Hot air balloonists parked on the lawns of Old Parliament House filled their balloons in front of hundreds of onlookers, finally given the green light to fly after several days of bad weather had kept them grounded.
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Sarah Orton brought her two young boys, Thomas and Harry, before school on Thursday morning to watch the take off.
"It's sort of like a tradition," Harry said.
Thomas pointed to the more colourful ones slowly inflating, but admitted he'd never want to fly in one.
Thursday was just the second day the weather allowed for the balloons to fly since the festival officially kicked off on Saturday, albeit with no flights that day either.
Pilot Jeffrey Vella coasted a metre or two off the ground before suddenly unclasping the carabiner tying his Cathay Pacific Airways balloon to the ground.
Mr Vella and his passenger Rebekah Allen was above the Treasury in seconds and over Commonwealth Avenue in less than a minute, already prepping for a 'splash n' dash' into Lake Burley Griffin.
The bottom of the basket skirted the lake's surface as Paul Jurak, Canberra's 'kayak cameraman', pulled alongside to say hello to Mr Vella.
"We've just had a lovely flight so far," Mr Vella said later, floating west above the lake.
"Sometimes we get great steerage in the winds ... I'll basically go up and down to chase the winds that I'm looking for."
"You can get quite variable wind and that's what we like. You can fly down, hit a target then fly back to where you took off. You can get that much steerage in the winds."
Mr Vella occasionally stopped to spit over the side to gauge where the wind was travelling.
To the south of Mr Vella was a two-seated 'hopper', essentially a hot air balloon where its crew sit on top of the gas cylinder used to navigate it.
To the west was a "racer'' balloon: a narrower teardrop-shaped sporting balloon, that disappeared into the cloud cover over Black Mountain.
Without the burners firing, it was dead quiet save for the traffic on the Tuggeranong Parkway 1000 feet below and Mr Vella and Ms Allen marvelling at the views.
Back on the ground, Mr Vella organised for a balloonists' blessing of first-time flyers, including The Canberra Times, with a fellow pilot splashing them with champagne.
Mr Vella explained champagne was how the first balloonists, French aristocracy, proved they weren't demons descending from the skies in flaming chariots lest god-fearing farmers stuck them with pitchforks.
Judging from the smiling faces on the ground, you could tell a lot has changed.
The cows didn't seem phased either as Mr Vella landed in the paddock with them, but one fox sprinted into the distance, looking over its shoulder at the balloon as it ran.
