Perth Skyworks 2007 and Australia day

Well, Australia day has been and gone and as I indicated in this post yesterday the photographs didn’t turn out that great (click here for the blurry results).

Still it gives you an idea and watching the display in the flesh, the fireworks were spectacular.

The 700,000+ crowds that were expected didn’t materialise but some are putting this down to the heat! 

It must have been the warmest day we’ve experienced since moving to Australia yesterday.

Even at about 9pm it must have still been over 40 degrees Celsius last night. Even though the sun had set, sitting outside in the calm evening breeze was like sitting in the path of a hair dryer.  The net result of all this heat is that many people decided to stay within the confines of a nicely air conditioned pub or restaurant for most of the night..

In addition, the lower turn out may have also been down to the fact that for the first time, Freemantle (much to the displeasure of the Perth Mayor), Hillarys and a few other popular spots held their own Australia day fireworks celebrations.

About 30,000 made the Freemantle display which was sold to the Western Australia public as the firework display for families (unlike the firework display for drunken louts on the Perth foreshore I suppose).

In the end, all wasn’t bad on the foreshore. Despite 3.5 tonnes of booze being confiscated, the revellers down on the foreshore were pretty well behaved.

Some were treated by the folks from St Johns Ambulance for heat exhaustion and excessive boozing, but in general the night went ahead pretty uneventfully apart from a minor fire on the river.

According to the news, two of the barges used for launching fireworks from the river caught on fire.

Burning barges and a few tonnes of unexploded fireworks don’t make a good mix apparently so a few hundred spectators had to be evacuated due to the risks of smoke inhalation and I guess the possibility of having their limbs blown off by the odd stray firework.

It was all very exciting if the stories in today’s Western Australian newspaper are anything to go by!

As for us; our night was spent watching the Skyworks display from the balcony outside our bedroom.

The evening started when a couple of helicopters carried a huge and I mean MASSIVE Australian flag through the sky.

As you’ll see by these pictures, it wasn’t particular clear and I’m unsure why they didn’t do the flag display whilst it was still light.

Still, it was pretty impressive and was a good opener to the main firework display.  Makes you wonder what the hell they will do with a flag so big now the display has been completed, somehow though, I don’t think it’s the last we’ll be seeing of it

We watched the firework display again late last night on TV and although we did miss some of the action, in the main we caught most of the big bangs from our balcony.

Not the sort of thing you see everyday (especially in Bradford) so generally speaking a very enjoyable and very cool experience was had by all.

Perhaps next year when Junior is a little older we’ll all wonder down to the foreshore to see ALL the sights, sounds and burning barges first hand!

PS. If anyone has some good tips on how to take great photo’s of fireworks please feel free to share them

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