Sydney kicks off New Year’s Eve celebrations with spectacular family-friendly firework show – but the best is yet to come!
- Sydney has started the countdown to 2019 with stunning 9pm fireworks display
- The eight-minute long extravaganza included special design from student, 12
- More than one million people have packed harbour foreshore for New Year’s Eve
Sydney’s countdown to 2019 is well and truly underway with the first of two New Year’s Eve fireworks displays lighting up the harbour city.
As the clock struck 9pm on Monday, Sydney’s traditional family-friendly fireworks spectacle turned the city’s gloomy skies into a kaleidoscope of colour.
Rain had drenched the more than one million revellers who packed the harbour foreshore just before 7pm but cleared in time for the display.
Sydney’s New Year’s Eve family-friendly fireworks lit up the harbour city at 9pm
The eight-minute long extravaganza included peach and lime fireworks for the first time
Revellers were forced to put up umbrellas and clad themselves in rain ponchos as the CBD battled showers and thunder.
Peach and lime fireworks made their appearance for the first time during the eight-minute long extravaganza and there was also a special design from a 12-year-old student from South Australia.
Dhrithi won the ABC’s design your own firework competition, with a jewel of the sea blue firework which included a glittering white centre.
Fireworks erupted over the harbour, from the east to the west of the harbour bridge.
Rain which had drenched the city on Monday evening cleared in time for the 9pm fireworks display
The family-friendly fireworks display turned the city’s gloomy skies into a kaleidoscope of colour
Attention now turns to Sydney’s world-famous midnight fireworks.
Some 100,000 individual pyrotechnic effects will be launched above Sydney Harbour, set to the theme of ‘Pulse of Sydney’.
The theme is inspired by the city’s multicultural community.
There will be spherical fireworks inspired by Saturn and gold and silver firework cascades, in a tribute to Aretha Franklin.
But it not just the fireworks which will colour the night sky – a stunning light show is set to unfold, with the Harbour Bridge, Opera House and several vessels on the harbour illuminated.
Sydney New Year’s Eve lighting designer Ziggy Zeigler said ‘the lights are all about keeping it fun and vibrant, not something over the top’.
‘They’ll be moving from one side of the bridge to the other, to use the bridge’s full shape,’ he said.
‘Each year we try to see how far we can go and we’ve been thinking about this new effect for some years.’
An estimated one billion people across the globe will watch the spectacle unfold.