Happy New Year, Australia!

The hangovers are already hitting Sydney, where 1999 began at 8:00 a.m. EST.

An estimated 100,000 people turned out to watch a million-dollar fireworks display light up the sky over Sydney harbor. Millions more took in the spectacle on television.

Onlookers "oohed" and "aahed" as explosions bathed the Harbor Bridge and the famed Opera House in pulses of green, red, or blue light.

Sydney celebrates every major holiday with fireworks, but this New Year's Eve was a pyrotechnic orgy -- a dress rehearsal for next year's welcome to the new millennium and to the 2000 summer Olympic Games.

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