Dateline NZ - how others saw us

By ARNOLD PICKMERE and MARTIN JOHNSTON

When it came to the dawning of the millennium, even racy British tabloids such as the Mirror and Sun showed a bit of reverence.

Both had front-page pictures of the sunrise at Pitt Island in the Chathams.

"Welcome to the New Millennium," said the Mirror.

"The first sunrise at Pitt Island in the Pacific yesterday. Around the globe billions celebrated a new beginning."

The Sun's front page read: "Welcome to the year 2000. Sun rises to greet Third Millennium."

Readers had to turn to the back of the paper for more regular fare - a sign to cut out and hang on the door reading: "DO NOT DISTURB (I've got the biggest hangover for 2000 years.)"

The New York Times noted the six skydivers who bailed out over the international dateline near the Chathams. "Skydivers plunged towards shark-infested waters as they glimpsed the new millennium's first dawn off the coast of New Zealand."

(A shark attacked a paua diver in the area in 1996.)

Miro Cernetig, for Toronto's Globe and Mail, also recorded the skydivers' "magic moment," but added that at the same time "many Pitt Islanders were still hung over from partying all night in the woolshed, the corrugated tin hut where they usually shear their sheep."

"They shivered and stamped their feet at a Roman Catholic Mass before dawn, a few swigging from a Scotch bottle as one of their neighbours read the command from Genesis: 'Let there be light'."

And "the heavens complied with a sunrise that would have been the envy of Hollywood."

But the Globe and Mail found Pitt Island a place where "New Year's Eve festivities still feature old ladies playing the electric organ and singing hymns."

"The highlight of New Year's Eve, in fact, was a big bonfire, set alight a few minutes before midnight.

"Despite its status as the place that would usher in the first sunrise of the year 2000, the island's 'millennial countdown clock' was a mantel clock, carried to the woolshed by Evan Lanause, the family matriarch.

"She dropped it and the battery fell out, throwing the countdown off somewhat. But on Pitt Island it is generally agreed that precise time doesn't usually matter.

"'Our New Year's countdowns are usually off,' one farmer confessed, sipping from a wine bottle."

Kathy Marks, of London's Independent, found sunrise in the Chatham Islands "an awesome event ... a glimpse of nature laying on the works for a spellbound audience on a day that has exerted an inescapable pull on the collective imagination."

Washington Post staff writer Joel Achenbach, however, was a reluctant early riser.

"I awoke at 5.50 am to catch the New Zealand millennial celebration, an event that created a compelling argument for going back to sleep," he wrote.

"We Americans feel bad for New Zealanders, living as they do at the end of the Earth, upside down, among so many sheep, with everyone confused about what day it is.

"To its credit, New Zealand managed this morning to lever its tragic global position into free media coverage 'live from New Zealand' - four words you just never hear.

"The millennium event in Auckland featured a pyrotechnic display and many dancers, and was somewhat reminiscent of an Orange Bowl halftime show."

The newspapers overseas covered, as well as possible, the first baby story and the fact that our computers still work.

And the Japanese Embassy in New Zealand reassured the New York Times that telephones in the first developed country to enter 2000 were becoming almost unusable as lines became overloaded - not because of the Y2K bug.

The same paper also had a report from the first marathon. "Only a few hundred spectators lined the streets of Hamilton, a city of more than 100,000 approximately 80 miles south of New Zealand's capital, Auckland."