Thursday, September 06, 2007

Eclipse and Riverfire

The past couple weeks have seen a total Lunar eclipse as well as the annual Riverfestival.

The eclipse was last Tuesday night (the 28th) and, sadly I was working. I did get out and get a look at it, but my roommate was able to get some photos on his camera (which, incidentally, is the same as mine). Here's a good one:



The Riverfestival is kicked off with a fireworks show that takes in the entire city. If you look at a map of the city, you'll notice that it's effectively on a peninsula, where the river makes a sharp turn. On the east side of the city, you have the Story Bridge, and around the bend, on the west side, there is the Victoria bridge. The distance from the Story Bridge to the Victoria Bridge is probably 2 kilometers (a bit more than a mile). Here's a map. The bridge in red is the Story Bridge, and the one in blue is the Victoria. The green "x" note where the fireworks barges were positioned. (For reference, I was standing in about the center of the area noted as the Southbank Parklands - nearer the Victoria Bridge.)



The fireworks were preceded by a short demonstration by the RAAF aerobatic team, The Roulettes. They did some rolls and loops and things right over the river. (Clicking on any of the pictures below will open the full resolution file. These are large, so are not recommended for dialup connections.)



Once the fireworks started, the scale of the show quickly became apparent. In addition to the barges, the Victoria and Story Bridges themselves and one of the bridges between (The Goodwill Bridge - the pedestrian bridge which is immediately south of the Victoria which links the Southbank Parklands with the Botanical Garden) as well as about 10 buildings in the city and south of the river were used as platforms. I was very impressed by the scale of the show. Easily, this was the biggest fireworks display I've seen. Here are some shots (if you look in the lower-right corner of som eof these, you can see the fireworks on the other side of the peninsula through the buildings):











The finale of the show is when the RAAF F-111 fighter jets fly overhead doing what they call a "dump and burn." Essentially, what they do here is dump fuel from the aircraft, and light it with their afterburners. The result of this is a huge fireball trailing the aircraft. I got a clean shot of the fireball, but it's not a very close one, so you can't see how large the fireball really is.



If you want to see a closeup, check this link out: OurBrisbane.Com

Also, I found a little video: From www.F-111.net