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Sydney has welcomed 2017 in sensational fashion with a huge fireworks spectacular lighting up the world-famous Sydney Harbour Bridge and surrounding city. As the clock struck midnight more than $1 million in fireworks lit up the night sky, as some one million revellers crammed along vantage points around foreshore. In what has become an annual event, Australia's biggest city came to a standstill at midnight as it became one of the first in the world to welcome in the New Year. Eager partygoers camped out at spots around the harbour from as early as Friday in an effort to ensure they had prime viewing. In Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth millions more caught a glimpse of the fireworks, while thousands were determined to party well beyond midnight at music festivals around the country - even if that meant going topless.

Otou Yumi, from Nara, southern Japan, continues to live with his three children and wife, Katayama, who perseveres in making conversation with him but has only ever received a nod or a grunt in response for 20 years. The Japanese couple's silence was revealed by their 18-year-old son Yoshiki, who wrote into a TV show asking them to fix the situation as he had never heard them have a conversation. And sure enough, a meeting was arranged between them in the park where they had their first date, as their emotional children watched on.

AFL star Travis Cloke and his gorgeous partner Rebeccah Panozza tied the knot in Melbourne's Yarra Valley on New Year's Eve. The smitten couple wed at the picturesque Coombe's Estate in front of 150 friends and family. Camera phones and social media have been banned from recent high-profile weddings, but the newlyweds allowed their guests to share their special day online. 

The ABC hosts in charge of welcoming in the New Year and seeing out 2016 in Sydney almost missed the all-important countdown to midnight after the became distracted by the evening's entertainment. Ella Hooper and Jeremy Fernandez were chatting with Hoodoo Gurus front man Dave Faulkner when the band's drummer had to get their attention so they could prepare for the countdown. The blunder didn't go unnoticed by those who tuned in to watch the fireworks.

William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have been criticised for managing fewer annual engagements than Charles and Diana at the same stage of their life. When William and Harry were three-years-old and one-year-old respectively, their parents attended 703 royal engagements. Now with George and Charlotte at the same ages in 2016, the Cambridge have been to 328 in the year, less than half the number of Charles and Diana. One source said they are committed to raising their children.

Revellers descend on the coastal town of Byron Bay to welcome in the New Year at the Falls Festival, after the music event hit headlines earlier this week. Some appeared to enjoy the performing artists a little too much at the three-day event, letting everything loose and nothing to the imagination, while many others appeared to be enjoying the water amenities on offer. The festivals have already made headlines following a number of horrific incidents earlier this week.

Video captures the exact moment a four-wheel-drive rolled into the deep waters near Fraser Island, north of Brisbane on Saturday morning, leaving a group of backpackers devastated. No-one was in the car at the time of the incident, but the group lost their phones, debit cards, passports and valuables. The bridge at the back of the ferry appears down in the video and a spokesman for Manta Ray Fraser Island Barges said they were investigating the incident.

Mother-of-one Kelly Rose Bradford, 43, (pictured) hates the night and the enforced celebration around it. She asks: 'Why would we want to embrace being another year older and another year having passed?' She's insisted that this year she refused all invites, steering clear of Prosecco and will be tucked up in bed by 10pm. Here, she explains to FEMAIL why she believes December 31 is the most miserable night of the year.

A pilot, identified as Tekad Purna, for Indonesian low-cost airline Citilink repeatedly dropped his belongings as he went through security at Surabaya airport on Wednesday morning. The pilot is believed to have made it as far as the cockpit before he was replaced by another captain when many passengers staged a walk off. The travellers were reportedly alerted to his alleged state of intoxication when he made an incoherent flight announcement while preparing for take off. Citilink confirmed he had appeared 'physically unfit' and an investigation is ongoing.

A honeymooning Welsh couple have forked out $1,600 just to get a glimpse of Sydney's world famous New Year's Eve fireworks after their initial plans fell through. Robert and Camilla Stanyer (both pictured) had planned to watch the fireworks at Mrs Macquaries Point but after lining up for four hours in stifling heat had interrupted views. So the couple did an internet search of harbourside restaurants that still had seats available and lucked out when Sydney Cove Oyster Bar said they could accommodate them

A group of British men thought to be a stag party has been photographed in Benidorm, Spain, dressed as Jimmy Savile, Osama Bin Laden, Oscar Pistorius, Rolf Harris and Saddam Hussein, which shocked fellow guests. The men are said to have told other guests they were 'the Offenders', and were there to offend.

From drinking at a £20,000-a-table club in New York to sailing off the French coast with 32 beautiful women, the Rich Kids of Instagram tell MailOnline how they are spending New Year's Eve. They include businessman Benedict Kusay and his seven best friends, who extended an open invite 'gorgeous women' to join them for a night of champagne, dance music and 'fireworks' aboard their rented yacht in Normandy. Spanish blogger Mon Rovi is retreating to a ski resort for the rich and famous in the Pyrenees, where she expects her champagne-fuelled friends to be 'dancing on the tables'. Toy empire heir Kev Kouyoumjian will spend the night at a £30million villa in Aspen with his family and Czech fashion blogger Barbora Ondrackova is jetting off to Abu Dhabi with her boyfriend.

