Sydney outlaid $6.6 million for their display - streets ahead of the capital of the next most populous state with Melbourne paying $2m.

Organisers state 1.5 million people were crowded around the shores of the harbour city to watch the display and if you bring it back to an averaged value it's about$5 a head. Cheap entertainment? Perhaps. We wonder what the carbon footprint value of such an amount of sparks and noise would be?

Closer to home Orange ran its annual New Year's Eve firework show and the fire brigade only had two small spot fires to extinguish. Another individual living close to Orange ended up in hospital with burns and a fire burning nicely for the rural fire service to do battle with.

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STATISTICS relating to the road toll in Western NSW were released yesterday and revealed a drop of 18 per cent. In real terms this meant nine less people died on the region's roads last year compared with 50 in 2011.

Because many of our friends and family must cover much greater distances in this part of the state to get to essential services, it's good news to hear of a decline in the number of road deaths.

But keeping more people alive on our roads is definitely a work in progress.

So welcome to the new year but please be safe out on the roads we'd much rather print stories that don't cover these tragedies.