australia day

The Australian's are a very nationalistic nation and whereas we never celebrate St George's day - the Australian's go to town for their own national pride day. It fell on a friday and everyone gets the day off. The city set up celebrations everywhere, but the main daytime parties were happening in Hyde Park. We headed over there and I can only assume there must have been about 250,000 people in this park all chilling out and listening to bands play, professional dancers do routines or dj's playing new tunes. We copped a squat under a tree and bought ourselves a corn on the cob and chilled out watching a latino band play and some professionals salsa dancing!
In the evening we were told (as were about 1000 other people) that the Australia day fireworks were to be held at the rocks - looking over the harbour bridge and opera house. So an hour before they were due to start - myself and kate and our 2 new friends (Dan and Kerry - see photo below) stood and waited for them to start. At 9pm we could hear some fireworks and they had a big screen up showing fireworks going off, but couldn't work out where they were coming from. At 9:20pm, a drunk bloke took much joy in telling us that the fireworks had been shown over in Darling harbour for Australia Day - only new year is when fireworks are done at harbour bridge!! Feeling totally stupid and a little pissed off we found a bar with a view of the opera house etc and ordered some champane and chilled out there for the rest of the night. Had a fab evening in spite of the lack of visable fireworks!!!