Vale William Crabb – the doyen of harness racing photographers in Australia

Bill Crabb started as the track photographer at Gloucester Park in 1985 and remained in that role for some 30 years before health issues forced his premature retirement from the job he loved and excelled in. 

Bill was working his way through Europe and Asia in 1973 as a brickie’s labourer and surveyor’s assistant, when he was bitten by the photography bug and while his first camera was the ubiquitous Kodak Instamatic he quickly upgraded to a Yashica Rangefinder for an overland trip in India. 

His next camera came soon after and the Nikon 35mm became his go to piece of equipment along with several Nikon lenses. 

While the Nikon was his workhorse, Bill’s indulgence was a mega expensive Hasselblad, and I vividly recall the day he showed me his pride and joy and explained that Hasselblad was the camera used by NASA on the Apollo 11 command module. 

Bill had been born in Bunbury and when he returned from his travelling he worked as a photographer at the now defunct Western Herald newspaper. 

He soon realised how little he knew about the complex subject of photography, so he enrolled in a full-time three-year Diploma Course at Mount Lawley Technical College in Perth. 

After graduating Bill set himself up as a freelance photographer and he recalled some years later how “I starved for a while and drove a truck one day a week to make ends meet”. 

He began work as the on-course photographer at Gloucester Park in 1985 and soon after became the semi-official photographer for the West Coast Eagles which was launched in 1987 as Perth’s first AFL team. 

Bill was responsible for many of the shots which appeared in the 1991/92 Eagles Year Book which celebrated the team’s first AFL Premiership. 

He freelanced during the euphoric days of the 1987 America’s Cup defence off Fremantle and sold copies of his work to the famed “Focus on Sport” Agency in New York and was also commissioned by Time Magazine. 

Bill also covered Davis Cup and World Swimming Championships held in Perth which, in the pre-digital camera era, probably accounted for him using a conservative 1500 rolls of 36 shot film each year. 

A normal day at the World Swimming Championships saw him use between 20 and 30 rolls per day while a day at an Australian Rules football match saw ten rolls used and a Gloucester Park meeting a mere two or three rolls of film. 

Gloucester Park was somewhat of a frustration for a perfectionist like Bill as he was barred from using a flash to shoot the finish as it would bounce off the photo-finish mirror and upset the sensitive electronic timer. 

“A flash would stop the action and result in a sharper picture”, he said some years ago. 

“I have to use a faster film, and the result is push processed as the artificial light at Gloucester Park is not strong enough for a fast shutter speed and you have to pan as the horses pass the post”. 

In 1992 he had a photograph published in a book detailing finalists in the Nikon World Photo Competition. From more than 48,000 entries across the globe only 200 photographs were published. 

In the pre-digital era Bill preferred to work with colour transparencies and the photos accompanying this piece are just a handful of samples of his work with transparencies. 

In 1991 the WA Trotting Association began its industry publication Westrot under the editorship of yours truly and the ensuing eight years, working with Bill, remain a highlight of my 48 years working in this industry. 

Westrot provided a vehicle for publication of Bill’s harness racing work and between 1991 and 1999 Bill won eight Australian Harness Racing Joseph Coulter awards in the photography section. 

It is a total only equalled by ace Victorian photographer Geoff Ampt between 1979 and 1990. 

A gentle man in addition to being a gentleman, Bill and I would head out to a pre-dawn trip for those special shots required for the cover of the magazine. 

We had to get there before the sun came up to capture the soft yellow dawn light so prized by photographers. 

Bill and I only ever had one slight disagreement across those years and that was when I insisted that Bill lie down in an infield drain at Gloucester Park to get a different angle for a picture of star pacer Valley Champ being fast-worked at Gloucester Park by his trainer Des Parr. 

Bill relented, got down in the drain and the resultant shot was a Coulter Award-winning photo

In 1992 Bill was on hand amongst the media throng at Gloucester Park to cover Westburn Grant’s second WA Pacing Cup win, less than a fortnight after the horse’s trainer Vic Frost and his wife Margaret had lost their son Gary in a tragic accident at home while they were in the air on their way from Sydney to Perth. 

Bill’s photo captured all the pain of losing a son just days prior to winning the Group One Cup. 

My then boss at Gloucester Park was critical of the decision I made to put the photograph on the cover of Westrot – he deemed it too sad. 

The photo was to become another of Bill’s national award winners. 

While trackside to take photos of horses winning Bill was ever the photo-journalist and, while the races were in progress, he would use a second camera and track the field in the event there was a newsworthy incident.  

Bill won a Coulter Award for Best Action Sequence for a series of six shots of a fall in a prelude of the 1993 WA Pacing Cup. 

Hoofnote: 

When my wife and I decided to get married at Gloucester Park during a race-meeting in 2006 we asked Bill if he would be our wedding photographer. 

To our surprise Bill agreed, and it did provide some laughs as the formalities had to be worked around the race schedule to allow Bill to shoot the finish of each race before returning to the wedding upstairs. 

A couple of the winners that evening were appropriately named No Turning Back and The Final Word. 

by Alan Parker for Harnesslink