Riverfire with Ganeesh

So to end the Brisbane Festival in September, Brisbane celebrates with fireworks. Now, I’m not a huge fireworks fan. I can take them or leave them, but when you have friends who live in the Brisbane river and have front row seats to the fire works, you don’t refuse, even if it means fighting you way across town because they closed the footbridge over the river (this year it too had fireworks on it).

Please excuse all the photos from tonight. It’s hard to take a steady shot while you’re bobbing on a boat!

 

We settled in early- the jetty for the moorings closed at 6. This gave us plenty of time to watch the banks of the city gardens fill up with families and sample some wine. We also discovered that my hosts had a new addition to their boat- a nearly 2 feet tall statue of Ganeesh they they found floating down the Brisbane river. Ganeesh is lucky, so they brought it on board.

Nestled gently next to the propane…

I also met Alissa and Bryce from A to B to Sea, a couple blogging about living their nautical dream of renovating a boat and sailing around the world. Alissa made a gorgeous cheesy garlic bread and blogs about cooking in her tiny galley, as well as the misadventures Aquabat throws at them.

Cooking in tiny kitchens, like this one. Mind your head.

The annual flyovers from fighter jets and helicopters did their usual thing. It was loud. Really loud.

Now Riverfire isn’t your 5 minutes of lights kind of deal. It’s a highly synchronised affair that takes place in several locations along the Brisbane river. The focus tends to be on the Storey Bridge (pictures above) but there are fireworks platforms set up on this river near it, at Southbank, on the Goodwill Bridge and on the rooftops of surrounding city buildings. During the event we were surrounded by fireworks.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

La Rejouissance.

 

 

RIVERFIRE

We hadn’t seen some lovely friends of ours in forever, so when we were invited to have dinner and drinks with them last night for Riverfire (a huge city party with fireworks synchronized in three places, helicopters and fighter jets, music and food), we couldn’t say no.

Oh yeah. They live on a boat. On the river (as opposed to all those skyscraper boats).

 

 

 

 

 

We muddled our way across town, avoiding first the Southbank fenced off area, which had security guards checking bags for alcohol (and we had beer), then taking the long way around the City Gardens via QUT because the river path had been closed off due to Parklife festival. We were rowed out to our friends boat and, after finding our sea legs, settled down for an amazing night with a perfect view.

 

 

 

At 7pm, the fireworks started. We were positioned perfectly to see everything. I’m not usually a big fireworks fan, but I was totally in awe of the beauty and fun of the fireworks this year. Normally, there are people lining the banks of the City Gardens (you can see the bank empty in the photo above with my friend rowing back to shore) but because of Parklife, it was quite quiet. You know, except for the fireworks noise. You could feel the rumble easily on the water.

Perty.