A selection of the most awesome photographs of RAAF jets over downtown Brisbane yesterday.
Riverfire is the big finale to the Brisbane Festival, Queensland’s three week arts and cultural festival held each year at the end of September in eastern Australia.
Aviation-wise, the event is quite famous for the flypasts and aerial displays of Royal Australian Air Force aircraft.
Many readers will probably remember the RAAF F-111 AArdvaark’s iconic “dump and burn“ passes performed from 2006 to 2010 at night, with the jet igniting with afterburners the fuel dumped through a nozzle positioned between the two engines, as part of the Festival. With the retirement of the F-111, the Australian F/A-18s (including the EA-18G Growlers) and the C-17A Globemaster III have taken the leading role in the flypasts over Brisbane.
In 2018, for example, the C-17 literally “stole the stage” performing its flypast at a much lower altitude resulting in tons of videos that were posted online. As you may remember, while the majority of those who watched the flypast in 2018, either in person or on the Internet, found it “cool”, some others were scared by the sight of a big aircraft zipping between the skyscrapers according to the local media outlets. Some media called the flypast “9/11 stuff” and said people were “terrified” by the “unnecessarily stupid and dangerous stunt” as the display was defined by those who slammed it on the social media. However, all the criticism seemed way too exaggerated, as I commented in a post published here last year.
This year a No. 1 Squadron F/A-18F Super Hornet and a No. 36 Squadron C-17A Globemaster from RAAF Base Amberley performed some really impressive display that were caught on camera by No. 28 Squadron’s Sergeant Peter Borys and Corporal Jesse Kane.
Here’s a selection of the most impressive shots taken during the flypasts.
Along with the official images you can find online plenty of clips and shots taken by bystanders, like the ones below:
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