Andrew Howard had no idea he would enter the family’s fireworks business despite being a regular crew member from the age of seven. It wasn’t until he was in his final year of boarding school in Bathurst that he had what some might call an epiphany. It was only then that he realised his school holidays and weekends spent setting off crackers at country fairs and special events – making spectators ooh and ah - hardly seemed like work at all. Which is why he’s been doing it ever since.
Andrew and Christian Howard’s great grandfather was without doubt a pioneer. Like most engineers he had a general fascination with how things worked. His interest however, extended from the machinery that he toiled over at BHP in Newcastle to the strange and often dangerous pyrotechnics that were imported into Australia from the UK at the time.
Nobody in Australia manufactured fireworks in the 1920s. Nobody had the first idea of how and why they worked, and it seems that nobody had any interest in understanding them until Sydney Howard began examining them in minute detail.
It wasn’t long before he was making his own and creating fireworks shows for special occasions around the Newcastle area. Good news about the fireworks man travelled fast, and pretty soon people from around the country with their own agricultural shows and festivals wanted their own fireworks displays. So, in true pioneering spirit, Sydney Howard packed up his family, moved to Sydney and set up his own business, manufacturing and displaying fireworks.
His first big public event was the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932. It was clearly an exciting time to be in Sydney and Australia. And where there’s excitement, progress and celebration, fireworks it seems, aren’t far behind.
As Andrew explains, to be in the fireworks industry back then you had to be a bit crazy. There were no rules, no regulations, no nothing. You packed your own fireworks, you lit your fireworks by hand, and if something went wrong…well, something really went wrong.
“My great grandfather and my grandfather (Harry) both lost their hands in mishaps that would have never occurred in this modern era, but it was very much a process of trial and error in learning about the manufacturing and display fireworks back then and they paid a painful price,” he says.
“If they were doing a show in Bathurst or any other area around Australia for that matter, they would pack their fireworks and mortars into suitcases and jump on a train. They’d reach Bathurst where they’d be met by one of the organisers and driven to the show where they’d unpack their suitcases, set up the fireworks, light them, pack up the mortars, then head home again.
“These days you need a licence to make fireworks, you need a licence to store fireworks, you need a licence to transport and also display fireworks. By law our larger trucks that transport fireworks have to be fitted with anti-hijack devices and satellite navigation so we know where they are at all times.”
Their new factory at Wallerawang beyond the Blue Mountains west of Sydney looks more like Guantanamo Bay in Cuba with the amount of high-tech security they have had to install to meet government regulations.
Even that is a far cry from how it used to be. Howard & Sons had their first factory in Epping in Sydney’s north west in the 1930s. Back then Epping was full of farmland and paddocks – the perfect place to pack and test fireworks. But as the urban sprawl began to close in around them they moved to Box Hill on the way to Windsor where they comfortably built, stored and tested their fireworks until the vast housing estates inched closer there too. By this time Andrew’s father Les was also well-entrenched in the business.
“A lot has changed,” Andrew says.
“Back then there were no such things as contracts; there were handshakes. Now in the modern era and insurance requirements it feels like we have contracts for contracts.”
And what has also changed has been the computer technology, particularly associated with the firing of the fireworks. Every aspect of the launching of fireworks today is done with the aid of computers.
“We program in when they launch, how they launch, what beat of the music they are launched and burst on – it’s far different to walking around lighting them all by hand. And the other great thing is that today we [pyro-technicians] can actually watch the fireworks, at a safe distance at the computer controller at the same time everybody else is watching them. In the old hand firing days we wouldn’t see anything but the flash of the listing charges, which could be compared to running the streets of a war torn city at night.”
Like any business Howard & Sons Pyrotechnics has had its ups and downs. The most dramatic was when the Government decided to ban backyard fireworks (in 1987). As one of the biggest importers of fireworks for this market in Australia, Howard & Sons faced some financial hardship. Thankfully for them, the reduction in home-based fireworks resulted in a greater call for public fireworks displays, which was when the business really took off in this area.
The company now does large-scale events around the world, although Andrew says they are scaling back on these because of the sheer difficulties with transporting fireworks. “Since September 11 and the raft of new security restrictions it is getting harder and more costly to ship fireworks elsewhere. And the price has also risen dramatically. Whereas it cost us about $2500 to ship a container to Asia, for example, it’s now about $14,000.
“We don’t have an international sales and marketing arm actively pursuing business overseas. If it comes to us then we’ll consider doing it but we won’t actively seek it. We prefer to focus in our own backyard – keeping our existing clients happy and looking at new opportunities locally but it’s also great to work on some large scale international events - they are always exciting and challenging and enable us to spread our creative wings.”
“People might be surprised to know that about 45 per cent of our business is for the special events industry. We do the large-scale public events but we do a lot of things in-between. On any given day we could be dealing with the members of a local P&C association, then talking to a special event producer about some weird and wonderful event they want to do, and then be in a protocol meeting with some government department discussing why a road or bridge has to be closed during our display.
“I have to say that I really enjoy the work we do with special events because it’s always different and the event people are always so imaginative in relation to what they think fireworks can do, then we go away and try and figure out a way of making that idea happen.”
In the Howard & Sons Pyrotechnics of 2007 Andrew focuses on the business and creative design side of the company while his brother Christian looks after the technical and logistical side and is based at the Wallerawang property. They presently employ about 25 full time staff but often use 100 more during major events. Their involvement in the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games involved 55 staff working full time for 10 months. Andrew says this event is probably the pinnacle of his working life to date.
“We worked with some very creative people who were constantly asking us to raise the bar on what had been done before in Australia and what we could do. They pushed us to do things that we really had to work hard to achieve. It was tough – long hours during the design and installation phase of the project, tempers were frayed more than once – but we got through it and we were all very proud of what we’d achieved.”
Andrew doesn’t like to look too far into the future without looking and remembering the past. He and Christian may not know what the future holds for the company or how new technology is going to change it as it has over the past 85 years, but they are aware that change is inevitable. They are now making great inroads, for example, into creating fireworks that are more environmentally-friendly, have no debris, less smoke emissions, continually experimenting and refining new bio-degradable equipment to significantly reduce the impact fireworks have on the environment. Even so, in the pyrotechnics game some things just don’t change. “What I find fascinating is that we are working with an art of fire that is so old and that in many respects will never change. We are using the same chemical compositions in our fireworks that have been used since my great grandfather started making fireworks, and well before him, and we are producing the same styles of fireworks that have always been used.
“Before my grandfather died we took him to the Sydney Royal Easter Show to watch the fireworks display we were doing out there. He was your typical Australian man born around war-time – very stern, very set in his ways. We wheeled him out in his wheelchair and he watched the show, and afterwards I asked him what he thought and he said it was amazing and asked how we’d done it.
“Here was a guy who I thought had done everything that you could possibly do with fireworks over 80 years and he was asking how we’d done it. It was mind-blowing to me to realise how far fireworks technology had come in such a short time.
“I’m very proud to represent Howard and Sons; I’m very proud of my family and what my family has done – what they have passed onto me – and I don’t mean material possessions. I’m still very aware of the foundations that they have laid in this business. It really does affect everything we do.”
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