River Fire...Best Firework show EVER!

In September every year, Brisbane celebrates its city festival. This year it wrapped up on the first weekend of the kids' Spring Break.  All month they have shows celebrating the diversity and excitement of Brisby.  They have all kinds of music, plays, operas, symphonies etc.  They also do markets, craft shows etc. and at the end of the month the festival ends with an ENORMOUS firework and laser light show on the Brisbane river that runs right through the middle of the city. The event is called Riverfire-- and rightfully so!

This show is seriously amazing.  I've never seen anything like it.  They shoot fireworks off the bridges that cross the river, off the buildings on the other side of the river and even off barges and small boats floating in the river.  

One of the coolest parts about the show is that all the lights (lasers and fireworks) are reflected off the water's surface so it practically doubles the effect.  They had HUGE fireworks and hundreds of them.  I wish our pix could do it even a 1/10 of the justice it deserves.

 We had to get there REALLY early to save ourselves a great seat and we had awesome seats.  We met our friends the Moons at Southbank downtown and just pretty much hung out from 11am til dark.  And by the time the show started it was wall to wall people.  Hundreds of thousands line the river to watch the show and we held our ground for front row seats baby!

Before the show while it was still light.  They had all kinds of cool things to see.  Every 30 minutes they had fighter jets fly by. They would zoom past and nearly cause everyone to go deaf.  They were so fast and so loud.  They would spin and turn and then fly back.  Parker thought they were awesome.  

They also had Apache helicopters come and practically land on the river surface.  They had their big guns blazing and they were almost staring the people on the bridge in the eyes.  It was cool to see them up so close.  The propellers were causing huge waves in the water.  It was really fun.

Southbank is so much fun.  They have the ferris wheel, and all kinds of shops to look at, so we killed a lot of time looking around and playing in shifts while others held our spots. Luckily we found some vendors selling glow sticks...what's a firework show without glow sticks???













When the sun went down, the "pushers and butters" came out.  Oh nothing bugs more than people who decide to show up at the last minute and push in and get the best seats.

It reminded me of the good old days of Black Friday with the sisters and mom.  "Uh-uh, buddy don't even think of squishing your way in."  I was wishing I had my sisters-- particularly J3-- to help me hold my ground. I know she would've had some choice words and inventive names to call such individuals!  In the end...we had the best seats and we let the people behind us fight it out.  

 Yah, I really can't even do this event justice.  I got some cool videos with the explosions and the music.  But the photos just can't capture it.  We thought it was interesting that they were all rocking out to songs like "Born in the USA" and other obviously American jams.  It's interesting, they work very hard to embrace the American culture.  They love it.  But that night...Australia was amazing and Brisbane Riverfire was exactly the place to be!  We love Brisby!!!!