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Written by Nick Mesker
Edited by the Bathurst Freak
Thumbnails shown are linked to a full size image
Click here for Visitor Feedback
Edited by the Bathurst Freak
Thumbnails shown are linked to a full size image
Click here for Visitor Feedback
"Nick! Are you listening
to me?" boomed the voice of my 8th grade maths teacher. "Yeah, Yeah" I
shouted back at him. But I know why he asked, because I was sitting staring
at the wall thinking about what was in front of me. You see that night
I was heading out to Bathurst with my friends James Hansen and Jeremy Parrot.
At about 6:17pm my mum told me they
had arrived and so I was about to make my first annual pilgrimage to Bathurst.
After a brief stopover at James’ place and some necessary supplies at Sunny’s
(The Bathurst Freak), we hit the open road.
The drive couldn’t have gone better! Well except maybe
if Peter Brock himself was driving, cause there was minimal traffic and
we had heaps of Legendary CD’s to listen to like Midnight Oil (an absolute
essential for any seasoned campaigner) , Rage Against The Machine and Fuel.
To top off the Journey, we ate Nacho Cheese Doritos.
After the long drive, we finally arrived
at the mountain itself. And what a spectacular site it was, standing up
there in all its glory, with columns of smoke that are so thick they almost
hide the fires of burning cars.
No sooner had we bought our tickets,
than did we head up to brave the mountain and try to find a campsite for
ourselves. This didn’t prove to be too difficult for we found one all the
way up the back of the Reid park camp ground with the greatest view of
the anarchy you could possibly imagine. We set up our tents and fetched
some wood and yawned for by now it was about 11:30 pm, so we fetched some
wood to stoke up our fire and took one last check on the Bull Pit and nothing
much was happening at such an early hour of the night so we went to bed.
DAY 1 - Friday November 12 - 8:30 am
Soon after Jeremy and James awoke and realised we had nothing for breakfast. So he said excitedly "Don’t worry guys, we’ll get Hot Dogs while we watch the track!". But he forgot Adam’s encounter with a green dagwood dog. The one that had been left over from the Easter Show that year.
So we walked to Ford Cutting (Why would you call it that? Surely Ford Laser Cutting sounds moderately better, but who would want to buy one of those) to watch the qualifying, and on our way we noticed that the annual pilgrimage up the mountain was still going strong. It didn’t take long to realise we were not alone in our little campsite.
From Ford Cutting we walked along the track to Siemens Forest Elbow where I saw my first ever Dodge Viper, and didn’t it inspire power. Two hours later we returned to our campsite admiring all of the Yobbos achievements like the well built Esky Mobiles, the four wheel drive with Rodney Forbes spoiler tied to the front, a beast of a black car that could probably out run a bullet (probably the Awesome HSV GTS), the huge piles of Beer cans that made the mountain a few feet taller and the huge Ford and Holden flags tied to the trees that did nothing but insult each other (incidentally we noticed more Holden supporting flags).
Upon returning to our campsite we stoked our struggling fire whilst a thick
cloud of dust rose into the sky. We knew this cloud of dust could only
come from one place, the BULL PIT! Last year, so Sunny tells me, it rained
until Friday morning and so the Bull Pit was really muddy, but this year,
BONE DRY. We picked up our heels and ran to the Bull Pit just in time to
see the next sacrifice to be made to the gods of Mount Panorama being driven
into the Bull Pit by the angriest bunch of Yobbos ever assembled on the
face of this planet. This thing was an absolute wreck. My guess is it failed
every single one of the NRMA’s registration checks.
In the Bull Pit there are three huge trees as old as the mountain itself that give refuge to the faint hearted and allow idiots to get close to the action. And a good thing they are there for a speeding car came flying into the Bull Pit. Who knows, he may have been trying to out run a bullet, but every body jumped for cover whilst the car was trashed and once the car was dead, they torched the car using every available bit of petrol.
