Roller girls ready to rock

Bundaberg City Rollers Tracey “Distracefull” Strahlau (front left), Paul “Mental Stealth” Cox, Kate “Compact Risk” Cox, Linda Davis (back left), Janelle “Pana Doll” Ford, Jessica “Ruby Dread” Palmer and Kristin “Princess Lay’erout” Freeman are looking for recruits.

Rhondda Scott

IT TAKES a special sort of girl to strap on a pair of skates and hurl themselves around a roller rink at top speed dressed in boob tubes, a pair of torn hotpants and fishnet stockings.

Roller Derby has reared its head in Bundaberg and the region's first club is recruiting women to become involved.

No experience is required to join the Bundaberg City Rollers but aficionados warn the obscure Texan-born sport is not for the faint-hearted.

In the world of Roller Derby, young women adopt tough aliases, dress in punk and gothic-inspired clothes and crash into one another on the rink

Bundaberg City Rollers president Janelle “Pana Doll” Ford has teamed with other local roller girls Tracey “Distracefull” Strahlau and Jessica “Ruby Dread” Palmer to form the local association.

So far, 30 women have signed and formed two local teams the Rumble Bees and Crimson Chaos.

Ms Ford said the sport had made a resurgence nationwide and offered thrills and spills for girls looking for something different to netball or gymnastics.

“It's one of the fastest-growing sports in the world and is becoming increasingly popular in Australia,” she said. “We thought it was about time Bundaberg became involved.”

In the female-dominated contact sport, a team is divided into two categories of players: blockers and jammers. Jammers score points by passing members of the opposing team on the roller rink and the blockers try and stop them.

The rough-and-tumble sport carries some risk but Ms Ford said injuries usually only amounted to a bit of “lost bark”, or as the girls call it, rink rash.

“It's about learning the right moves to use when you go down,” she said. “You don't go and enter a bout straight away; you practice and learn the skills.”