Christmas may have been a bit disappointing but New Year in Sydney certainly lived up to expectations and was by far the best one i've ever had. Hardly a stretch comparing it to a night at the Academy or Dusk but very true none the less. Bedlam had a pretty settled crowd over Christmas with everyone having to stay for the two week period so the place had a really good atmosphere with everyone wanting to have a bit banter and at one point 63 people came for a night out. Carnage.
I made an incredible schoolboy error by going out the night before New Year, not only that but for some reason we decided to make it 'Wine Time' leaving me in not the best of states. To give you a quick idea i ended up back at the hostel emerging from my room with Chilli sauce on my face and not only my shorts on inside out but i some how managed to put them on back to front too. Quite a feat I know, I really am a classy guy. Needless to say i was a lil bit rough in the morning.....Speaking of which i awoke at about 6am to the sight of some random weirdo standing not only right next to my bed but my face too, I was so stupefied by it all (and the drink) that i was actually rendered speechless for once. To make matters worse he was dressed exactly like the Yank off Trainspotting who walks into the bar muttering "Can i please use your bathroom" then gets beaten up and his clothes taken off him, i should've done the same in hindsight, just terrible manners. He was a friend of Julia's and Sarah's though so it figures, they just had to get up early (or come in late) at every opportunity making as much noise as possible, turning on lights, using hairdryers all to the delight of Leona. "How Rude".
It being New Year n all Sydney was packed to the brim, to get a good spot round the botanical gardens you had to leave at about 5am then spend hours queuing and then having to do it all again if you wanted to leave at any point. This clearly wasn't an option at all with me "not doing mornings" so the hostel decided to head down toward Rush cutters bay and set up camp down there. On my rising it was a pleasant sight to see "The French" being a lot more organised than us and were heading down the bay to set up shop for everyone so to speak; they were also going with the intentions of getting on the drink, just a bit ambitious i thought with the likelihood someone was bound to be passed out when the fireworks et al were on. None of us (Us being Skinner, Jacobs and Jon) were entirely sure just where Rushcutters was so thought we'd better scout it out at 3 before "getting on it", so with the help of "Storyteller" John Maughan's directions "Yeah its ten miutes away. you just go left, right, forward, left, right" we headed off. Yeah John, stellar directions there, it took us a hell of a lot longer than that but we got there in the end and found a pretty good spot had been set aside for us. About 30 people were already there well on the way to getting trolleyed and had a nice patch of cushions, mattresses, sheets and anything else they must've found on the way. We couldn't really see the Opera House and weren't right on the bridge but the view of it all was pretty stellar and the city landscape more than good enough for me. Rushcutter was pretty banging too but not too crowded to the point you couldn't move. We quickly made an executive decision to get on it, buy some booze (via hangover food at McD's) and then get straight back down there.
For some reason unbeknown to me everyone in the City was encouraged to wear blue, i have no idea why, some bullshit to do with "spirit" but i obliged anyway and stuck on a blue top. We picked a few more people up from the hostel (including the debut of Amy "Martens pils" Roast) and headed straight down to rushcutter where we found immediately that my prediction of people "peaking too early" was far too true. Most of the hostel was well on their way to being completely fucked with Francois being in the lead, he greated me with a nice big spit of booze all over my chest. Looking around it was clear i wasn't the first victim of this and the girls came off the worst with Nina getting a particularly high volume burst of alcohol. The best thing about the night was that despite their being large groups of English, French, German, Danish, Dutch and Canadian we all mixed together and people didn't just stay in their "clique". Everyone was having a good craic on and the whole place just had a really good atmosphere really. This was also the point in time where Eddy gave birth to the catchphrase "Do You Know Lucky Luke?" Apparently it's a Belgian-Franco cartoon that is pretty famous to everyone on the continent, he must've asked about 342 people that night. All the while Francois's drinking had left him passed out and shirtless on the grass, "someone" decided to leave a "please help" sign next to him with a little plastic cup for loose change as if he was a tramp. He managed to make a fair few dollar before waking up in a rage, kicking the cup as if he was going for a super bowl winning field goal sending coins flying everywhere. Of course they had to be some stereotypical English dickheads standing next to us who reacted in the same way they do to every other situation by wanting a bit of argy bargy. Thankfully after a bit of chatter it all simmered down and Francois gave the French a lecture.
The night carried on with the masses getting more and more drunk as you can imagine, obviously when this happens people tend to need the toilet a lot but this was clearly an unforeseen event to the Sydney council. To say the area was lacking in portaloos is a massive understatement which led to some rather animalistic scenes. There just wasn't enough at all leading the queues to get far too big for anybody who'd had a skin full, leading to people to just go on the hunt for anyway to go. Rushcutters was situated on a road with some rather nice houses on the other side of the grass and yiou really had to feel sorry for the owners when these became the toilets of choice with people releaving themselves in doorways, garages and anywhere else. The "security" at the place was a joke and at one point i stumbled across a rather humorous scene involving a drunkard, the owner of a house and a security guard. The three of them were within six feet of each other, the drunkard pissing on a house, the woman next to him alternating screams of "stop it" at him and then turning to the security guard with "Do something now!!!!". He just stood their like a tin of milk with absolutely no reaction in his face whatsoever, I think he was a bit retarded actually. So I do.
Another strange character made an appearance in the form of two blokes running a hot sausage and burger grill. They had the whole patch to themselves and must've made an absolute killing that night with no other food in the area. One of them freaked me out a bit though, he looked like part of experiment where they create a perfect human but need to make two, one good one and one for all the cast off bits. He pretty much was the Penguin from Batman Returns just without the flippers and Danny DeVito's gift of the gab.
The first wave of fireworks went off round nine and with the city backdrop it was quite impressive compared to England style but the harbour and city view were good in itself really. The main display at the turn of midnight was a lot better still, it was rather humorous though with literally everyone standing back uttering "ooohh" and "whoooah" at random intervals in tune with the fireworks. By this point things get blurry as we all were trolleyed, the Police however wasted no time in ejecting us from the area. They formed a solid line the length of the park, walked from one end to the other pushing and kicking everyone away and causing more bother than anything in the whole day. If you had stuff on the wrong side of the line then they're attitude was just "tough shit, have a boot", i fucking hate the police.
We all got scattered with me somehow getting lost from everyone and ending up at Edgecliff station. How i managed this i have no clue but a vaguely remember falling over at one point, fortunately the cross is only one stop away so i made it back to Bedlam fairly hastily and was one of the first back. I looked about wished some people Happy New year and found Shaggy the angry mute in his usual place in the TV room. This time though instead of just wearing a scowl he had a cowboy hat on too, it probably took me about 5 seconds to take it off him and then perform a Shaggy medley for him. I fear the whole event was lost on him though. Over the next hour everyone came pouring back in and we all just had a great time, things get really blurry at this point and i have pretty much no memory of it but i ended up losing my shoes somehow. Good times though and that was New Year.
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