Moments later we saw a couple riding on a motor bike fit for a 10 year old, the girl on the back was barely holding on. All of a sudden the girl lost her grip and fell off the back and copped a mouth full of dirt. Every body in a 50 metre radius started laughing at this poor girl whilst the sheepishly tried to get back on the bike and get on with her day. As I looked around the Bull Pit I noticed every tent, car, couch and living creature had a fresh layer of dirt on them. It still beats Sunscreen.
After inspecting the Bull Pit, we
headed back to camp and jumped into our car which was also developing a
thin layer of dirt on one side. The guys setting up camp next to us were
pulling out their 10 cases of VB which is about 5.4 litres of pure alcohol
(enough to run a Indy car for about 3 laps).
We headed down to the supermarket to stock up on the essentials like Chocolate Milk, Sausages and Dr Pepper.
On returning to the mountain at 7:30, James started to cook up all the Sausages but I was feeling wasted so I crashed for about 45 minutes. When I awoke, the sausages were cooked and we all sat down and had a feast fit for a King. While we ate, the Yobbos in the Anarchy tradition threw bungers at us as one of their childish pranks. This went on until the flaming toilet rolls started flying across the horizon then our gaze was suddenly fixed on them now, and a good thing too because a flaming toilet roll narrowly missed Jeremy, and hit me on the leg and I suddenly found my self able to leap over tall buildings, well maybe just the toilet roll to get it off me. After that there were no stray missiles coming our way.
We wasted time talking, watching fireworks and keeping up with the progress of the huge bonfire on the bottom of the mountain all whilst listening to some songs on the radio. ACDC Back in Black and Cold Chisel seemed to be on the stereo quite a bit.
At about 9:30 we went to explore the Bull Pit again to keep track of the sacrifices. No sooner than we had arrived did a huge toilet paper war erupt whilst cars flew in and out of the Bull Pit for the odd Burn-out. For a long long time girlfriends long to hear guys say, "Will you Marry me" but this pales in comparison to the longing I felt to hear some one say "BURN IT!" That’s right! A stray car had entered the Bull Pit and collided with a burnt sacrifice and the crowd went wild! So about a thousand guys started laying into this car for all their worth and eventually tipped over the car and torched it. This display was even more elegant than Swan Lake. It has to be seen to be believed. After a while their was a huge explosion that shook the mountain to its roots. The explosion was based at the fuel tank which probably had more than about ten litres of fuel in it.
After watching the Kaleidoscope of Homo Sapiens at play for just over an hour we returned to our camp and crashed for the night. Jeremy and I braved the sleeping bags in the tent whilst James had the comfort of the car. All night Jeremy and I tried to sleep through the fireworks, bungers and speeding cars, but at about 3:30am I was awoken by a familiar sound which went like this "Smoke on the water, Fire in the Sky!" So I lay there and listened to it curled up in my sleeping bag head banging to this song in between snores from Jeremy and the odd firework or gunshot. After the song had finished, two guys pulled out all our tent pegs and ran away giggling like little school girls. It left me wondering what they were smoking on the water.
DAY 2 - Saturday November 13 - 8:30 am
When we arrived at the elbow, we set up our chairs and watched the V8’s finish their warm-up laps.
TOP TEN SHOOT OUT REVIEW COMING SOON
After their warm up lap came a great race for Production Car Supremacy. But in
the first laps, my bubble was burst, my worst dreams came true, for the
announcer inform us that the Dodge Viper had crashed in the Esses. I was
heart broken until I saw the Ferrari and came to my senses. The race became
boring as heaps of inexperienced drivers kept putting their cars into the
arnco bringing the safety car out more than the number of times than cars
were burnt at the Bull Pit yesterday. But there were some great crashes
like MX-5 into a concrete wall right in front of us, and the Ferrari Fire
Ball at the exit of Reid Park.
