Tag: ‘Flagship’ Sydney Spectaculars

NSW Health is advising people who have been in the Sydney central business district (CBD) area (map above) on New Year’s Eve (NYE) to be on alert for symptoms of Legionnaires’ Disease after 7 people who have developed the disease spent time in the area in the last 3 weeks. This advice applies to anyone else who has been in the CBD since & including Christmas Eve (24 December).

Symptoms of Legionnaires’ disease can develop up to 10 days from the time of exposure to contaminated water particles in the air & include fever, chills, a cough and shortness of breath and may lead to severe chest infections such as pneumonia.

Those most at risk are people with underlying lung or other serious health conditions & people who smoke. People who develop Legionnaires’ Disease are diagnosed by a urine or sputum test and chest X-ray & usually require antibiotic treatment in hospital.

The southern boundary of the area pictured above is roughly in line with Sydney Town Hall/southern Hyde Park while the northern boundary is Sydney Harbour.

The only vantage point in the area of concern is the Cahill Expressway. However, most people would have been affected on the way to & from any vantage point if their path of travel took them through the CBD such as via the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Eastern Suburbs or ferries to/from Circular Quay. People who attended Sydney NYE vantage points such as Darling Harbour, Barangaroo Reserve, Observatory Hill Park, Dawes Point (Tar-ra Park), Hickson Road Reserve, Campbells Cove, The Rocks, West Circular Quay, East Circular Quay, the Sydney Opera House, The Domain: Tarpeian Lawn & the Royal Botanic Gardens: Bennelong Lawn, who are very likely to have traversed throughout the CBD from/to the event should also be especially cautious.

The 7 people who have already developed the disease, 3 women & 4 men, ranging in age from their 20’s to 70’s, independently visited locations in the CBD between Bathurst Street, Sussex Street, Elizabeth Street & Circular Quay in the 10 days prior to their symptoms. All have been admitted to hospital for treatment of pneumonia & have been identified with the Legionella bacteria that causes Legionnaires disease, which is often associated with contaminated cooling towers of large buildings. 

NSW Health environmental health officers are working closely with the City of Sydney to inspect cooling towers & review the CBD cooling towers’ maintenance records, which will help determine further towers to be inspected & sampled.  

Building managers with cooling towers are being contacted & informed of the cluster. Building owners should ensure that their cooling towers are operated & maintained in compliance with the NSW Public Health Regulation 2022.

People can be exposed to the Legionella bacteria if contaminated water particles from a cooling system are emitted into the air & breathed in. Legionnaires’ disease cannot be spread from person to person.

1 million people are expected to have attended Sydney New Year’s Eve 2023.

For more information about water cooling systems management contact your local public health unit on 1300 066 055 or https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/environment/legionellacontrol/Pages/default.aspx​

For more information on Legionnaires’ disease visit: https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/factsheets/Pages/legionnaires_disease.aspx

Sydney has, once again, showed the world how to live the party life after a spectacular conclusion to 2023 & welcome to 2024.

It began on a disappointing note though. The Fire Tug, announced to make its 1st appearance since New Year’s Eve (NYE) 2018, did not appear in the end.

However, the next event, the Smoking Ceremony, did go ahead & it was the biggest ever – with 3 vessels used for the 1st time.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge light show & pylon projection show started a surprise half an hour early before the visual broadcast began at 8:30pm, which revealed that at it’s beginning that Zan Rowe had finally been promoted to co-host of the entire broadcast after been the concert co-host since NYE2017. New roving co-host Concetta Caristo, after a brief appearance from the eastern roadway of the Sydney Harbour Bridge with Fortunato Foti, the Sydney NYE2023 Fireworks Director, in what was probably the 1st ever live television cross to the Bridge on NYE, partially co-hosted the last 90 minutes of the concert.

In another surprise, the message stick presentation from Indigenous elders to the City Of Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, took place at the end of the Welcome To Country rather than at the end of the Calling Country: Live Performance, as it has been done in the past. More surprisingly, it was relegated to the back of the stage rather than onstage and so only via television.

The Bluey & Bingo Moment followed but it started a couple of minutes early – potentially causing some revellers to miss the first 2 minutes of the Moment. This was probably because Bluey is an ABC-co-commissioned production for television &as a result, they were allowed to determine the precise timing of the Moment – for television audiences – which was a minute earlier than advertised for people down on the Harbour. It was live in both instances.

Calling Country then started. The live performance & fireworks were, once again, combined after being separate last edition. This meant it started at 8:57pm – 3 minutes before 9pm. It also opened with a film on television before 8:57pm – it’s unsure if this is technically part of Calling Country or just the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) broadcast. However, it was well-produced film that did set the stage for the main performances & displays, which were again, together with that film, the greatest annual expression of Indigenous creativity & culture on this continent.

The biggest surprise though came during Calling Country when it was revealed, for the 1st time since 2008, the Sydney Harbour Bridge catwalk was not used as part of the 9pm fireworks display.

When Calling Country finished, the ABC didn’t let the end of the segment slow the party – they went straight into the concert with a set by King Stingray. It allowed the flow to not be disrupted.

The rest of the event was standard Sydney including the iconic Midnight Fireworks. However, the ABC did slack in the broadcast of the Pink & Sydney Opera House 50th Anniversary Moments. The latter may have been affected by the late inclusion of Harry Connick Junior to the concert line-up, who appeared 25 minutes earlier than expected at around 11:05pm, but either way, the Moments only lasted a few minutes & could have been shown in full. It is unknown if the Moments had soundtracks either as the music played at the Concert, unlike previous years, was not stated by the hosts to have a special link to the Moments.

