I should at this point talk about the New Millenium.

You may not be aware, but New Zealand is the closest developed country to the International Date line.

There are a number of small Islands such as the Chatham Islands or Pitt Island that are further East and much closer to the date Line. Many International Media organisations purchased the rights to have camera crews in these locations to film the first Dawn of the New Millenium. In the same way, because of its proximity, New Zealand became the centre of attention for other groups of media.

150 Kilometres (100 Miles) North North East of Hastings is the coastal city of Gisborne which is the closest City in the world to the Dateline and as such, it became the centre of media Interest in New Zealand. Huge celebrations were planned and much activity planned as 10 of 1000's of people decended on Gisborne to see and film the New Dawn.

It is rather interesting to note that the Media neglected to "hedge their bets" and completely forgot about Napier and Hastings, which because of our geographic situation places us only seconds behind Gisborne as far as the Dawn was concerned.

The big day arrived and you would all have seen the fantastic celebrations that took place around the world, but where were the pictures of the Sun rising over Gisbornes beach.

Well, "Murphy" took a hand in the matter and the day that dawned in Gisborne was wet, cold and overcast so the momentous pictures were never taken. However, Napier Beach (which had been completely forgotton by the worlds media) had a perfect dawn and the picture above is the sun rising at 5:45am on January 1st 2000.

I think that this is all rather Ironic.