Heart of the nation: Donnybrook 6239

THE sun is setting over Donnybrook, an apple-growing town south of Perth, and all is calm and quiet on the Sheehan family's 80ha orchard farm.

THE sun is setting over Donnybrook, an apple-growing town south of Perth, and all is calm and quiet on the Sheehan family's 80ha orchard farm.

Well, all except for the hard revving of son Josh's 450cc Honda as he soars above a corner paddock. He's practising a trick called the Ruler Flip: launching off a dirt ramp at 50km/h, he and the bike perform a backward somersault as they trace a three-second arc through the air to the landing ramp 23m away; to spice things up, he leaves the seat, so that he's hanging under the bike at the apex of the jump.

It looks crazy - but then you have to be a bit bonkers to make it to the top as a freestyle motocross (FMX) rider. Sheehan, 27, grew up on the farm with three sisters and a brother, and always preferred doing "stupid and extreme things" on bikes to picking fruit. It was the Ruler Flip that first got him noticed by FMX promoters, in his early 20s, when he was working as a driller in a local bauxite mine. At that time he'd only been abroad once in his life, on a school trip to New Zealand; since turning pro with the Red Bull X-Fighters and Nitro Circus Live he's performed around the world from Dubai to Paraguay, from China to the Czech Republic.

It's a demanding lifestyle; touring leaves him no time for a love life, he says, and the nature of the sport is that "you have to constantly push the limits to stay ahead of the pack". Aerial stunts that once wowed the crowds - the Indian Air, the Nac Nac, the Whip Flip and the Superman Seat Grab - just don't cut it any more. Sheehan's upping the ante: he's one of only four riders in the world to have performed a double backflip.

It's a dangerous job, no question; an X-Fighters team-mate was killed in February, and Sheehan has broken his wrists, jaw and collarbone. He uses a "foam pit" - a huge, custom-built soft landing - when perfecting a new manoeuvre, but it's always a "huge mental step" to take it onto a hard surface for the first time. He admits he gets scared. "But if you don't conquer your fear, you don't conquer the trick."