Players in action during the 2025 Ntaria Sports Weekend. Picture: Charlie Lowson<\/p>\n
All pictures: Charlie Lowson<\/a><\/p>\n “FOOTBALL is life here in Central Australia.”<\/p>\n It might seem like a bold statement to some, but Nicholas Williams, organiser of the Ntaria Sports Weekend, should know.<\/p>\n Nicholas, and his sister Taren, have witnessed the passion that their community’s renowned sports carnival brings out in people since they were kids.<\/p>\n Ntaria, also known as Hermannsburg, is an Indigenous community approximately 130 kilometres west of Alice Springs.<\/p>\n The Sports Weekend runs annually across the three days of the May long weekend, with Nicholas, a Ntaria community leader, and Taren organising the past two events.<\/p>\n This year’s carnival saw 15 football teams, eight softball teams and eight live bands play, with people travelling up to 700km to take part.<\/p>\n “It’s an awesome event for our remote communities,” Nicholas says.<\/p>\n “We say sports carnival, but it has music as well, so it’s more of like a sports\/music carnival, but the majority of it is about the sport, especially football.<\/p>\n “The event brings together about 10 of our major remote communities in Central Australia, and then you get a few communities from Western Australia and South Australia.<\/p>\n “It gives opportunities for people that have never been to our community to come and visit us and for families to come see families that live in Hermannsburg.<\/p>\n “The only other times that we get to see families from other communities is when it’s a funeral, it’s sad times, so my message in the last two years has been, ‘Let’s have fun, let’s get together’.<\/p>\n “It’s the only time we get to have fun seeing family during this time, we’re not getting together for what we call ‘sorry business’, so it’s just fun.<\/p>\n “Football brings our communities together with the pride that people have in playing for their team.”<\/p>\n Alice Springs-based photographer Charlie Lowson has entered his pictures of the Ntaria Sports Weekend into this year’s Footy Focus competition.<\/p>\n ENTER NOW\u00a0Submit your best grassroots footy photos for Footy Focus 2025<\/a><\/p>\n Nicholas, who is also the team manager for the Western Aranda Bulldogs team that plays in the Central Australian Football League, says Charlie has a big following among footy lovers in the region.<\/p>\n “His photos are everywhere because he just captures everyone,” Nicholas says.<\/p>\n “So, everyone has an opportunity to shine when he shares his photos.<\/p>\n “I don’t know how he does it, but in one game, he can have a picture of every single player on that field.<\/p>\n “And there are special moments that he captures as well within his photos.<\/p>\n “The majority of the time players are guaranteed to see themselves through a professional lens, so that’s a great quality for a photographer.<\/p>\n “Once he puts photos up on Facebook, they get shared everywhere.”<\/p>\n Charlie, who works in education, has been an avid photographer for about 15 years, and shot sport on weekends for the now-defunct Centralian Advocate for a period.<\/p>\n The demands of work and family have made it a bit trickier of late to devote as much time as he’d like to his passion, but he makes an exception for Ntaria’s famed sporting festival.<\/p>\n >> See more of Charlie Lowson’s photography HERE<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n “I know there’s passionate leagues and passionate fans and supporters everywhere, but this is on a completely different level,” Charlie says.<\/p>\n “The Ntaria\/Hermannsburg carnivals are phenomenal \u2026 the whole town gets behind it.<\/p>\n “It’s an unreal weekend to go out and shoot \u2026 the last few years I try and make sure I’m free that weekend to head out and do it.”<\/p>\n One of Charlie’s all-time favourite pictures was taken at last year’s Ntaria carnival.<\/p>\n His shot of a Laramba Roos player flying for a mark with the red dust rising around him was ‘highly commended’ by competition judges.<\/p>\n But it almost didn’t happen.<\/p>\n “I was about to leave,” Charlie says.<\/p>\n “It’s about a 130km drive back to town, and you don’t really want to do it at night because there’s kangaroos, there’s cattle, there’s horses \u2026 it can be a slow drive back.<\/p>\n “I’d been in the sun all day, and quite fatigued, and then I see there’s just a little patch of light shooting through the trees from the setting sun.<\/p>\n “So, I ran over there hoping for the best. You’ve only got a couple minutes before you lose that golden light, and you can’t predict the flow of footy at all.<\/p>\n “But I got a sequence of the guy jumping into that light just at the right time, with dirt kicking everywhere, and taking this great mark.<\/p>\n “That one’s hard to top for me \u2026 I had a lot of people message me about that one.”<\/p>\n As difficult as it is to recapture the magic of that moment, Charlie appears to have pulled it off, beautifully capturing the essence of Ntaria’s Sports Weekend that has captivated and inspired children for generations.<\/p>\n “Some kids were running about playing in between seniors games and there’s just this magical light with the dust kicking up,” Charlie says.<\/p>\n “They’re chasing each other, and they’re taking speccies, and fending each other off, they’re mimicking their older family members.<\/p>\n “There’s just such raw talent from a young age that’s untapped and you don’t often see it.<\/p>\n “A lot of these players don’t play in the town comp, they play community footy, so their talent is a bit hidden.<\/p>\n “So, when you go out and you experience it, and you’re like, ‘Who’s this? Who’s that?’ and there’s a 16-year-old just taking hangers on everyone.<\/p>\n “It’s just phenomenal to see.”<\/p>\n Footy Focus 25, thanks to Toyota’s Good For Footy, is now open for entries! Here’s your chance to shadow and shoot with\u00a0Michael Willson<\/a>\u00a0at a game in 2026.\u00a0 We want to see your photos that capture the essence of our great game at a grassroots level. To enter, upload your best community footy photos taken during 2025 to:\u00a0afl.com.au\/footyfocus25<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n