FREMANTLE is considering ditching its popular Australia Day fireworks in favour of a more “culturally sensitive celebration”.

Fremantle mayor Brad Pettitt said Australia Day was painful for some people and celebrating it with fireworks “had an uncomfortableness about it”.

“Celebrating with fireworks what is great about Australia on the very day when the dispossession of our nation’s original people began is something that sat uncomfortably with many of us in Fremantle,” he said

“Doing it on a day of English arrival or settlement certainly doesn’t feel like the most appropriate day given the mixed messages and mixed consequences of that.”

City of Fremantle council will decide whether to replace the annual fireworks with “a more cost effective, environmentally friendly and culturally sensitive celebration” on Wednesday.

If approved, Fremantle would instead mark Australia Day with a citizenship ceremony at Fremantle Arts Centre, including a speech on the tradition of multiculturalism.

That would be followed by a family picnic and concert in Esplanade Reserve on the following Saturday and an indigenous music celebration on the Sunday.

Dr Pettitt said the council had received community feedback about different ways of marking January 26.

Camera Icon Fremantle’s Australia Day fireworks have become a popular family tradition. Credit: News Limited, Faith Moran

“We wanted to find a way where we acknowledge both the great things about Australia, and that we’ve been given a peaceful prosperous country, but we also think at the same time that we do have a dark past,” he said.

“We also want to do something that’s more culturally sensitive and acknowledges that challenge around our history and our relationship with indigenous people in this place.”

About 50,000 people a year attend City of Fremantle and City of Cockburn’s Indian Ocean Skyshow.

Fremantle has held Australia Day fireworks for more than a decade at a cost of $145,000 each year.

Dr Pettitt said the fireworks had become a much-loved family event.

“That will be part of the challenge for council,” he said.

“It will be weighing up the fact people love fireworks and the family tradition that’s been running over the past decade.

“The challenge is — if you’re not going to celebrate what’s great about Australia on Australia Day, then which other day do you do it?”

Whadjuk elder Len Collard, an indigenous studies professor at the University of WA, said more people were considering colonisation and its associated atrocities on January 26.

“I think people are reviewing the traditions in Australia,” he said.

“I think we’re at a stage now where we’re thinking if we’re going to move on in the future, what are the sort of attributes we might visit around how we do celebrate Australia Day.”