Frank Hackett-Jones. What can be said about this man? Well, basically, this man knows how to throw a party. Every year he coughs up an extremely large amount of money, so that the town of Canowindra can show the world that they know how to have fun. Originally established to remember his mother, Marti's Balloon Fiesta gets bigger and bigger each year. This year, 1997, 47 balloons attended, making it the largest balloon gathering in Australia since 1988. As in past years, the main aim of the competition was for everyone to have fun. This meant that the tasks set encouraged everyone to participate but not treat it like the Worlds. Probably the most interesting task was held on the Saturday morning. This task involved pilots to be paired up. One pilot had to fly in to the oval and drop a parachutist as close as possible to a target. In the mean time the other pilot had to fly out of the oval and try to land as close to their partner. This involved many hours of creeping around the town in dead calm conditions. Stuart Gregory and Les Springett cleaned up this task. The best thing about this task was that there were balloons and parachutist everywhere, a real crowd pleaser. Saturday afternoon saw a fly in to the launch site, however everyone missed. Sean Kavanagh opted to sacrifice this task to jump out of his balloon with a tandem parachute from 10,000ft. Being the pilot of this feat ( Andrew Robertson ), I must say it is pretty weird dropping your friend out of his own balloon. We must mention the fireworks. They were spectacular. Good 'ol Frank brought the International Champion Pyromaniacs to put on the hugest display ever held outside a major city. This was held directly after the night glow on the Saturday night, in front of an amazingly huge crowd. If you think of any Sky Show or major fireworks display held in capital cities and think of the grand finale of them, that is what everyone of these fireworks was like. The highlight was supposed to be the setting off of the largest mortar ever built, containing 26 seperate fireworks and measuring about 9ft high. They decided to place it 2km away from town and activate it by remote control because they thought it might burst everyone's eardrums. It was pretty impressive but it was set off too far away to allow for the full effect. Marti's Balloon Fiesta was a big event. Everything that happened was big. It was bigger than Big Sky and apparently that is pretty big. Hopefully it will all happen again next year, after all we all like a party and that is exactly what Marti's is. Author Andrew Robertson, Aunty Monkey, Issue 11 Autumn 1997.