Fireworks explode over Sydney Harbour at midnight, ushering in the new year, in Sydney [Reuters]
Fireworks explode over Sydney Harbour at midnight, ushering in the new year, in Sydney [Reuters]

With a gathering of over two million spectators, the Australians rang in the New Year with the loudest cheer. The New Year's Eve on Tuesday night at Sydney is seen as the largest crowd gathering for the year-end celebrations.

For the New Year fireworks show, it was estimated that 1.6 million people will attend the event. However, Sydney's Lord Mayor Clover Moore, in report in The Telegrah, confirmed that 'the preliminary figures show crowd numbers exceeded expectations.'

"We were expecting 1.6 million and the estimate is that it was 2 million. We know that the event has just become more, and more, and more popular, and that is something that we will have to take into consideration as we plan for next year," Mayor Moore said.

The spectacular fireworks that filled the Sydney sky to celebrate the start of 2014, lit up the iconic Harbour Bridge and Opera House. Sydney, famous for its pyrotechnic display, had 'shine' as theme this year. "Shine is a word that symbolises Sydney, from the way the sun glints on harbour waters, to the sparkle in the eyes of Sydneysiders, the glow on the faces of visitors and the brilliance of our fireworks," the city's new year event website read. 

For creating the show, seven tonnes of fireworks were fired away from different locations around the city, including - for the first time in a decade - the sails of the Sydney Opera House, to create the 12-minute long show. More than 1,000 fireworks were set off from the roof of the World Heritage-listed Opera House, having been specially designed not to damage the building which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year.

A billion people around the world watched the show through television and live streams.