This weekend past I spent two nights at the Arunga Park speedway track in Alice Springs. I went mainly to take some shots of the wonderful young Aboriginal speedway bike rider, Sooty Pigram from Broome in Western Australia.

My interview and some shots of Sooty will be ready in a day or so – watch out for it as he has some great things to say.

In the meantime I just want to post a few of the shots of the action over the weekend. The meeting was largely restricted to bikes – so we had lots of solos and sidecars – and a few Quad bike & motorcross events thrown in for good measure.

All this took me back to my childhood and errant youth, when I was a member of the St. George Motorcycle Racing Club in Sydney. My Dad and I tracked all over New South Wales going to all manner of bike races, including the last of the Speedway races at the Sydney Showgrounds and beyond.

Little has changed from those days – speedway riders still have some serious balls – and that includes the girls that are often enlisted as “swingers” – passengers, on the sidecars. As you can see the action is fast and truly furious.

Most large Australian cities have regular speedway meetings dedicated to sols and outfits – and while the cars are fun, for mine the bikes trump them big time.

Anyway, enough talk – here are some shots from the weekend.

As you can see, the solos – and the sidecars, have immensely powerful engines and no brakes…

Robert Ksiezak doing a burnout to celebrate a victory

Rob Ksiezak in his office

Sooty Pigram - check out the sparks!

Sooty, his partner Katy and their four kids did the round trip Broome – Katherine – Alice Springs and back – over 5,000 kilometres – to come and race for two nights in Alice.

The previous weekend he was in Albany in the far south of WA.

16 year old Robert Branford guns it through an Arunga Park coner

That is enough of the solos. As exciting as they are, for me the real action happens with the outfits. I hope I can give you just a small idea of how much fun these guys and girls are having.

Current Australian Sidecar Champions Mark Mitchell (driver) and Tom Golding (swinger)

And I couldn’t choose between these shots so I’ll indulge myself and include both.

Mitchell and Golding getting down and dirty

Warren Monson & Deven Gates dive under Byren Gates & Michael O'Loughlin

The NT's Brendon Edge & Cassy Hall show a new way to go around Arunga Park - all crossed up!

Joe White & Shane Cramp from the NT

Arlen Carragher & Nick Howard

Mark Seidel ducks under Cameron Miller and Samantha Fidler

South Australia's Daniel Puddy and Chad Herbert

Shayne O'Connell & Steve Sanderson from the NT

Mark Seidel - and his unidentified swinger...

For all of these shots that are vaguely sharp there are several hundred that are little more than blurred smudges – these bikes are moving very fast and the light – despite how it looks in these pics – is pretty weak. For the tech heads I was shooting with a Nikon D700 with a Nikon f2.8 70-200 zoom and pushed right out to ISO 3200. So apart from a little noise – which I could still do some more work on, and some colour temperature issues (largely because of the low level and inconsistent colour temperature of the lights used at the track) there is a degree of consistency.

All in all a great weekend – and I’ve still got that burnt racing oil smell in my clothes, on my skin and in my hair – fantastic!