While there was much transport chaos last night, there were also some pretty amazing scenes. Here are some of the photos I managed to take:
The photo above was taken at around 1pm, when I went out to get my lunch. It was already pretty obvious at this stage that there would be an enormous number of people in the city centre later in the day.
There were a pretty huge number of people crossing Customs Street down at the end of Queen St. And remember, this was at 1pm.
Quay Street was also pumping.
A few hours later the streets were even busier. At this point I sent a tweet to Auckland Council saying I thought they should close Queen Street. A pity they didn’t listen.
The Viaduct Harbour was pretty crazy too. Fortunately some work colleagues had booked out a few seats here so we managed to escape experiencing the madness. 
By 5.15pm it was really really starting to get packed along Quay Street.
It was mad up on Queen Street too. By this time (around 6pm) most people seemed to be walking up and down the street itself – even though it (stupidly) hadn’t been closed to cars.
As you can see, Queen Street was pretty much being taken over by pedestrians after 6pm.
We wandered down to QEII square to see the fireworks, which was perhaps something of a mistake as the crowds were a bit too intense.
Overall, it was pretty incredible to see so many people in central Auckland – just a shame that the transport was so poorly organised and also a shame that there didn’t seem to be contingency plans to deal with what might happen if many more people came into town than had been expected.
If, like me, you missed the opening ceremony in the crush of people, you can watch it here.
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