If the world does end on December 31, at least it will be having a good time. Christina Goumeas and Marthali Brand survey the globe’s millennial celebrations
The first permanently inhabited place to see in the millennium officially is Pitt Island, part of the Chatham Islands, 850km east of New Zealand. Just 55 people, thousands oflll sheep and manylll more thousandslll of seals live onll Pitt Island.lll They’re expecting 500 visi- lltors, mostlylll friends andlll family, wholll will see thellll First Dawn ce-lll- lebrations centredllll around an old vol- lll-cano, Mount Ha-ll-kepa. The mountain is owned by the Lanauze family, who have sold the television rights for the next century’s first dawn to the New Zealand government for $106E500. And the descendants of the first people to inhabit the island, the Moriori, will take part in the celebrations at midnight.
However, several other islands have laid claim to the first dawn of the new millennium. The tiny country of Kiribati has renamed one of its islands Millennium Island, and moved a dateline to support its claim.
The Fijian Islands of Vanua Levu, Rambi and Tavenui are all bisected by the dateline, but the first dawn issue has been overtaken by other events. The island nation’s planned diving extravaganzas have dried up with the death of a tribal chief, Ratu Glanville Lalabalavu. Traditionally, 100 days of mourning are called after the death of a chief, and chieftain Ratu Tevita Vakalalabure has warned he will feed any revellers to the sharks if they trespass on his territory during mourning.
Divers should take this threat seriously as some chiefs on the islands claim they can call up sharks through ancient rites.
Another suitor for the first dawn is Tonga, which has declared daylight savings time to support its claim. But the Earth’s official timekeeper, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, is standing firm on the Chatham Islands. Six skydivers from New Zealand have decide to skirt the issue by jumping out of a plane right over the international dateline in the South Pacific.
The title of “first city of the sun” has been appropriated by Gisborne, New Zealand. There the dawn will be greeted by a flotilla of ships and traditional canoes. Two thousand cyclists will ride into the first sun, and blind golfer Chris Bartlett will drive a ball into the first rays of the new millennium.
Golf seems to be a theme in New Zealand’s millennial celebrations, with Christchurch hosting the first golf tournament of 2000, which will tee off at midnight.
In Wellington a time vault pyramid will be filled with thousands of individual capsules and sealed for the next 100 years.
While New Zealanders party, the rest of the world will be waiting to see if the stroke of midnight brings the expected meltdown of the millennium bug – should it strike at all.
Across the ocean in Australia, things are not looking up for the millennium lparty of “the first industrial city”. According llto a re-lcent survey, most of Sydney’s inhabitants will be watching the llharbour festival lfrom the comfort lof their own homes. Locals are unhappy about the festival’s crass commercialism, and the city’s failure to lay on extra public transport for the event. Even worse, all railway stations in the city will close at 11.45pm on New Year’s Eve as a precaution against the Y2K bug.
In Bourke, eastern Australia, pickers will begin harvesting grapes at midnight for the first vintage of the millennium. But the winemakers llof Vielle are apparently notll llthreatened by their Aus-lltralian counterparts, and plan to start harvesting what they call the first grapes of the millennium when the clock strikes 12 in France, the cradle of viticulture.
The city of romance began its New Year’s celebrations with the lighting of the 35 bridges of the Seine last month. At midnight on December 31, the Eiffel Tower will be lit up with 20E000 flashing lights. A variety show has been organised at the tower, where a huge counter will tick down the minutes to the end of the year. More than a million people are expected to flock to the Champs Elysees, where at midnight 11 large wheels called the “doors of 2000” will start to turn. For those wanting to do the millennium in style, a “supper with the Sun King” has been organised at Versailles. For $2 000 per person, guests will feast on veal, truffles and wild strawberries while dancing the night away to the court music of Louis XIV.
Across the Channel, London has been dubbed the “Millennium City”. The home of the Greenwich Observatory claims its 24- hour New Year’s celebrations along the banks of the Thames will be the biggest and best in the world.
Money has been no object in sprucing up the capital for the celebrations – more than 758-million has been spent on the construction of the Millennium Dome alone. Situated across the Thames from Greenwich, through which the zero meridian line passes, the dome covers 8ha, has a circumference of two-thirds of a kilometre and is 50m high.
And then there is the the Millennium Ferris Wheel which will tower over Big Ben, filled with visitors taking in the sights from above. At 120m high, the wheel is the world’s largest observation structure of its kind, giving visitors a 40km view across the capital and beyond. It will have its own fireworks display when it takes its first spin at 10pm on New Year’s Eve.
