Brisbane River Fire

While we were waiting at the riverstage... waiting...

The annual Brisbane River Festival began with a (literal) bang on 12 September with the F-111 dump and burn. This is my 2nd time watching the fireworks live in Brisbane. The first was riverfire 2 years ago, where we caught it from Kangaroo Point. This year, we went early, parked at Roma St Parklands and had our home-prepared picnic style dinner at the park and then walked 30 mins to the city Botanical Garden's river stage by 6pm to settle ourselves in a nice spot to watch fireworks and the Chris Isaak concert.

We were happy to get a spot not far from the stage. It was a cool (cold later in the night) evening. We chilled out for an hour while waiting for the fireworks to begin at 7pm. (We read that we could not bring food in. Otherwise, we would have a picnic dinner! But hey, the guys allowed us to bring in our half-eaten chips and drinks in anyhow!)

You know it is 7pm when you hear the F111 flying closer. With that, the fireworks began! We felt so fortunate that we were where we were. We sat/lay down on the grass (on a picnic mat) and watch the big sky with fireworks. Where we were, we could see fireworks sprouting from 3 locations (there were more along the river, from tall buildings in the city and from the river). If you can imagine, the fireworks were at my 11 o'clock, 3 o'clock and 5 o'clock location. It felt like we were surrounded by fireworks! The sky was simply so beautiful - black with colourful sparkles of light.

I figured that was one of the best places to view the fireworks, without having to squeeze with the massive crowds at Southbank and Kangaroo Point and the Story Bridge area... not unless you have own an apartment or penthouse along the river (which is my dream!) which you can watch it at the privacy of your own pad or enjoy it with a few friends invited to your pad.

Video clip taken with my mobile phone, which shows you how we were surrounded by fireworks

The 30-minute fireworks presentation ended with another F111 performance. It was only now that I reckon Brisbane fireworks are better and a lot more than those I see back in Singapore. Fireworks in Singapore goes for 15 minutes maximum (I think). The river fire fireworks has accompliment music (if you tune in to the radio or watch it live on tv from home) in which the fireworks seem to 'dance' along to the music/songs (we watched the recorded version on tv at home a few days after). Anyway I heard that the Sydney's New Year's Eve fireworks are much better... Hope to see it in person one day...

Chris Isaak's concert began 1 hour after the fireworks. By which we saw more and more people congregating to the river stage as they move from various different locations to where we were after the fireworks. By then, we were really glad we 'choop' the place earlier so that we could enjoy the concert comfortably within the boundaries of our picnic mat :) The highlight of the concert was when Chris decides to walk into the audience and singing along at the same time... and stopping to take photos and shook hands with people. Just as I wished, he walked along to where we were. I stick my hand out into his path and he shook my hand! Hee hee but hubby was busy videoing him that he did not realise that and hence nothing was captured on photo or video :p

Very thankful for the relaxing evening well spent... especially after we spent a couple of hours in our garden weeding away earlier that day :)