When she retired four years ago, after more than 40 years as a photographer, she took up dragon boat racing, but it’s not just some fun lark.

The 65-year-old trains in a boat three times a week at Gateway Lakes, near her Wodonga home. She also does three gym sessions each week and walks seven kilometres every day.

She also put her two daughters and two granddaughters on to the sport, and they competed together – in the one boat – on Sunday at the Dragon Boat Regatta at Victoria Harbour, Docklands.

Adrian Stephens, president of Dragon Boat Victoria, said with 400 competitors, it was the biggest regatta ever held in the state.

It was held on the final day of the two-week-long Chinese New Year Melbourne Festival.

Mr Stephens said the regatta started among the Asian community for Moomba, on the Yarra River.

At Docklands on Sunday about 10 per cent of competitors were Asian.

There are now 23 clubs in Victoria, from Bairnsdale to Dimboola.

Mr Stephens said people from age 10 to their 70s could take part, ranging in approach from being a bit of fun to ‘‘having white line fever and being terribly competitive’’.

Ms Edmondson, who will represent Australia in seniors in August at the world championships in Thailand (granddaughter Charlotte will compete in the juniors) said she was ‘‘dead serious’’ about the sport.

Just before a race, you ‘‘block everything out around you’’ and once you hear the starter’s call, it’s a frenzied dash to the finish.

‘‘You’re into such a high-intensity pace that nothing else matters in the world except for getting to that other line as fast as you possibly can.’’

In 2015, a friend invited her to make up the numbers in a community fundraiser regatta at Wodonga.

‘‘I loved it,’’ Ms Edmondson said. ‘‘It was just exciting. I’ve always been into exercise and I loved the thrill of it, the excitement, the fun. the camaraderie. It was just a fabulous day."

She joined the Albury-Wodonga Brave Hearts club and at the 2016 fundraiser assembled her own team from Dederang, where her daughters live.

That year her daughters Narelle Jones, 39, and Kellie Jones, 43, and granddaughters Ella, 11, and Charlotte, 14, became Brave Hearts members.

They compete across Victoria and sometimes interstate, and in April will race at the national championships in Canberra.

The five train together in a muddy former quarry in Wodonga on Monday and Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings, for nine months a year.

‘‘It’s lovely. I get to see my kids,’’ Ms Edmondson said. ‘‘I love having the kids in the boat. I’m very fortunate.

‘‘How many people can say that they can be in a sport with their grandchildren?’’