By STAFF REPORTERS
It might have been rain, it might have been champagne from the heavens. When the millennium moment arrived, Aucklanders didn't care.
They poured into the city in their thousands to celebrate the New Year to end all New Years, the new year of a century, of a millennium.
And afterwards they tried to pour out again, causing a traffic jam that held up traffic to the North Shore, in particular, for more than an hour.
But earlier, thronging the downtown streets, they paused only briefly at the various free shows provided outside the Aotea Centre, the town hall and the casino.
Drinking, shouting, singing and dancing, they flowed down Queen St and Albert St in happy tides as midnight approached.
At the waterfront, they packed the piers and waited within sight of the Skytower in one direction, the Harbour Bridge in the other.
Pleasure craft pushed out for a mid-harbour view of the fireworks. As they motored past the crowds on Princes Wharf one or two male passengers stripped naked to the wild appreciation of their audience.
Then, as the midnight hour approached, clouds shrouded the Sky Tower and moisture fell from above. It might have been from the sky, it might have been from the balconies of the new waterfront apartments.
Nobody minded. The Sky Tower was firing pyrotechnics into the cloud, like Gulf War tracers over Baghdad, smudging the sky in dirty orange, green and red.
At the city end of the Harbour Bridge, fireworks flowered as best they could in the low cloud.
In the Domain, a large crowd that braved the wet night for a concert under the stars, erupted as the clock ticked midnight, joining in a mass Auld Lang Syne.
Far away in the Chatham Islands, where midnight arrived 30 minutes before the mainland, islanders made their way slowly by horseback to a clifftop beneath Mt Rangaika.
There, they watched as local couple Monica Croon and Dean Braid were married, before settling into a singalong to dawn.
In Gisborne's city centre, 10,000 people stood shoulder to shoulder as strobe lights lit the sky and fireworks marked the end of the millennium.
On Mt Hikurangi, 500 people wrapped in wet-weather gear listened to Ngati Porou elders dedicate the moment to Hikurangi, saying the mountain would stand strong forever.
In northern resorts, people buttoned up windbreakers and prepared to greet the dawn. The weather ruined one afternoon event in the Bay of Islands when a Maori canoe trying to sail to Waitangi was overturned by 40-knot winds and 2m waves.
The 50 men and children on board clambered to safety.
At Mt Maunganui, where midnight arrived with pouring rain, ambulance crew treated a number of people for hypothermia.
Nearby, Whangamata also witnessed a marriage at midnight. Dean Crawford and Bianca Trengrove made their vows on the beach as fireworks exploded above them.
As midnight passed on Auckland's waterfront, young people held the moment and held each other, heedless of wet party dresses, broken bottles and the press of people.
Then they began to move back into the city as the thump of nightclubs resumed and the bars settled in for a good long night, one to remember.
This is the moment
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.