Family Passion Sparks Sydney's Spectacular New Year Fireworks

SYDNEY, , (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Dec, 2016 ) - When Fortunato Foti dreams up his designs for Sydney's dazzling New Year's Eve fireworks display, he's drawing on more than 200 years of pyrotechnics expertise.

The Foti family moved from Italy to Australia in the 1950s, but have been in the same business since 1793. This year, they are marking two decades as the brains behind Sydney's world-renowned visual extravaganza, which kicks off global celebrations.

The family's secret recipe, says fireworks director 51-year-old Foti, is passion -- lots of it. "It's in the bloodline, we start from a young age," adds Giovanni Foti, 29, who together with his father Vince, are two of the eight Fotis working for the family company.

"We are so used to fireworks. We start to love them -- then we start to try and make other people love them," he tells AFP, laughing. Sydney's New Year's Eve celebrations -- which take 15 months of planning and cost an estimated Aus$7 million (US$5 million) -- are billed as Australia's largest public event and it's hard not to see why.

More than one million spectators pack Sydney Harbour to watch the spectacle and a further one billion people watch on television. Yet much of the expertise behind the 12-minute-long star attraction -- the fireworks -- wasn't learnt through formal education, notes Fortunato Foti.

"It's been passed down from generation to generation and that's how I learnt it, that's how my brother learnt it, because there's no courses that do fireworks, there's no university," he says. "It's stories, recipes -- it's a bit like being a cook." The Fotis are involved in the entire process from designing the fireworks with a factory in mainland China to sending the pyrotechnics soaring through the night sky on December 31.