There were only a few minor problems. One concerned a bus load of professional armchair cosmologists who travelled three hours west of the city to see the southern sky for the first time, took in the area from Scorpio to Carina and returned to their hotel complaining about the bad luck of getting so much persistent cloud on their one free night.
The more serious matter involved a diplomatic incident centred around a disgruntled group of US professionals who had been amateurs in their misspent youth and who sought refugee status in Australia on the grounds of Enron and like corporations infringing their civil liberties by trashing US skies with light pollution.
This brought an angry response from US ambassador Hank Gofer who said that Astronomers only had to visit his home town of Crowfeed Texas to be really kept in the dark.
He said that everyone on the town council from Mayor Hawgsbref to Honorary Dog Catcher, and Master Chef, Ying Chee were tireless in keeping the lights of Crowfeed turned down low from dusk til dawn, but did not appreciate Astronomer Ronald McDonald of the McDonald Observatory's response that this was because Crowfeed did not look very attractive in good light - or in any light.
The matter was quietly settled by granting dual citizenship to the group, and to Ambassador Gofer.
Apart from the usual papers on astral travel and alien colonoscopic interventions, some really good papers on cutting-edge research on dark matter, gamma-ray bursters, extra-Solar planets and adaptive optics were presented. As I personally could not understand a word of them you will just have to wait until Sky and Telescope figures them out and publishes some summaries - If they ever figure them out.