I’ve been a rally fan for many years. Growing up watching legends like Colin McRae, Sébastien Loeb, and Ken Block, nothing in motorsport ever felt quite as raw or unpredictable.
Photography allowed me to get closer – to be involved rather than just a spectator. But it wasn’t until I attended the Rally of the Heartland, held in and around Burra, South Australia, that I truly began to understand what a rally is.
I’d been to Rally Heartland once before the 2025 event. I’d seen the challenges, photographed the damage and the repairs, and witnessed the celebrations. But rally has a way of reminding you that watching is not the same as understanding.
This event reflects the Australian spirit: stubbornness, a sense of camaraderie, and a desire to give it a go. Over three days, competitors tackle unforgiving special stages across farmland, with a route book that stretches north toward Hallett and Mount Bryan, and south toward Worlds End and Robertstown.
For 2025, I covered the event while following some close friends of mine and their Lancia Delta. Arriving at Parc Ferme, I floated through the makeshift pits, capturing the prep work and catching up with familiar faces I’d met over years of shooting rally.
Day one began steadily. Teams felt out the terrain and their cars across six special stages, until the final challenge: an 81km night stage, run in peak kangaroo hours.
By day two, Rally Heartland had begun to bite back. Mechanical failures and incidents thinned the field. The Lancia blew its turbo, so the team spent the night repairing it with what they had on hand.
It’s in moments like that that you start to understand the sport. Finishing often becomes more important than winning. Within an event like Rally Heartland, you’ll find a sense of community and a shared hardship. A willingness to help your fellow team achieve the same goal is ever-present. Whether it’s the organisers, an official, a family member, or a photographer, in a time of need, everyone is there to help. These aren’t multi-million dollar teams, just regular everyday Aussie battlers having some fun.
Only half of the 60+ starting field finished the rally on the final day – a similar number to the year before. The faces of finishers as they drove up the 2025 Rally of the Heartland podium showed that the cars weren’t the only ones that suffered.
So why put yourself through all this? Well, from a photographer’s perspective, the smiles seen among the sad and battered cars told a different story. Rally strips things back to something simple: endure, adapt, finish. Seeing everyday folk share war stories while cracking open a cold victory beer after several days of minimal sleep and constant stress is one of those rare moments worth witnessing.
Many sports push people to their limits. Rally seems to do it collectively, and to be able to capture those moments for people to look at years later is truly a special thing.
