NEW CENTURY - AUSTRALIA
Byline: By KERRY TAYLOR
Fireworks were not required. The sunset had it all.
ULURU
Fireworks were not required. The sunset had it all.
For the more than 3000 people who gathered in the middle of the Australian desert to celebrate the millennium, the sunset and sunrise at Uluru are better than any midnight Sydney fireworks.
They journeyed from all over the globe and Australia to see the last light of the century play across Uluru in a rainbow serpent mix of ochre and lilac.
And then they kept their bleary eyes open until the first rays of dawn peeked over the most famous monolith in the world, ushering in the year 2000.
The stroke of midnight doesn't seem to matter as much in this part of Australia.
``The light flickers across the rock, changing color. Red, then orange and purple. People are quiet except for their cameras clicking. It's better than any half-hour fireworks explosion,'' Stephanie Bond of Brisbane said at the last sunset of the millennium.
She was not alone in her quest for a unique New Year's Eve. Thousands descended on the sunset-viewing area in Uluru-Kata Tjuta national park to do the same.
They came on their Harleys and in their Holdens, raising champagne glasses and beers high to salute the sunset.
``We thought it would be really special but lots of people seem to have had the same idea,'' said Sara Detoma from Rome, who has been planning for more than a year her trip to converge on ``the Rock'' with 28 friends from around the world.
She has met a lot of fellow Italians over the past four days with the same idea.
Among a group of Japanese tourists, Michiko Izumida stood watching the shadows lengthen over Uluru with her 80-year-old father.
``It is my dream to see this place and to bring my father here. There are two places in the world I have always dreamed of and one is Ayers Rock. It's just my dream to be here now.''
The groups were big and small, the parties for sunset were intimate and epic in scale.The champagne was chilling in Eskies. Ice ran out at the resort so some beers went rapidly warm. Didgeridoos and drums played out the dusk to Americans, English and Taiwanese tourists. A group of Harley adventurers had ridden since Christmas Day from Melbourne to see the view before them.
``We wanted to jump into the next century, I guess, from where time began,'' Mark Haddad said.
The national park closed its gates to the public after 9pm and put on extra staff in the park. But most people seemed to be respecting Uluru, the park manager, Matt Le Duc, said.
Apart from an Italian tourist and her daughter falling on top of the rock earlier in the day, New Year's Eve had been incident free, he said.
A total of 270 people paid $475 each for a seven-course dinner in the desert with Uluru as the backdrop.
For some revellers the celebration at Uluru was a homecoming of sorts.
Danielle Johnston, who was formerly of Melbourne, now resides in San Francisco. She has backpacked through India, Nepal and Europe but she had never seen Uluru or Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) until this new year.
``It felt about as right as anywhere else in the world to have new year's ... I'm not living in Australia now so coming back to central Australia - well, it's not a pilgrimage but I guess it's a bit of a homecoming,'' she said.
For the local Aborigines - the Anangu - two millennia is a blink in the eye of their time. Their law and dreaming stretch back to a time when their giant serpent ancestors slithered across the earth to form the startling landscape of central Australia, including the rock that is causing so much fuss among whitefellas.
Yet year 2000 celebrations are a good excuse to hold one of the biggest ``inma'', or dancing ceremonies, the Anangu have seen.
A ``mob'' from the Top End (Darwin) and Cairns are also being flown in to sing and dance.
Celebrations are restricted to local Anangu and the ABC, which will exclusively film the event and beam some footage via satellite around the world.
But for Andrew Uluru, a local Anangu man, 1 January 2000 is just another day.
``The sun sets and the sun rises; it is just the same,'' his interpreter explained.
Caption: Three photos: The sun sets at Steep
Point, WA, the most westerly point on the mainland. Picture: JOHN
MOKRZYCKI; Mark Swindells ends a continental crossing at the most
easterly point, Byron Bay. Picture: PETER RAE; Hundreds of New
Year's Eve revellers watch the sun set on 1999 at Uluru. ``It's
better than any half-hour fireworks explosion,'' Stephanie Bond,
of Brisbane, said. Picture: PAT SCALA
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Publication: The Age
Publication date: 1-1-2000
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