Industry trade shows aren’t generally spectator events, unless you’re selling something that is spectacular — and it doesn’t get much more spectacular than a rural fireworks show touted as Australia’s best outside Sydney on New Year’s Eve.

Last week, about 6,000 people gathered around the perimeter of the showground in Gunning, NSW, perched on car bonnets and camping chairs. 

The grassy oval was almost empty, apart from a few boxes scattered in the centre of the oval.

But those boxes — or rather, what was inside them — were what everyone was there for. Because fireworks don’t look like much in the box or in a catalogue; to get the whole experience, they must be seen, heard, smelt and felt. 

And why not make a festival of it?

What sparked the Gunning Fireworks Festival?

Martin Brady from Fireworks Australia started the Gunning Fireworks Festival 20 years ago, as a way of showing new fireworks to industry buyers and pyrotechnicians. 

At the time, fireworks were expensive in Australia and limited to the big events — and Mr Brady wanted to change that.

So, he got his explosives licence from a mine site in WA, and started doing shows for clients from the local golf course.

“My old man had a toy shop, and they used to sell fireworks in Canberra. And then we thought, it can’t be that hard to do firework shows. We didn’t really know anything about it at all,” he recalled.

“I just went to China and met people who made them, and we conjured up some fireworks and brought them to Australia. And that was a bit of a revolution here.

In the early days of the industry shows, he told the locals, “Hey, if you want to watch, come on over!” — and they did, in droves. The road turned into a parking lot, and it took 40 minutes to get off the Hume Highway.

To handle the massive crowds, the festival soon moved to the Gunning Showground, which also gave them space for food trucks and carnival rides. 

These days, the evening’s entertainment is split in two — first, a full pyromusical show, then an hour-long demonstration, where each firework is ignited one by one to show their full effects.

“I originally thought this wouldn’t be popular with the public, but they love it,” a bemused Mr Brady said.

What are the pyros looking for?

The VIP section of the showground — a roped off area lined with plastic chairs — is reserved for clients and buyers within the fireworks industry, who are keen to see what Fireworks Australia has designed for the summer season ahead. 

Around 150 pyrotechnicians from all over Australia and New Zealand spend the evening catching up with each other and marking their catalogues with what’s going to make the cut for their order. 

Ryan Mason runs a family-owned pyrotechnics business on the side of his engineering business in Warren, New South Wales. 

He said that, over the years, regulations, insurance, and transport have sent costs through the roof. With COVID, the spark almost went out for small pyro businesses like his. 

However, with a boost in funding from local councils across Australia, business might be booming again.

Mr Mason is at the Gunning Fireworks Festival looking for state-of-the-art, value-for-money fireworks.

Christopher Pearson is also buying fireworks for a show.

He got his start in the industry working with fireworks designer Syd Howard for Expo ’88, and said what he sees at Gunning is “basically what the public will see for New Year’s Eve”.

“It’s got to excite me, as simple as that, because I’m there to excite the public,” Mr Pearson said.

“If I’m not excited by new fireworks, I won’t buy them, and I won’t put them in my shows. 

What does it take to wow?

From a factory and storage facility just outside of Canberra, Fireworks Australia import and distribute fireworks to licensed technicians, build shows, and train people in pyrotechnics. 

But the business of wowing people is complicated — in fact, it takes about 18 months from ‘go to woah’ to get a new firework into a show.

When the team designs an effect they want to see in a firework, they take the concept to their Chinese-based manufacturers and work with their chemists and technicians to perfect it, travelling there a few times a year to test and tweak the idea.

The last few months of the process is all about quality control. 

“A large batch of them has to be taken away, used, filmed, weighed, and analysed to ensure [they’re] okay,” Mr Brady said.

Once in Australia, the explosives are stored in “bunker-like” warehouses with “chunky, thick walls and big steel girders, to protect the fireworks as much as to protect people outside it”.

And that’s important because there are thousands of cases of fireworks in these warehouses.

The names on these cases say it all: WTF Boom, Window Shaker, Pink Missile and Terminator.

There’s even a combination box known as Shitload — filled with all the best bangers, so when someone doesn’t know what to buy, they can “Get a Shitload”. 

One of these combo boxes is destined for the only place in Australia where you can purchase fireworks without a licence or pyrotechnician training — the Northern Territory.

Fireworks Australia sends 50 semi-trailer loads of fireworks north every year for Territory Day on July 1. These are the only consumer fireworks they sell in Australia. 

“It’s massive and crazy, but very popular,” Mr Brady said, adding that these fireworks are the most rigorously tested because of their intended recipients. 

Is there a future in fireworks, or will drones or lasers take over?

Mr Brady said the industry is constantly improving, changing and developing new ideas, and Fireworks Australia often design new fireworks by drawing on art, performance, and ideas from around the world.

“At the moment we’re working on a range of products for gender reveals,” Mr Brady said.

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“I didn’t even know that was a thing until recently.”

He said that people who run events are also happy to try lasers or drones or other ways of putting on a big show.

But while drones and lasers can add elements to the entertainment, Mr Brady thinks they will never cut it when it comes to the visceral experience of a fireworks show.

He’s also confident they will always return to fireworks as the only way to end the show. 

“People love it at the end of the event. It’s very dramatic,” Mr Brady said. 

And, as cheers make their way around the Gunning Showground as the 2024 festival concludes, the crowd seems to agree.