Cloud and rain obscured the first light of the new millennium for many bleary-eyed spectators in the South Pacific and finally rendered the argument about just who saw the dawn earliest even more irrelevant.

Yet, for most people, it appeared that just being there to see it was enough. Even at Sydney's Bondi Beach, where the 5.40 a.m. sunrise was lost in the gloom and rain, there was little sense of anticlimax.

Some looked out at the grey sea and skies and seemed awestruck, but others, including a large number of Irish backpackers, resisted the cold and the safety concerns of lifeguards at the large waves and took the first swim of the century - a few without the modesty of a swimsuit.

It was a minor miracle that there was no first drowning, but, in the absence of a brilliant sunrise, the emphasis shifted to the more unexpected firsts, such as the drunken horseman who could lay claim to being the number one arrest of the era.

New Zealand police on the Chatham Islands, which was one of the principal contenders for seeing the sun before anyone else, picked up the pickled rider soon after midnight. "I think he will rank as the first person this century to be arrested," said Sgt Brendon Erasmuson. "He will be infamous for the rest of his life."

On New Zealand's east coast, 70,000 people gathered on the shores of Poverty Bay at Gisborne, where the opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa headlined a predawn concert. But, while there was a glimpse of the sun, New Zealand again lived up to its Maori name of Aoteraoa - land of the long white cloud.

Two time zones to the west, in Sydney, they were still talking about the midnight fireworks display, which cost more than stg£2.5 million and saw a million people crammed in and around the harbour.

The pyrotechnics put a blazing smile on the harbour bridge, involved the opera house and saw shells fired from barges along a three-mile front across the water. Locals and tourists had staked out the best vantage points 48 hours before, while others paid upwards of stg£500 for all-inclusive parties with good views.

The multi-coloured starbursts and waterfalls of fire and light were accompanied by a specially-commissioned soundtrack and the bells of the city's two main cathedrals.

The 26-minute spectacle, beamed around the world by satellite, was a dress rehearsal for the Olympic Games in September. It culminated with the word "eternity" etched across the harbour bridge in light.

The huge copperplate letters were in reference to the distinctive chalk handiwork of recovered alcoholic and Christian missionary Arthur Stace, who left the message thousands of times on Sydney streets between finding God in 1930 and his death in 1967.

A group of really confirmed fans of new year revelry were to be found 18 hours driving time west of Sydney in the tiny outback settlement of Cameron's Corner (population 2). More than 200 people gathered there in one of the few places on the globe where it is possible to mark the chimes of midnight three times because of the convergence of different time zones.

The colonial boundaries of New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia meet in the desert and, because of summertime and the 30-minute time zone difference used in Australia, the new year arrived three times in 60 minutes.

The locals brought in a band and auctioned seats on the placard which marks the spot to raise funds for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Lindy Williams, who lives in the so-called corner country with her husband, Grant, said on Saturday: "We've had three new years and it feels like it."

Because it was one of the first major industrialised nations to experience midnight, Australia was an early-warning system for the Y2K bug, and business and governments around the world were monitoring the nation's progress. But, as with almost everywhere else, the bug proved a fizzer, to the delight of the federal government's Y2K co-ordinator, Senator Ian Campbell.

However, some scientists did find a genuine Y2K bug, with six legs, in rain-forest mountain streams between New South Wales and Queensland. The tiny creature is only 2 mm long and feeds on smaller insects. Dr Ebbe Nielson, head of the national research body's insect collection, said that while the creature had to go through international procedures for its official naming, it will be called the "Millennium Bug" to mark the timing of its discovery.