But London won’t stop there. As the countdown to midnight begins, all four faces of Big Ben will be lit by spotlights. And at the stroke of 12, almost 5km of the Thames will light up in a “River of Fire” as pyrotechnics explode between the Tower and Vauxhall bridges. It will take 18 seconds for the imaginary line ofll midnight to travel fromlll Greenwich to Tower Bridge.ll The “fire” will spread at thell same speed along a 5kmll stretch of the river. Hopefully the River of Fire won’t be dampened by London’s notorious drizzle.
Berlin is another European city hoping for fair weather. The “largest open-air party of all time” will take place around the Brandenburg Gate. A million people are expected to turn up for a series of concerts, fireworks and laser shows. Shortly before midnight a 20m-high wall of water will be pumped into the air to provide the screen for a laser show to bring in the new year.
Not being able to compete with the River of Fire and the 20m wall of water, celebrations in Greece will concentrate on the historical. Festivities have been organised at the foot of the Acropolis in central Athens, and on January 1 at Cape Sunion, south-east of the capital, ceremonies at the Temple of Poseidon will mark the “first sunrise of the millennium” in Greece.
In colder climes, Finland has declared 2000 as the Year of Culture, and has planned more than 450 arts events in the capital, Helsinki. A cathedral of ice will be sculpted in Senate Square, and candles will be lit as the new year is ushered in. Nearby in Sweden, the authorities have declared Stockholm a typically alcoholic party zone: a huge bar to cater for more than 100E000 people has beenl set upll at thelll city’s port,lll and an open-lll-air sauna will bell available for recuperating revellers.
Muscovites will also be partying, at a rock concert on Red Square where giant screens will relay events organised in each of Russia’s 11 time zones.
But the prize for the most macabre party of the century goes to Romania. At Bran Castle, the 15th-century home of Vlad the Impaler and the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, tourists will bring in the new year at a medieval ball entitled “Blood Red”. But at $4E000 a head, it is highly unlikely the desperately poor locals will be able to attend.
Not far from the newest Heritage Site and the cradle of humanity, Sterkfontein caves, there will be partying in Johannesburg’s nightclubs and at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. Celebrations have also been planned for Cape Town, and the Durban Point Harbour Festival will be broadcast around the world.
The Eastern Cape will host East London’s 2000 Phambili (Forward) Bash. The showcase of festivities is the grand finale to a week-long beachfront festival, with bonfires and pyrotechnics lighting up beach parties at Beacon Bay and Gonubie and with a double display at the main Esplanade. At the Buffalo Park stadium, Mdantsane’s sig- ll-nificant con-lll-tribution tol South Afri-ll-can jazz willl be toasted at all New Orleans-style jazz festival. The three beaches of the 1820 Settler landing in Port Eliza-ll-beth will blazell with bonfiresll and pulsellll with the beatl of drummers before the mid-ll-night fireworks displays lights up Algoa Bay from its Shark Rock Pier launchl pad. The Gardenll Route will hostll more upmarketll affairs. At R750 for adults and R250 for children, a Remember Tomorrow ball on Knysna’s Leisure Isle will compete with a R500-a-head gala dinner- dance on Knysna’s only beach at Brenton.
Up the coast in Tanzania, Mount Kilimanjaro has been booked out between December 15 and January 15 by 7E000 tourists, more than half the number of visitors the mountain usually receives in a year. It seems the National Parks Authority’s ploy of doubling fees from $50 to $100 a hut and from $40 to $80 a campsite has not had the desired effect of cutting down on the number of millennium hikers. Those planning to greet the dawn of the new century on the summit of Africa’s highest mountain with a shout of “Hodi!” (Swahili for “I am here”) will be a few metres lower than they might think, however: Tanzanian and German scientists llrecently set the lpeak’s height llat 5E891,77m, ll3m lower than previously thought.
To the west, in Abuja, Nigeria, a huge dome will be inaugurated with a programme of parades, concerts and traditional dancing. And a sound-and-light show will be held on the island of Goree, Senegal, the erstwhile departure point for slave ships from the Americas.
But the continent’s biggest party, in blow-out Western style, will be held at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Cheops near Cairo, Egypt. French electronic composer Jean-Michel Jarre will “usher in the new millennium” with a laser show accompanied by a symphony, especially written for the occasion, called Twelve Dreams of the Sun. Jarre claims his symphony is “a blend of Oriental and Western music”, but many Egyptians feel the performance will be “disrespectful of Islam”, especially as the celebration falls in the lllmonth of Ramadan. An Egyptian newspaper has also accused Jarre and Egyptian Culture Minister Faruq Hos-lllni of plotting to impose “Zionist freemasonry” on the Egyptian civilisation. The llllplan is to lllinstall llllla 9m ll”golden llcap” on Cheops at the llpeak of the concert, restoring the pyramid to its original height of ll137m. In the face of cri-llllticism that the cap may damage the 4E600-year-old monument, Hosni recently lltold MPs llthat “all elements of the spectacle are still liable to cancellation or modification”. This cannot be good news for those flying in from around the world to attend the Millennial Society’s World Millennium Charity Ball and watch the spectacle from luxury tents among the dunes.
