Experienced something new on Saturday, and distinctly Red-neck. I was invited by Mick, my host's son, to a "Burnout" event. Sounded fun, and I've played the video games of the same name, so I went along.
Arriving and parking outside the 'Thunderdome', I could hear far off sounds of straining engines and a vast plume of white smoke arising from an area that everyone else was walking to, obviously aware of what this event was all about. Paid up (about 8 quid) and followed Mick inside. In the trade area, where numerous marques and tents were set up, was a sight of 'Too Fast Too Furious' meets 'Grease' meets 'Dukes of Hazard'. Along side trade stands selling decals and tee-shirts (of mean looking snakes and dragons) were the shiniest, meanest mostest retro-tastic cars you've ever seen.
With engines which were too big (and too shiny) to be restrained by a (mere mortal's) bonnet and paint jobs that would make Picasso weep, these were definitely show and tell cars. What I liked about them (this is before they actually started up and went to 'work') was that they weren't modern day cars, in the most part - there were cars from as far back as the 50s turbo'd up and supercharged into the 22nd Century. There was one car modeled around very early cars, circa 1910, like this sort of thing, and reminded me of Dastardly and Mutley sort of cars. It was immediately obvious that these were the life and soul of many grown men (and a mean looking lady). Retirement perhaps wasn't such a rosy prospect now they had put that money into altering a machine that was designed to make a rocket-load of noise and spin around on the spot, as I later saw.
Walking onto a mound opposite where the action was happening, I was greeted by a loud yet dull explosion, to the cheers of the hundreds of spectators who were obviously a little bit more savvy about it all than me. One of the competing car's rear tyres had blown out, sending flailing strips of rubber into the mesh fencing and the massive white smoke plume that I had seen earlier. Not phased at all, the driver upped the revs further and applied the front wheel brakes, whatever they are, increasing smoke, noise and cheers. And sure enough; BOOM! a
nd the other wheel had gone. Officialman lowered the official redflag and the car limped off, like when you sit on your leg for too long and can't feel it.A multitude of cars did the same thing, spinning round in varying levels of noise, explosiveness and style along a short strip of raceway that can't have been wider than 10 metres and longer than 80, though no one clipped the sides once. One of Mick's friends was there competing (its anyone's guess as to how the 60 second display is judged), though his lack of disposable (or indisposable, which ever way you see it) income unlike many of the older guys there meant that there was never anyway he'd win, though he did put blue tyres on his Holden (Ozzie Vauxhall), which still had 10x more beans than your average 4 door saloon any day.
It was fun stuff to watch, akin to some form of Russian expressive dance (I am the sun, you are the sky) in hotrods. I'll try and upload a video I took at a later date, because I've already used up a sizeable chunk of my host's upload limit... Count yourselves lucky, pomes! The advantage of a small country is the infrastructure can be so much more advanced! God bless the unlimited bandwith package.
This is a very popular 'sport' in Oz, apparently, as is horse racing with carts - chariot racing! I haven't seen anything to do with this, but it conjures up very roman gladiatorial images! Strange how these sort of things take of in some countries but not others.
Talking of inter-country differences, I was talking to Mick about preconceptions of the other country, and he said "Don't you like cross a street and black people live there?" which made me laugh, as if there were racially separated legal districts in every town. I suppose it does sort of exist, but generally through immigration fluxes and cheap housing areas, I think... Hearing his impression of an English accent cracked me up, too, as it sounded more like mangled East-European. Interestingly, the crime rates in the cities has increased many many times over the past few years since immigration and asylum seeking policy was relaxed and a lot of people came to Australia, bringing different cultural values and norms with them. Unfortunately, this seems to encouage the social segregation of minorities such as the Sudanese and Korean, though the Japanese have been here for more than a generation, I think, so they're well integrated and thoroughly Australian now, to some extent. Pomes are still Pomes though!
Yesterday I took a trip into Melbourne again to see the Moomba Waterfest, celebrating stuff n things. More specifically I went for the Birdman Rally, which came over here in 1971 with some RAF dude. I'm sure they do it of Brighton Pier (one thats not burned down), but I've never seen it, so this was fun! Its quite simply people jumping off a pier in silly silly suits and trying to get the furthest. Of course you get the few guys who make an aerodynamically correct
polystyrene/polythene wing and float for ages in the air (still quite a feat), but the competition is designed for fun and showing off. One that springs to mind was a guy who was brought in a big animal crate and then stepped out all alien like, providing some slapstick alien comedy at its best.Along with this event was things like waterskiing and wakeboarding along the Yarra River, which was good to see along with some annoyingly natural kids on skateboards demonstrating in a skatepark (which was provided for free by the YMCA, and made me want to try skating again!) and some guys spray painting a mural along it's back wall.
Its good to see that some things in life are still free!
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