Competitive fires ignite in a soaring race for supremacy Air up there: Hot-air ballooning. Photo: Nathan Coates Thomas Dattler has a lilting accent that speaks to his European origins, is boyishly handsome with a thick head of dark hair and is possibly just a tiny bit up himself. Any tabs Dattler has on himself are arguably justified; the Byron Bay resident is one of the titans of Australian balloon racing and on this day he is the defending title holder of the Australian balloon championships. At an early-morning championships briefing in the modest surrounds of the gym at Canowindra High School, Dattler is also exhausted. For a man who won the 2011 title with a compass and a map, it is slightly galling that new digital inflight technology has kept Dattler up for most of the night as he attempts to sort it out. A balloonist fires up his burner at Canowindra. Up against Dattler and his fly-boy good looks is the big-boned, slightly awkward Paul Gibbs - the old man of Australia's balloon racing fraternity and the president of the Australian Ballooning Federation. Gibbs has the slightly inward-looking demeanour of an accountant from suburbia - which, in fact, he is, sort of, being a small businessman-turned-professional balloonist hailing from Lane Cove. He is also a four-time winner of the championships, and vying for a fifth prize. Not to be dismissed in any competition is the young turk of this close-knit community, 33-year-old Matthew Scaife, the runner-up in 2011 and a second-generation balloon pilot who is happy to boast: "Thomas knows I can beat him." But the race is on; briefing over, the 37 teams hare off to reach the launch site, a paddock five kilometres outside Canowindra, a picturesque hamlet four hours west of Sydney that is the home of the championships this year and next. The balloon racing community is an intriguing, magical, insular world, in which men and women pit their intellects and a host of equipment to do the seemingly impossible - steer a hot-air balloon in a certain direction and hit a target. Australian champion Thomas Dattler is amopngthe crop of Aussies taking on the hot-air balloon racing world. At the common launch site, with weather checks complete, officials raise a green flag. The balloons gently rise from the dew-rich tussocks, like giant bulbous, brightly coloured flowers. The balloon racers use their arcane knowledge of wind currents, weather conditions and judgment to reach for either declared goals or competitions known as a "hesitation waltz" - a choice between two different targets. Balloon racers speak of the tranquillity, the closeness to nature and the excitement. And there is genuine excitement. Despite an excellent safety record and the stately progression of balloons one by one into the sky, racers are nevertheless hanging by stainless-steel "flying wires" in a small basket under nothing more than an envelope filled with hot air at heights of up to 2895 metres. Competition balloons are designed to perform rapid ascent and descent. When descending about 520 metres a minute, experienced race director David Levin says, the specially designed balloons "distort" and "if you are not familiar with balloons it looks like it's going to crash." At $30,000 a pop, balloon racing is hardly a cheap sport. The kit includes specially designed teardrop-shaped "racer" balloons, alongside the high-powered gas burners and industrial-size inflation fans as pilots and crew disturb tranquil rural surrounds preparing to fly. Then there are the new electronic maps and position loggers - technology that continues to dog Dattler, who says: "At the last minute I decided to use a paper map as well." The stakes in the competition are high. Pilots compete not only for the championship but also for a chance to join the team representing Australia at the world championships in Brazil next year. At the first target on the first day, Levin adds with excitement and a smile that for the first target "a lot of the [pilots] stayed up high a little bit too long." As a result, he says, pilots had to get down fast and "a lot of them touched the ground trying to get that low wind and that's a penalty ... so it was fun to watch." Later in the five-day competition, things are not going so well for Dattler. He lands on a remote farm 20 kilometres outside Canowindra and has been dragged 30 metres huddled inside his basket. You sense Dattler's lilted accent is coming through gritted teeth when he talks about an almost perfect outing by the young gun Scaife: "Good on him - no, no - he's good." Riding high on the buzz from the successful flight, Scaife - whose family operates the largest balloon joy flight business in Australia - is happy to see the field break open, with the clear intent of being among the front runners. "The more tasks we get the more the field is going to separate and that will separate the experienced from the not-so-experienced," he says. But it is the consistency of Gibbs that leaves Dattler and Scaife hanging, so to speak. For Gibbs, the fifth title win makes him feel like he is back in business. Hot air balloon competitions are all about consistency and avoiding the urge to be heavy-handed, he says. With the awkward diffidence of a boy asking for a first date, Gibbs says that what set him apart was that he "started solidly" and other contenders whom he expected to give him "a hard time, never really got going." With a frustrating fourth place Scaife is hopeful of a place on the two- to three-member Australian team heading to Brazil next year. Gibbs says he would "hate to take a place in the world championships away from one of the younger balloonists" and will make his decision six months out from the event. And the debonair Dattler settles for 11th, saying it was "not because of bad flying" but due to a combination of bad luck and difficulties with electronic logging requirements. The successes and excitement of this year's competition have been shared with Canowindra. Local joy-flight operators and organisers in Canowindra, Graham and Jan Kerr, have been awarded hosting rights for next year's national championship after "knocking out Leeton in the final stage." It is no small prize; NSW government data indicates it brings $2 million to the central west. In keeping with the Kerrs' preferred passion, the sky's the limit. They are now preparing to bid for the 2016 or 2018 World Ballooning Championship - and hosting another tilt between the driven combatants in Australia's ballooning community. When things go wrong Although balloon accidents are rare, they are usually fatal. In February, the world's worst balloon accident happened in Luxor, Egypt, when an on-board fire engulfed a balloon sending 19 passengers plummeting to their death. In 1989, 13 people were killed in a mid-air balloon collision near Alice Springs. The tragedy occurred as a group of five balloons, operated by several balloon companies, took tourists on a dawn joyride over the desert about 25 kilometres south-east of the centre. Australia's first national ballooning champion in 1979, Ruth Wilson, is all-too-familiar with the perils of ballooning. A botched distance record attempt of 750 kilometres almost claimed her life in 2006 when an electrical storm sent her flying instruments into a spin. Wilson says she "felt calm because in all of her early days she flew without instruments" and her decision was to "fly on till morning and assess and land but then the balloon basket hit something." In the dead of night Wilson's balloon careered into trees at a speed of 20 knots. Devastated and with a few cracked ribs Wilson was not deterred, describing ballooning as "her destiny and passion in life."