Nothing like we’ve ever experienced, Territory Day was awesome! It was like walking through a war zone with fireworks firing continuously from all directions, with the odd misfire and sideways travelling fireworks heading in your vicinity. It is so exciting and risky to set off your own fireworks. I guess fun and danger go hand in hand. A few from our crew suffered some minor burns, typical of a hard day’s work shooting as many fireworks as you can as fast as you can. Most years there are cases of severe burns, fires, and even property damage when drunk people set off fireworks inside a small apartment (internal joke).

The professional public fireworks display at Mindil Beach was trully impressive. Much bigger bangs than the supermarket variety, thankfully they all traveled straight up rather than towards crowds of people. The display was tremendous, I think the best I’ve seen – impressive for a small city of only around 130,000 people. There was a barge out at sea and five trailers lined along the beach where fireworks were launched from. When firing together they filled your entire field of view with fireworks. And the backdrop of the setting sun over the calm waters at Mindil Beach made it even better.

Now that I have some experience with pyrotechnics, may I suggest placing your fireworks on flat, hard surfaces. Do not stack them on top of something or place it on the side of a sand dune. Each launching firework gives a kick, like a gun recoil, which has a tendency to trip over a fireworks multi-shot pack if it is not on a hard, flat surface. Next thing you know there’s sideways fireworks heading for innocent bystanders!

In this video Sharni eventually launches a Ladybug into the heavens with great success.

Here James cracks under pressure and fails to ignite the second firework pack, which then catches fire from the first pack and begins shooting fireworks sideways.