Sydney / Australia
Fireworks Festival on New Year's Eve
Tsutomu Yokoyama/UD Trucks (Oceania) Pty Ltd.
Six months have passed since I moved to Sydney. My existing opinion of Australia before I came here was that it was a huge country with comparatively little demand and a very severe business environment. The abundance of both nature and materials created little sense of competition among the nationals. In particular, Sydney is warm in the winter and there is no sense of the four seasons. And for myself, who had spent three overseas assignments in the Northern Hemisphere, there was nothing striking about the place in my mind and I really didn't have a good impression of Australia.
What caught my attention at that time was the massive fireworks festival that became famous as a commemoration of the year 2000 millennium and the Olympics, which was held again last year, on a specially large scale, to celebrate 100 years since the forming of the federation. In particular, many Japanese probably watched the 2000 millennium commemoration fireworks on their televisions in Japan.
The Harbour of Sydney is one of the three most beautiful ports in the world. The fireworks were shot up from six locations, the Harbour Bridge, Cockatoo Island and the roofs of four skyscrapers in the city. The fireworks were shot up at two different times: for ten minutes from 9:00 p.m. and 15 minutes from midnight. The ten-minute program from 9:00 p.m. was planned so that children wouldn't stay up all night and revealed the considerations of the welfare state.
This year's fireworks festival marked the first time that a digital system was used and it was run with six different computers. A total of 88,000 fireworks were launched with 80,000 color combinations. From a ball as much as 60 centimeters in diameter, a firework was launched as high as 400 meters and spread as wide as 200 meters. This year's materials filled twelve 20-foot containers and used more than 10,000 wire cables. It was also reported that 6,000 hours were spent designing and preparing the fireworks. Each year more than 1 million people line the Harbour of Sydney and look forward positively to the new year while awash in the beautiful firework.
The theme of this year's fireworks was " Of Beauty Rich and Rare - Australia The Land." The dove - symbol of peace - on Harbor Bridge, " Uluru " the holy place of the aborigines (known also as Ayers Rock, a trapezoidal rock in the middle of the continent) and the Southern Cross were all transformed by the fireworks into a world of fantasy that surpassed nature. As we pray for world peace and face global environmental issues today, the fireworks seemed to convey the message to the world that we should conserve this wonderful nature.
Marubeni Group magazine "M-SPIRIT" VOl.8(March,2002)
