It all began as a light hearted comment to my best friend Scotty. I laughingly said while we were hanging out the day before the race, if it’s less than 200km, I will run down the hill to Midland, grab a wireless flash and head down to Wellington Mills the next day to have my first attempt at photographing a Downhill mountain bike race.

Well at first, checking maps, I was disappointed. It indicated that the journey was 208km, so i said, oh well it is what it is. I then spied an alternative route, 198km!! IT WAS ON!!!

A quick trip to the camera shop in midland resulted in a much lengthier shopping experience than planned, buying half the place, including a second body to save me from having to change lenses for shots! So I welcomed a new Sony A7R5 to the gear bag.

I quickly messaged a friend from work, telling them that I would pick them up at 5:30am on a Sunday for a day mission to see the race. While they were not that keen on the early start, they were excited for the custom playlist and guarantee of a good old full volume heckle at the race. It was a late night setting up the new body and configuring the wireless flashes. At about 12:30am I made it to bed, hyperactive and unable to settle with a 4:15am alarm looming and a long drive to follow.

The drive down was uneventful and we arrived well before practice began, giving myself plenty of time to scope out and set up at the lower rock feature. Some teething problems surfaced with the remote wireless flash being temperamental. A quick change in the settings had it flashing without hesitancy.

Practice was going great and I was developing some new heckles, one which came from the fact someone called me a monkey for being 6 metres up a pine tree to get the shot I wanted. This turned out to be an absolute weapon of a heckle which sent my voice packing. Unfortunately there was a rather serious crash that I witnessed which left the young rider being taken away in an ambulance which put a pause to the morning for over an hour.

During this time, a group of us got up to some bush antics which included sword fighting with fallen pine branches, pine cone baseball and a bit of a yarn while we waited for the track to reopen. Practice did not resume and they got straight into race runs. I started at the top rock drop, moving slowly down the hill to the lower rock feature during race runs. I set up at the bottom double for the top 20.

Once the race finished it was a quick stop at gnomes ville, unfortunately someone had been having a smashing time there, and a lot of the gnomes were massacred. Heading back to Perth, there was a quick stop at the crooked carrot for some Freddo Frog cheesecake, and it was full steam ahead for home.

Thanks Peel Districts Mountain Bike Club for putting on such a great event. It was great to see everyone and to capture the event.