Standing on a jetty on the north shore of the Swan River in Perth, Syd Howard looks more like a favourite uncle than a master blaster. Then he crouches down in the sunshine and gingerly puts his hand on a piece of red metal shaped like an oversized bowling ball. Tonight, the Japanese Brocade Kamuro will be launched from a barge on the water high into the air, exploding in a celestial vision of purple and silver 400 metres wide. His eyes sparkle at the prospect and at that moment Syd Howard, world-renowned pyrotechnician, looks about as benign as dynamite.
His eyes are only slightly less illuminated the morning after he presides over the Australia Day celebrations. About 400,000 people flocked to the Western Australian capital on January 26th, standing on the riverside, necks craned, mouths open, watching the sky burst with jewelled rainbows and sparkling showers. All perfectly timed to a carefully chosen soundtrack of four decades of Australian music. The ensuing gasps, and hushed reverence spoke of a celebration the like of which we have never seen in the Republic. But on March 13th, Syd Howard is coming to set Dublin alight and we may never party in quite the same way again.
How the Aer Lingus Skyworks, double-billed as the start of our millennium celebrations and the opening night of the St Patrick's Day Festival, enticed Howard away from his normal stomping grounds of Hong Kong (he lit the skies for the Handover), the US (Atlanta Olympics) and Australia (just about every shindig imaginable) seems a mystery. But as he sips cappuccino in Perth's Sheraton Hotel, Howard makes it sound like he agreed to hold what is only his second ever European show in Dublin simply because he was asked.
"I was asked to come over to Dublin last year to see the St Patrick's firework display, so I did," he says. "It was OK, but nothing like we are gonna do because we have way more fireworks." Around six tonnes of them: 15,000 fireworks to be exact.
Planet 24, Bob Geldof's production company which is co-ordinating the international publicity for the event, issued that inspired invitation. When Aer Lingus came on board to invest financially in the £400,000 spectacular, and 98FM rowed in with an agreement to arrange and broadcast the Irish soundtrack - featuring U2, The Cranberries and Boyzone among others - the sparks were set to fly. The action takes place on the Custom House Quays and Howard, a third-generation rocket man, will conduct the symphony of sound and vision that will erupt from the water, the rooftops and the quayside.
When you ask him "why fireworks?" he looks at you with an expression that says "what else?". He has been in this business for as long as he can remember. In the early 1900s his grandfather, also Syd, bought a packet of fireworks for Guy Fawkes night and they didn't work. Like all the great entrepreneurs, he thought he could do it better. "And that," says Howard, "is how it all started."
He is full of admiration for his grandfather, calling him "slightly eccentric, very clever and not like any Australian today - he wouldn't go out the front gate without a suit, a hat and a tie on." In the 1920s Granddad Syd blew his hand off while experimenting with a firework. In the 1940s Howard's father also lost his hand and almost his life.
He remembers his own debut in the family trade as an 11-year-old living in a suburb of Sydney. There was none of the high-tech, computerised equipment that is the backbone of his shows now when he did his first display under the watchful eyes of his father: "I just lit everything as I found it," he says. Not long afterwards he was sent to Queensland when one of the agents employed by Howard and Sons got sick. He arrived in short trousers to the dismay of organisers, but by the time he had finished they were already booking his return.
By the early 1980s, the company - made up of Howard's father Harry and his brother Les - was one of the biggest pyrotechnic outfits in the country. Harry and Les were involved in manufacturing and importing the rockets, while Syd concerned himself purely with designing and executing the displays.
When Les and Harry decided that the company should diversify, going into the manufacture of fireworks for use in military simulations, the cracks in the family empire started to show. Howard's opposition wasn't based on moral grounds - he had spent a year in armed service by this time - but he thought the prospect "too risky . . . I just wanted to do display".
"I couldn't even strike a match," he says in a voice loaded more with irony than bitterness at the legal wrangling that followed the family split in 1985. But despite attempts to play it down, when he says "you hear of partnerships breaking down but with families it is 10 times worse" the hurt of 13 years ago is plain. Then it's back to business. "My share was bought out, taken over, and I left," he says. He has never spoken to his brother or father since and says, with a mixture of sadness and acceptance, that he never will.
The one thing he took with him as part of the deal was the family name. He had a cattle farm five hours north of Sydney, in Kempsey, and it was there he went with his wife Jill to rebuild the business. "I was going to buy fireworks from the family business, that was supposed to be the deal, but I was cut off straight away so I bought a small factory in Kempsey . . . and bought from Japan and China to keep me going," he says.
Since then, the fortunes of Syd Howard Fireworks International have followed the trajectory of one of his most powerful rockets. The company name is linked with some of the biggest events to have occurred in recent years. In Australia, they produced the shows for almost every bicentennial celebration in 1988, numerous New Year's Eve skyshows at Sydney Harbour, and the 75th anniversary of the Royal Australian Navy. He has wowed audiences at the closing ceremony for the Atlanta Olympics, at the Hong Kong Handover and at a variety of concerts, from Prince to Bon Jovi.
When he is not on the road the 63-year-old thrill-seeker - he spent 10 years racing cars - likes to spend time on the farm where he has "around 1,100" cattle. "I like going up there but I do my thinking in my 20-tonne truck. I have all my phones, a mobile, an analogue and a satellite phone, so anyone can talk to me - most days I don't know where I will be and my wife often rings up just saying so where are you now?"
On Australia Day, Howard received the prestigious Order of Australia award for his work over the past 45 years, and his next really big gig will be the Sydney Olympics in 2000. But in the meantime he is looking forward to bringing his unique carnival to Dublin: "I don't think the Irish people have ever seen anything like this." On the enduring appeal of fireworks, he concludes: "There is nothing that can pull so many people together, it doesn't cost them anything and it has universal appeal. They are just so beautiful".
The Aer Lingus Skyfest street party will begin at 6 p.m. from the quay area spanning Tara Street DART station to City Quay on Saturday, March 13th