Australia rang in the New Year Sunday with a spectacular display of fireworks cascading from Sydney Harbor Bridge, as people partied amid tight security.
About 1.5 million people packed the city’s foreshore to watch the pyrotechnics light up the sky above the historic bridge and the iconic opera house, the first major celebrations worldwide after New Zealand.
In Sydney celebrations centred around the harbour where millions had gathered on land and water to see in the New Year with a bang.
Melbourne, which boasted about having more fireworks than Sydney this year, also partied in the New Year with a flurry of fireworks exploding from its skyscrapers. An estimated crowd of 350,000 came into the city for the midnight fireworks, according to the City of Melbourne.
Hobart and Canberra were the other east coast cities to see in 2018, with Brisbane an hour behind.
