Each major city in Australia holds New Year’s Eve celebrations, usually accompanied by a fireworks display.

The most prominent celebration in the country is Sydney Harbour New Year’s Eve of two fireworks shows — the evening “Family Fireworks” at 9:00 p.m., and the main fireworks at midnight.

Sydney Harbour Bridge is a focal point of the show, via pyrotechnics launched from the bridge, as well as lighting displays that illuminate it during the show. Fireworks are set off from multiple other pints along the middle of the harbour from barges.

Local Sydney councils also hold firework displays. The northern hill at Sydney Park, 5 km south of the CBD, was a good vantage point, always crowded by thousands of people, to see many of them.

Over the years, local councils have invaded these spontaneous public gatherings by moulding them into uncreative, organised events flattened by mind-numbing, doof-doof, washing-machine rumble. Commercial conformity killing community creativity for “consoomers” to herd in and graze.

Musically, Sydney is a very uncreative place.

It embraces the safe and commercial. The music scene is largely funded by gambling. For rock, doof-doof and rap audiences it’s a race to get drugged or drunk to keep vital against swirling strident soundscapes dead-deafened by deludedly curatorial drones.

YEAR’S

In 1976, the Sydney Committee decided to repackage the failing Waratah Festival into the Festival of Sydney. They agreed that New Year’s Eve should launch the new festival as a ‘big bang affair’. This made New Year’s Eve official in Sydney for the first time.

EVE

Gloucester Park, a racecourse in central Perth, is the largest and most recognized display in the Western Australian city. In Brisbane events are held at Southbank. At night, 50,000 Australians gather at sites around the Brisbane River to watch a fireworks display. In Melbourne, hundreds of thousands of Australians come to the Central Business District to see the fireworks.  In the South Australian capital of Adelaide, events are held at both Rymill Park in the city, Semaphore and at Glenelg beach.

Here’s TV coverage of the Sydney New Year fireworks in 2021. TV coverage of the Sydney fireworks has two embarrassing traditions,

1. Struggling hosts (with the exception of Lawrence Mooney),
2. Cringey muzak smothering the exciting atmosphere of the fireworks going off and the cheering of millions.

Millions of dollars are spent on the fireworks. The talent and craft of the pyrotechnicians is extraordinary as you’ll see in the clip. The insta-music soundtrack is like putting a butterfly decal over the Mona Lisa. “Here’s the butterfly decal, everybody! Yay!”

The video is best watched with the sound off…

27 DECEMBER PLAY LIST