When it comes to New Year’s Eve fireworks the challenge for Peter Daley is making it different each year.
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He has been behind the end of year displays in Bendigo since 1999.
It was the eve of the millennium that gave him a leg up into the pyrotechnic-game.
With Melbourne councils throwing their money into firework displays to mark 2000, no urban operators would travel to Bendigo. So, Mr Daley was able to enter the market.
He’d been doing a few events that year, but New Year's Eve was big enough to get his business rolling. Now, he is the main pyrotechnician in regional Victoria.
An electrician by day, Mr Daley’s reasons for beginning his business were simple:
“Who doesn’t like fireworks?"
You've just got to keep thinking outside the box.
- Peter Daley
It takes Mr Daley about 30 hours to put a display together.
He uses a computer program to design the show.
“You try and change it every year. Producers are pretty good at the market,” Mr Daley said.
“It’s just where the creativity comes in.
“You’ve just got to keep thinking outside the box.”
It’s hard work though. On top of the design-time Mr Daley spends up to 10 hours setting up the display.
Then he’ll be at the Poppet Head in Rosalind Park until one or two am cleaning up.
Since Mr Daley began in the firework business things have changed a lot.
Manufacturers have kept creating new, and more interesting fireworks as audiences tired of small flashes of red and green.
And the fireworks have become more dangerous.
Mr Daley said where once fireworks were created for the home user, they are now much more dangerous than they used to be.
He said people who use illegal fireworks don’t normally understand how modern fireworks work, and how to use them safety. It’s this that leads to injury and death.
Victorians were warned before New Year’s Eve not to risk setting off their own illegal fireworks.
In Victoria it is illegal for anyone other than a licensed pyrotechnician to be in possession of, or use, fireworks.
In 2018 WorkSafe seized about 4000 kilograms of illegal fireworks.
Mr Daley and his team do not light any of the fireworks by hand, but use a computer program for ignition.
“The problem is people don’t know what they’re doing,” Mr Daley said.
“People just don’t understand what they’ve got.”
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