Dust Storm 24th September 2009

It came over in the morning. Looking outside it was as if you had orange tinted glasses on. There were people outside with their cell phones taking pictures of what they couldn’t see – me included!!!

The dust storm was caused by extremely strong winds over South Australia and inland NSW after a long period of drought. The winds lifted the dust and soil from the dry ground and whipped it thousands of kilometres through the air, to Sydney and then to Brisbane.

It’s been estimated that, when the storm was at its strongest, about 16,000 tonnes of dirt were dropped on SE Queensland every hour. That’s a lot of dirt!!!

Riverfire Brisbane 2009

Barge loaded with fireworks, there were several of these all dotted along the river / Roulette air show.


September the 12th had us heading down to Southbank’s river edge to experience a pyrotechnic display like nothing we have ever seen before.
To celebrate the opening of the annual Brisbane Festival each September, Brisbane is treated to "Riverfire", a half hour of pyrotechnics stretching for a couple of kilometres along the river from the Story Bridge to Victoria Bridge. 600,000 people were expected to turn up to see the display.

We were entertained before dark with the Roulettes air show……. It was all truly spectacular. Then the F-111’s flying over, followed by amazing fireworks & finishing with the F-111’s sweeping low over our heads to perform the ‘dump & burn’. (also known as the Zippo after the cigarette lighter).

The F-111s are being replaced by Super Hornets next year and the dump and burn is a thing of the past. The F-111 is the only plane capable of this because of the positioning of the fuel dump between the plane’s engines.


We were truly Wowed – check out the video……