Creamboy does not know what cracker night is. How is this possible? It is the night when everyone buys firecrackers, has bonfires and lets them off at great risk to themselves and others, this is possibly why it was banned. It was the best night of the year.
There was unbelievable general merriment. Whole streets and families would join forces to try and have the biggest bonfire. There were fires everywhere, you could see them for miles. Everyone had a go at letting off crackers unless you were very small and restricted to running around with sparklers. Catherine wheels were a great favourite of mine, they made a loud whizzz screech sort of a noise and threw flames and colours alarmingly close to you no matter how quickly you ran away after lighting them. I still love sparklers, sometimes I carry a packet around in my handbag, this has come in handy on more than one occasion. Sparklers are amazing whizzy sparkly fun and should be used more often in day to day situations.
I have fond memories of racing around in paddocks trying to catch the parachute men and collecting the funny plastic shapes that were left after the cracker exploded. My brother and I used to hoard and compare the plastic shapes for weeks afterwards.
In more recent years my brother went on a trip to Canberra and bought fireworks. We set them off in the bush near our house one night when we were having a party (it was not bushfire season). To make proceedings more interesting we all dressed up in camouflage and went in single file running along bending over, to avoid being visible like roadies do at concerts, and dodging from tree to tree. One of my friends did a spectular dive roll at one point. You can imagine our great disappointment when the fireworks failed to explode.
At a different party we once lit a helicopter style of cracker, it went off with an incredible enormous bang that flexed the kitchen windows and lit up the sky, it went straight up into the air and landed in the neighbour's pool where it exploded whilst making simultaneous screeching and splashing banging noises. All the dogs everywhere went mental howling and barking, lights went on up and down the street and all of us at the party made a mad dash into the house, drew the curtains and turned the lights off. A marvelous time was had by all.
