An Eventful and Educational Paramotoring Day One motorised flight at Manilla, Australia turned out very eventful and educational. I had taken off in a lull in wind that wasn't too strong but was up and down a lot in strength. On the climb out I experienced getting thrown about quite a bit. It seems I had had a 50% collapse and wasn't even aware of it (someone videoed it). There is less feedback from the wing with high attachment points and you can't hear a collapse. Also it's difficult for me to see more than the wingtips as my helmet hits the motor when I put my head back. At this point I considered landing, but having got thru the ground turbulence it felt much better. I headed for Mt Borah but even on full throttle I wasn't climbing. It is weird to be on full power with the canopy sitting right back and yet still going down when in big sink. I headed back to Godfrey's and hooked into a 4 metre/sec thermal that got me up. I noticed that there was no one free flying on Mt Borah. I had a great time flying around and over some small CUs that were forming under the high stratus. With a borrowed GPS I could see that I was making from 23-28 kph into the headwind. I was on the way down to land with the motor off from a couple of thousand feet. At about a thousand feet I got a sudden shock when I hit a shear layer and had an 80% collapse that turned 180 degrees with a big surge and subsequent big frontal collapse. The lines sagged in front of me, then falling, followed by a quick recovery. Phew! Then it happened again a minute later. Not quite as bad the second time around as I controlled it a bit better. While I was in the air the wind on the ground had picked up to 25-30knots. My friends were expecting to get a call from me as they expected me to have outlanded as the wind picked up. When one of them saw me over Godfrey's place going thru the wringer, I quickly got a big audience. They didn't see the first cascaded collapse but said that the second milder (cascaded) collapse was pretty spectacular. I decided I wanted a humungous field to land in and Godfrey's was a bit small and in full sun. I also didn't want thermal turbulence adding to the turbulence I was already experiencing. I flew down wind a couple of kilometers towards a much bigger field in cloud shadow, then found myself going up fast on big ears towards this big black cloud that had just formed. At this point the old saying came to mind: "It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than in the air wishing you were on the ground". That fit my situation perfectly. Luckily I passed thru the lift and continued (getting chucked about) on big ears to about 10 metres off the deck, I landed in turbulence, being blown backwards and a bit crosswind at about 15kph. It's the first time I've ever been glad to land in the thistles. (Manilla gets  fields of  two meter high thistles) I rolled and ended up on my face with the motor on top of me. The thistles caught the lines and wing and stopped me getting dragged. One of the support legs of the cage was a bit bent, but I had escaped relatively unscathed. When the boys turned up they thought I might be injured and were quite pleased to see me with only a bit of  blood on my  face from the thistles. It was after this day that I decided  I didn’t want to paramotor with a DHV2 rated wing.