This is, by far, the biggest party of the year in Australia. It is a time to celebrate with friends…unlike Christmas, it is not really a family thing. If you’d like to read more about Christmas traditions in Australia, then you can read my blog on that by clicking here.

New Year’s Eve (31^st December) often starts when the sun sets. If you are organised, you will have already made a reservation for a dinner at a restaurant. If you haven’t made a booking, it will be very difficult to find a place to have dinner. We eat dinner early at around 7:00pm -8:30pm. Then, it is time to start partying.

All major cities and even regional cities like mine, have fireworks. There are normally two firework sessions. One is for families with young children at 8:30pm. The second one is at midnight on New Year’s Eve. These events are what we call ‘dry events’ and what this means is there is no alcohol available, and you should not bring any alcohol to these events. I’ve seen many New Year’s Eves where police are making people pour their alcohol onto the ground.

At midnight, it is customary to kiss the person who is next to you on the lips. This is great if you are standing next to your boyfriend or girlfriend or someone that you are attracted to, but it can also be disgusting if you are standing next to some random drunk Australian. You can say No.

At midnight, the song Auld Lang Syne is played. This song is very old, in fact, it is ‘old English’ so many of the words and the grammar is not standard English today. Many Australians don’t know what they mean, however, the general understanding of it is ‘let’s drink together to share friendship and to remember the friends from our past’.  We sing this song loudly and mumble all the words we don’t know.

Then, the young people go dancing and drinking wherever they can find a party. Driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or as we call it 'drink driving' is illegal so many people arrange for taxis or ubers to take them home. If you are in a big city, you are lucky because there is public transport available for this. Or, if you have one friend who does not drink alcohol, they become the ‘designated driver’, which is a term we use for them. They will drive you home.

New Year’s Day (=1^st of January) is nothing special for most people. Everybody is exhausted or is too hungover to do anything. It is a public holiday so many people wake up close to lunchtime, find a cool place like a river or the beach to have a barbeque and swim.

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are the perfect time to contemplate goals for the following year. In English, we call these New Year’s Resolutions. Personally, I love to do this every year. Do I achieve all my goals? The answer is definitely no. However, my personal philosophy is to ‘aim for the moon, and even if you miss, you will land somewhere in the stars’. So, I set big goals and small goals to work towards in the year to come.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!