SeaFire hits new height
SEAFIRE in Surfers Paradise is now bigger than the city’s largest New Year’s Eve celebration when it comes to the size of both crowd and its fireworks bang.
The success of the annual pyrotechnics showpiece – Australia’s only international fireworks competition – has ignited plans for the spectacular to be held over two nights next year.
Surfers Paradise Alliance CEO Mike Winlaw said SeaFire was now the largest single-day public spectacle on the city’s events calendar.
“It beats New Year’s Eve in Surfers Paradise for size and for the amount of fireworks detonated,” he said.
“The crowd on Saturday was more than 10,000 people up on New Year’s Eve, which has three shows spread across the night.
“With SeaFire, those three shows are compressed into a short time.”
A record crowd of 82,000 packed the tourist precinct on Saturday night to see some of the world’s leading pyrotechnic producers set off more than six tonnes of fireworks from three barges anchored off the Surfers shoreline.
“With more people coming each year, we’re going to have to look at what we can do,” Mr Winlaw said.
“There’s a bit of a discussion going on about having two international teams compete on Friday to decide who challenges the reigning titleholders on Saturday.”
Families began pouring into the precinct earlier in the day to enjoy the Village Roadshow superheroes activation and jag a prime position for the after- dark spectacle’s program of three massive nine-minute pyrotechnic productions.
“We had 600m of beach blocked off for sound and there were people 200m either side of that,” Mr Winlaw said.
“That’s 1km of people on the beach.”
The cracker crowd was well above both the 60,000 people organisers expected and the seasonal visitor average.
This year’s spectacle saw reigning Seafire champions Hunan Qinghai Fireworks Group, from China, trumped by an impressive display from event debutants Platinum Fireworks Inc from the Philippines.
While they weren’t competing, Australian team Skylighter FireworX also showed off its prowess during an explosive nine-minute exhibition.
Mr Winlaw said the alliance was keen to capitalise on the rapidly growing popularity of the event, presented in conjunction with Wyndham Vacation Resorts Asia Pacific.
“We’re talking about expanding and have been learning a bit from the Philippines team,” he said. “Their activation in Manilla Bay (the annual Philippine International Pyromusical Competition, aka the World Pyro Olympics) is bigger – they run it every Friday and Saturday night over four weeks.”