There's something elusive in the dust and tyre smoke - something fleeting but vital, tangled in the roots and seeping up through the layers of happy riot and kitsch.
Peter Saggus stands with his back turned to the camera, tosses his mane of silvery hair that feathers out about the middle of his shoulder blades, and raises his fist in a kind of cheerful, general defiance.
His mother made his outfit for him; a pair of business slacks, blazer, button-down shirt and tie, split at the seams from shoulder to ankle and sewed to the back half of a pair of stubby shorts and a party shirt. He says he has come dressed as a mullet - "set up for business in the front," he says, "And ready to party in the back".
The word "MATE" is printed in block letters across his backside.
"About 10 years ago, I had a girlfriend," he says, smiling, "She said I had to go and get a haircut. She said it was getting a bit long and that I had a mullet.
"Well, I don't see that girl anymore."
The story of Mulletfest: How a party at the back of the pub inspired a global cult following
The Belgian chef who has been in and out of the country for the past few years chasing opals in the arid parts of the state, rests his hand on Saggus' backside and turns back to the camera beaming from behind his wrap-around shades. Bavo Van Broeck is dressed in a flammable-looking purple and teal track suit that he found online and a white t-shirt that looks slept-in.
"This is actually pretty popular clothing in Belgium," he says, "When we go to crazy parties, we're all dressed up and raving.
"We say rave ist leben; raving is living."
Van Broeck was woken early that morning by the sound of a drag car firing near the burnout pad on the site of the former Hebburn No. 2 Colliery, owned by the Johnson family of Kurri Kurri who founded Mulletfest in 2018. What started as a quiet party at the back of the Chelmsford Hotel for a few who sport the iconic Australian style quickly spread and gathered a cult following of the faithful.
In 2022, Laura Johnson - the former hairdresser, publican and the creative drive behind Mulletfest - took her show on the road, bouncing between pubs and country towns off the main drag, evangelising the haircut and the sentiment it represents.
For the uninitiated, the mullet might appear as anything - a gimmick, a joke that celebrates good-natured poor taste, or a brotherly embrace of the awkward and the grubby, but to those who wear them it has become a symbol of their rebellion - a culture of their own.
The mullets eschew the modern and slough off the Instagram sensibilities of style and curation in favour of the timeless comforts of familiar tack. They rebel against trend and swim against the current of modernity. They're nostalgic for authenticity and the easy homeliness of brand-name beer and lovingly worn-in work boots.
At the weekend, Mulletfest returned home for one last hurrah to see out the year and crown the nation's most magnificent mullet.
Tim Morgan found Mulletfest on Facebook a few years back and travelled from his home at Wollongong attend in 2019.
"Knowing that I couldn't win the hair division, I knew that there was something I could win," he says Saturday afternoon, "It was a pie eating contest."
Morgan, who goes by the nickname Timmy Pinger, downed seven and a half pies in around 30 minutes as his competition gradually "fell off the perch".
"Lo and behold, I took it out," he says.
Then: "I had about an inch of growth, and I saw this bloke's mullet and I was astonished by it - I had such a man crush on this bloke's hair. I asked how long he had been growing it and he said seven years.
"I turned around to my fiance and said, that's it - seven years, I'm growing it."
On Saturday, Morgan and his three-year-old son, Isaac, won the best family mullet. Isaac also won his age category for mullets three years and under. Like many who he competed against, the back of Isaac's baby-down mane has never been cut.
In around nine weeks, Tim and his partner, Kyra Whitney, will marry. She will wear a pair of custom mulleted Volley tennis shoes that Tim won at auction during Mulletfest.
"It's a big family here, man," Van Broeck says, fanning out his unbreathable tracksuit jacket in the midday sun. "It's lovely. I came down here yesterday evening and they needed a hand, you know, so I just stayed here in my rooftop tent.
"It's cool because I'm part of the crew already. Everybody wants to give a hand. Everybody's happy and nice to each other. You feel part of something, you know?"
