Rated: M
Directed by: Dylan River
Produced by: Rachel Clements, Isaac Elliot, Meredith Garlick, Trisha Morton-Thomas
Narrated by: Eric Bana
Director of Photography: Clair Mathon
Featuring: Isaac Elliot, Scruff Hamill, David Walsh, Daymon Stokie , Luke Hayes, Toby Price.
‘Fast as all hell, rough as hell and dangerous as all hell.’
If that sounds like your idea of fun, you might want to head up to Alice Springs on the Queen’s Birthday long weekend for the Finke Desert Race.
Each year 15,000 spectators and 500+ riders turn up for the Northern Territory’s biggest annual event.
It’s a two hour dash through the scrub to the Finke Hotel, 230 kilometres through the heart of Australia, and for the riders, ‘It’s like holding onto the edge of a cliff for two hours’.
While the car and bike events each crown a King of the Desert, the dirt bikes are the glamour event. Theirs is the raw confrontation with one of the most challenging off-road events in one of the most remote places in the world.
Part of the allure is that a dark horse can come up from behind and steal the crown.
With race favourite Toby Price forced to compete in the four wheel drive section due to injury, the field for this year is wide open. As Finke is raced on corrected time, and each rider sets off individually, the race leader will not necessarily be the winner.
Behind the scenes there are high stakes for these potential dark horses in their ubiquitous trucker caps, with the film honing in to tell the stories of six competitors from a field of nearly 600.
Yamaha hasn’t taken out the race in 9 years and local boy Daymon Stokie, despite a broken hand, hopes to steal the crown from fellow local and KTM rival David Walsh.
Scruff Hamill has driven up from Sydney to race a 1970s’ bike he’s restored himself, while Isaac Elliot will attempt the race on a bike with special modifications. A decade earlier he fell during the race and, while it rendered him paraplegic, it didn’t dilute the Finke fever running through his veins.
Every year there are gut-wrenching stories. Who will take the crown this year? The desert will decide.
Breathtakingly beautiful, ‘The desert is an all-powerful force that looms over every rider,’ and stunning cinematography, using aerial and ground-level views, even bike-cam, captures the inscrutable beauty of this ancient world, while glimpses of the night sky are awe-inspiring.
As Eric Bana’s voiceover intones, ‘It’s God’s country, it’s like nowhere else’.
With its clouds of dust, drifts of red sand, relentless heat, dangerous curves and infamous whoops (like the corrugations on dirt track, only bigger—much bigger) the Finke is intense. It is very much a confrontation with human fragility. According to emergency services, just about every bone in the human body has been broken somewhere along the track. As one rider very perceptively commented: ‘The hardest part of the course is the four inches between your ears.’
The Finke has changed since it began with a group of larrikins in the 70s. According to one ex-rider, ‘It’s a bit different now; it’s a bit serious.’ But some things haven’t changed. There are still plenty of ways to put yourself on the ground. Hard. Even if you’re not in the race, you can ride the 44 gallon drum hooked up to bungie ropes. It’s the Finke version of a mechanical bull.