The world had its eyes on Sydney in 2000. A million people lined the harbour to ring in the new millennium (though some said it was actually the final year of the old one) on January 1.
US television reporters called it “the biggest party in Australian history”. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, whose corporation seemed to represent the coming age, was among those watching on.
Sydney offered not only a world-leading party, but also a litmus test for the much-feared Y2K bug, which threatened to knock planes out of the sky and bring the global economy to a halt. Australia and New Zealand were said to be the “tripwire for the world’s computer systems”.