At a party on sands of a different kind, three million people are expected to turn up for fireworks displays on the holiday beaches of Ipanema, Copacabana and Barra in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Fireworks will also feature in a celebration along the Rio de la Plata in Buenos Aires in Argentina. That country’s and the world’s southernmost city, Ushuaia near Tierra del Fuego, will host a symphony concert and ballet in the daylight of the far southern hemisphere midnight.
Panama is hosting a millennium marathon accompanied by events to celebrate the recent handing over of the Panama Canal by the United States.
Egyptian pyramids are not the only ones to be fted at the start of a new millennium. The Pachacamac archaeological centre in Lima, Peru, will host a light show, while locals will party around the Sun Temple. And rock stars like George Harrison, U2 and Peter Gabriel will commune with the spirits of the pre-Aztec civilisation that used to inhabit the Teotihuacan pyramids near Mexico City, Mexico.
While the rest of the world is plan-lll- ning on partying se-riously, the people ofl the world’s last re-l-maining superpower are singularly unimpressed.ll Many of the extravagant celebrations planned for the Unitedlll States had toll be cancelled or scaledll down dra-ll-matically inll the face of pub-l-lic apathy -ll Americansll seem to prefer spending the end of the 20th century at home with family and friends. A recent Time magazine poll found that 68% of Americans planned to spend New Year’s Eve among loved ones. At the stroke of midnight, 63% will be kissing a partner, 56% will be watching the telly, 35% will be toasting the new year with champagne and 20% will be making love.
The Los Angeles Millennium Show had to be cancelled because tickets going for a meagre $55 to $75 just weren’t selling. And on the East Coast, in Washington DC, organisers of “America’s Millennium” planned for the Mall, the esplanade stretching between the Lincoln Memorial and Capitol Hill, initially prepared for 600E000 people. It turns out that only 100E000 Americans want to spend New Year’s Eve with Bill and Hillary Clinton watching a special film, by Stephen Spielberg, depicting the 20th century’s biggest events. BB King and Aretha Franklin are scheduled to perform, accompanied by an orchestra conducted by composer John Williams.
But true to Big Apple style, the organisers of Times Square 2000 are not taking the challenge lying down. The 1,5- million people expected on the square and the more than one billion people watching on television around the world will be entertained from 7am on December 31, with a giant puppet fish swimming through the throng representing the start of the new year in New Zealand and Fiji. At 10am, as Japan and Korea enter the new year, live Taiko drummers will fill the square with thunderous percussion and 100 dancers will perform under a shower of cherry blossom confetti. At 3pm a 6,5m puppet elephant, representing India, will lumber through the square showered by red streamers. When the new year reaches 41 European and African countries at 6pm, puppeteers will unfurl 57 banners created by the pupils of New York’s public schools, representing the children of the 41 countries. And at 10pm a 13m snake, accompanied by puppets of monkeys, ants and butterflies, will represent the new year’s arrival in South America.
But all that attention to the rest of the world is just window dressing for the real event. The traditional aluminium ball counting down the seconds until midnight has been replaced by a crystal ball 180cm in diameter, with 600 halogen lights, 96 neon strobes and 92 rotating pyramid mirrors shining from the inside. The ball, made up of 504 Waterford Crystal triangles, will make its first appearance at 7am, and at 11.59pm start its maiden voyage down the 230m flagpole.
Far away from the bright lights, big city, in Taos, New Mexico, the All One Tribe Foundation has spurned extravagance for a chant-and-drum global peace party. They will be joined by people in other towns across the world in chanting, “As we drum, we are one.”
In this spiritual vein, the United Methodist Publishing House is trying to get teens across the US to spend New Year’s Eve reading the book of Revelations in church cellars. The event has been dubbed the Catacomb Project, as the organisers hope being locked up in cellars reading the llBible will help the kids sym-llpathise lllwith perse-llcuted Chris-lltians at the beginning of the current millennium.
llllllFor those lllllAmericans llllwho want to lldeprive them-llllselves even lllmore, a travel lllllllagency is lllloffering an llll11-day tour lllacross the frozen wastes of Alaska. On New Year’s Eve the tour will reach Little Diomede Island, a rocky island populated by 160 Ingalikmiut Inuit.
Little Diomede is located about 1km east of the international dateline and will be one of the last places on Earth to see the dawn of a new century. Tourists will hike across the sea ice to the invisible line that separates one time zone from the next – on the one side it will be 1999, on the other 2000. The dateline crossing will not be accompanied by the consumption of champagne, however, because alcohol is banned on Diomede. – With additional reporting by Peter Dickson