This, along with the message stick presentation during the Welcome To Country & the timing of the Bluey & Bingo Moment, gives a strong feeling that there is a push to make Sydney New Year’s Eve more of a ‘television event’, like Australia Day LIVE. Last night’s broadcast was ABC’s 10th since regaining the rights in 2013 and the City Of Sydney relies very heavily nowadays on the ABC for the event – the question now is are they starting to rely too much on them?

‘Television events’ are very different to ‘in-person’ events. ‘Australia Day LIVE’ is the prime example. Spectators at the event may have to watch a big screen to see the event for hours as the event is designed for viewers at home rather than at the event. Sometimes, there are rarely any ‘in-person’ segments but a heavy reliance on short films being broadcast to make ‘the event’. Also, if a commercial broadcaster is running it, spectators at the event would experience gaps in the event for television commercials. ABC is a public non-commercial broadcaster.

It should be noted the Moments never used to broadcast but ABC, until last night, started to broadcast them complete with synchronised music from the concert, to really bring ‘the event’ to people’s lounge rooms. The message stick presentation was also, until last night, primarily seen by the people at the ABC concert. This means these are not historically unusual but the trend is going the other way from a ‘broadcast of an event’ to an ‘event designed for television’ – and the latter is not good for spectators attending ‘in-person’ & thus, the actual ‘event’.

While the City Of Sydney did show the world how to live the party life this NYE, the ABC has started to head the other way after so many years of success since their disastrous NYE2013 & NYE2014 broadcasts. It was not a total disaster like those 2 broadcasts. In fact, overall, it was, again. a very well-produced broadcast. It’s just that they didn’t show everything like they used to & relegated part of a segment backstage, meaning it was all but perfect.

My rating for the Sydney NYE2023 event: 8/10

And lastly, great to see Genesis Owusu appear on the concert stage singing after pulling out at the last minute on NYE2021!

UPDATE (6:58PM): All vantage points in the city and North Sydney are now full. Please do not travel into these areas.

The City of Sydney & NSW Police is advising that multiple vantage points around the Sydney Harbour foreshore are now at full capacity ahead of tonight’s Sydney New Year’s Eve 2023 event.

Vantage Points that are full as at 6pm are:

• The Domain: Fleet Steps
• The Domain: Mrs Macquarie’s Point
• The Royal Botanic Gardens: Bennelong Lawn
• The Domain: Tarpeian Lawn
• Sydney Opera House
• East Circular Quay
• Blues Point
• Campbells Cove
• Hickson Road Reserve
• West Circular Quay
• Mary Booth Lookout/Bradfield Park

Other areas that are quickly filling, as of 6pm, include:

• The Rocks
• Barangaroo Reserve

Fireworks with ‘surprise shapes’ have been announced to feature in this year’s Sydney New Year’s Eve (NYE) 2023 fireworks displays as the Midnight Fireworks is revealed to be synchronised to a 3-part soundtrack.

There will also be pyrotechnic effects with new pastel & neon colours.

Sydney NYE2023 will be the Foti family’s 27th Sydney NYE & such is Sydney NYE2023 Fireworks Director, Fortunato Foti’s, passion about his work, he said he is undaunted by the challenge of creating something exciting & new each year:

We started working on Sydney New Year’s Eve back in 1997 & we quickly learnt what works best for a show of this size and scale.

We’ve reached a point where each year we walk away thinking ‘that was the best show we’ve ever done’ & really, that just spurs us on to do even better the following year.

This year, the displays will feature bright white, peach, lime, silver, gold, violet, yellow, burnt orange, pink & blue fireworks as well as the crowd favourite colour-changing fireworks & some other surprises.

Fortunato Foti, Sydney NYE2023 Fireworks Director

Planning since October 2022 and setting up since 19 December, the fireworks displays require a crew of 60 and 18 shipping containers of equipment & will use 8.5 tonnes of pyrotechnics fired with up to 25,000 igniters using 18,000 cues including from 184 different positions on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which has 7,000 cues alone. The 6 barges, a kilometre apart, along the Harbour & the 4 pontoons in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge & Opera House will use 9,000 cues.

There will be more than 80,000 pyrotechnic effects, 36,000 shooting ground-based effects & 13,000 aerial shells. The Sydney Opera House will use more fireworks than ever before during the Midnight Fireworks. In total, there are 58,000 individual firing shots, fired from 15 computers that require more than 25 kilometres of wires & cables.

Up to 10 tugs will be required to move the barges & pontoons into place throughout the day & night so the highest fireworks can reach their height of 380 metres into the sky.

Fortunato Foti is a 7th generation pyrotechnician whose family has been making fireworks since 1793. Among the very experienced staff of Foti International Fireworks in helping create this year’s fireworks are 15 Foti family members including Fortunato, his 3 children as well as his nieces, nephews, brothers & cousins.

Fortunato also said music is a critical component in the creation of fireworks displays of this scale:

We design the show to flow with the mood of the music, in essence aiming to make the fireworks appear like they’re dancing to the music.

We’ve meticulously planned the 9pm & Midnight Fireworks to perfectly synchronise with each show’s specially created soundtrack.

Fortunato Foti, Sydney NYE2023 Fireworks Director

The Midnight Fireworks will be synchronised to a bespoke soundtrack created by THE SWEATS that ranges from driving beats & contemporary electronica, through to elegant & lush choral moments.

It took roughly 2 months to compose, record and produce the Midnight Fireworks soundtrack.

We’ve been working with Foti International to create another spectacular show this year using pyrotechnic effects that will amaze & delight crowds.

While everyone is enjoying the festive season, the crew behind NYE is busy loading barges, buildings & the Harbour Bridge with thousands of fireworks and pyrotechnics.

They are working tirelessly for a night to remember with their incredible & innovative fireworks displays.

Clover Moore, City Of Sydney Lord Mayor