took the North Sydney train station stop because we were planning to go to a park on the north side of the Harbor Bridge. We had been told by multiple people it would be hard to get over the bridge on New Year’s so its best to stay on whatever side your hotel is at, for us that’s the north side. We had researched lots of places to go and watch the fireworks. Some places charge a fee and some provide entertainment. Some places you have to arrive by noon to get a good spot. We didn’t want to do any of that. We wanted to find a nice park and have a laid back fireworks watching experience.

While looking at Google Maps, Jacob found a place called Kurraba Point. This park was not listed on the main city website as a vantage point but he found other information about it that said it was open for New Year’s Eve and would have security on-site and toilets!

We decided we would aim for that park first and if it was full we would head to Cremorne Point. Both of these parks are along the north side.

Everything we read said everywhere was going to be packed. Jacob was getting alerts about vantage points filling up by noon and eventually there were alerts from the city to not enter the area because everything was full.

This had us a bit worried but we figured we’d make the most of it and try to find a good spot if every park we tried was full.

When we got off the train we ended up in a huge mass of people walking toward events down by the bridge. We got swept away in the crowd but realized this was not the direction we wanted to go. We turned around and were now going against traffic. Jacob said this made him nervous because he was worried they knew something we didn’t know. I said we should stick with our plan of trying the other parks.

After getting slightly lost, we got back on our way. It was just after 8:40 p.m. and the first round of fireworks were set to begin at 9 p.m. We picked up the pace and headed for Kurraba Point. There were hardly any other people on the street headed the same direction as us and we were starting to worry. However, a little bit later we started to see more people headed our same direction. A group behind us that clearly knew where they were going gave some directions to other people in their group and that filled us with confidence we were headed the right way.

With minutes to spare before 9 p.m. and hearing children countdown from 10, we arrived at the park to find scattered groups of families and kids running around. The park had people in it, but there was plenty of room and spots for us to hang out to watch the first show. We could even clearly see the Opera House and Harbor Bridge. We were amazed!

When we arrived, the children were shouting “we want fireworks!” A few minutes later Jacob heard one of the kids say the fireworks would start at 9:15. Jacob said he wasn’t sure if the child had good sources, but sure enough at 9:15 p.m. the family fireworks began!

The fireworks were spectacular. They launch fireworks from several barges along the water so they are going off simultaneously all around you. Jacob said if this was the warm-up show then he was really looking forward to the main display.

Once the fireworks concluded, streams of people started heading out and we then headed down to the lower part of the park to find the toilets. This turned out to be a great decision because this section of the park was a wide-open grassy field with hardly anyone there. The park is right up against the water with clear, unobstructed views. We couldn’t believe our luck. We set down our towel and got ready to wait it out two hours for the next show.

It was really breezy along the water and we were glad we had pants on and wore our pullovers, although I could have done with another blanket. While we waited we watched the parade of boats which began at 9:45 p.m. and we even saw several of the famous three-foot wing-span bats I had read about. It was amazing how time flew by and suddenly it was time for the main show. The park filled up, but was still not crowded when the show began.

It was such an incredible fireworks display. I took a short video of it here: Click to watch.

And I took a couple photos, but its so hard to capture the magnitude of this amazing event. People were cheering and screaming happy new year all through the show.

But all good things come to an end and the show completed after 12 minutes.

From here it was a 20 minute walk back to the train station. Then waiting in a giant crowd of people for 30 minutes to get let back on the train and then a 30 minute train ride back to our hotel. We arrived just about 2 a.m. and went straight to bed!

Today, we are going to have a nice, relaxing day today probably with a couple naps.

We will see what else the day has in store.

Until then!