Selena Rollason, a mum-of-four from Brisbane, is Australia's Birth Photographer of the Year. She shares with FEMAIL a series of photographs capturing the emotion of childbirth. One image shows the agonising moment a couple meets their baby boy for the first and last time after he died away during childbirth (left). Other images show a mother whose daughters were conceived 10 days apart due to their mother's rare hormonal condition (top right) and a baby emerging from the womb (bottom right).

John Green (main image) spent four days in hospital after the attack - but meanwhile two of his neighbours found Staffordshire bull terrier Rio dumped in a wheelie bin (wheelie bin) on his road in Grimsby, Lincolnshire. People started speculating that the dog had been stabbed, but Mr Green has become frustrated and insists he does not know how the pet ended up in the bin, as he had been in the Hull Royal Infirmary. He added that Rio had been a 'beautiful' pet for 10 years but had to taken out when he suddenly turned.

Russia officials have revealed that one of the 35 diplomats is a chef, who will be leaving America on Saturday, as two of their country clubs outside New York City and Maryland lie abandoned after President Obama's expulsion. On Thursday, Obama labeled the diplomats from the country's embassy in Washington, DC, and consulate in San Francisco 'persona non grata', giving them 72 hours to leave the US for their alleged meddling in the presidential election. According to a Facebook post by the Consulate General of Russia in San Francisco, dozens of the expelled diplomats and their families 'will fly back to Russia on Saturday'. A photo of the last dinner (main image) for some of the diplomats was posted on Facebook with the caption: 'It's so difficult to remain diplomatic; but we will.'

An ingenious band of Tasmanian friends built a watercraft (left) out of picnic table, four plastic drums, an umbrella, beer esky and a four horsepower motor to putter around Hobart Harbour on New Year's Eve. Social media users shared their similar efforts at improvised watercraft from all around Australia (right).

Welcome to 404, a remote city in the far-flung Gobi Desert which was built as a national secret in 1950s so that Communist China could make its first nuclear weapon during the height of the Cold War. As if it's to add to its mystery as a city that is never there, the city's code name - also the name of the nuclear plant it served - happens to be the responsive code one gets nowadays when a webpage cannot be found. Once thriving and full of life, the 500-acre city, located among the barren sands of central Asia, is now largely deserted. A set of incredible pictures, taken by a Chinese photographer who claims to grow up there, captures the haunting presence of today's 404 city - after all residents were relocated by the authority in 2005.

Saparman Sodimejo, also known as Mbah Gotho, has an Indonesian ID card that purports his date of birth is December 31, 1870. He celebrated his birthday with his living relatives in the Seragaen district of Central Java. Attending his party were his grandson Suryanto and wife Suwarni, with their children Erika Kurniawati and Anisa Kurniawati, among other younger surviving relatives. He has, unsurprisingly, outlived all 10 of his siblings as well as his four wives, the last of whom died in 1988.

Unofficially known as Stalin World, in Grutas Park monuments of Lenin, Marx and Stalin scatter the land, set amid beautiful wooded countryside in the south of Lithuania. Grutas Park was established to preserve the history of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic era, and as well as the sculpture garden's collection of 86 statues there are darker touches, such as guard towers and fragments of concentration camps. The park features statues and other relics of the Russian occupation of the country that, according to the park, lays bare 'the naked Soviet ideology which suppressed and hurt the spirit of our nation for many decades'. Grutas Park also holds an annual event on May 1 - a 'Soviet' celebration, when actors (pictured inset) dress up in Soviet official ceremonial garments, and take on the role of political leaders from the time.

The photos are in a new book on the animals featuring work by 65 of the world's top wildlife photographers. The likes of Art Wolfe, Frans Lanting and Michael Poliza have combined for the project in aid of conservation. The images were on display at La Galleria Pall Mall in London earlier this year. Founder Margot Raggett said she decided to start the project after reading a quote by Sir David Attenborough. He had asked: 'Are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?' But Ms Raggett said: 'My response to Sir David's question was an emphatic "No".' Pictured: Elephants (clockwise, from top left) at Amboseli National Park in Kenya, Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa, Victoria Falls in Zambia, Mashatu Game Reserve in Botswana and Kwazulu Natal in South Africa.

Firefighters were slowly lowering 21 people from an amusement park ride stuck 100 feet in the air for more than five hours Friday night at Southern California's Knott's Berry Farm, officials said. The riders, both children and adults, were harnessed to firefighters and hugging them tightly as they were lowered one-by-one from the Sky Cabin. The process could take hours before all are safely on the ground. Orange County Fire authorities and park officials have both said that those who remain stranded are not in danger. Firefighters are seen above as they lowered one of the stranded riders to safety.