When the three hours of power had ended we decided it was time to check on the progress in the Bull Pit. So we took some photos to capture the atmosphere that only the Bull Pit can produce. Then it happened! The King returned! No you idiots, it’s not Elvis, but this beast of a Four Wheel Drive! The King of the Mountain! The very 4x4 that was laying into the Datsun last year. The King spent a couple of minutes making the burnt offerings 4 feet shorter before retiring for the afternoon.
On our way through the Bull Pit we turned our heads just in time to see a Yobbo on the end of a rope behind a car riding on a piece of cardboard come flying through at breakneck speeds. But then the all time classic of the weekend. The event that took the cake and didn’t leave a crumb for the competition. This was THE DUNNY DRIVE-THROUGH!
A drunken Yobbo came screaming up to the dunnies on a small motor bike and
entered the left side opening and wasted no time getting to the exit past
any unfortunate living thing that happened to be in his way. You could
track the progress of the motor bike rider by listening out for the four
letter words shouted out by the poor defenceless victims inside. After
several laps of the facilities, the motor bike rider wasted no time in
getting to the Bull Pit and shredding his rear tyre on the best piece of
real estate he could possibly get his Bridgestones on. Just a word of note,
Never have a shower in these toilet blocks. You will come out more dirty
than when you went in.
After using up all our film, we went and cooked some more sausages for dinner. We packed up our campsite and deserted it forever finding a safe haven in the Pit Straight car park.
We then decided to take our annual walk around this fine establishment, but Jeremy got a bit off balance and fell off the wall due to the large amount of Dr Pepper wreaking havoc with his nervous system. But all he could say was "Nice try, a little hard on the landing, you’ll have to settle for the Bronze". It was just one of those situations where you had to be there.
On the way around the track we met a guy who told us he was going to reserve a track side position for the race and we realised we had to do the same thing. So we started getting in our sleeping bags when we noticed Jeremy was in the early stages of an Asthma attack, so we headed off to the hospital.
Upon arriving, a nurse took care of Jeremy while we sat in the waiting room talking to a drunken Yobbo trying to sober up so he could get treated for his burns after falling on a campfire. A while later Jeremy returned and the nurse said he was fine to leave so we went back to the circuit and hit the sack.
DAY 3 - Sunday November 14 - 4:02 am
I was awoken by the alarm on my watch and for a moment I thought it was early in a school morning and I had to get my lunch made, but I snapped back to reality when James said, "Yep, lets go Nick". We left Jeremy to his sleeping bag in the car and set up camp at the exit of Murrays corner wasting no time in falling back asleep. At 6:39 I awoke and found the grass around us full of people waiting for the main event. I went to get Jeremy, the radio and James’ phone. I got all the stuff including a still snoring Jeremy and waited for Sunny to arrive with his dad.
If I wasn’t awake yet, the sound of thunder on tarmac certainly did the trick. Yup, the V8’s were warming up. Sunny took me through all the marquees on Pit Straight and we collected enough posters to plaster Sunnies wall with. We also checked out the legendary new racing game, Dick Johnson’s Touring Car Challenge.
There was also a Formula Ford race and some legendary pre race activities which included some Bike stunt Riders who managed to master every single trick known to man including coming to a stop on the front wheel of the bike, donuts with no feet on the ground and wheelies. The Roulettes made a couple of fly overs while Larry Perkins took on Dick Johnson in the VB Burnout Challenge. It’s a good thing Larry
decided to show off his car down our end cos we were all a bunch of Holden
fans. The guy who cheered for DJ received an Atomic Wedgie and few extra
incentives to switch camps. Next some utes with moulded foam heads of the
Holden legends did a lap of the circuit. They were all pretty funny and
I could see some likeness between them and the real thing. After this they
paraded the V8 Supercar drivers around in Ford Mustangs (again), when is
the Chevrolet Corvette or HSV owners club going to get involved? But once
they finished, the cars got gridded up and the race was almost here.
After the National Anthem and those magic words, "Gentlemen, start your Engines", the cars set off on their warm up lap. Mark Skaife actually stopped his engine when he got back to the start line to keep his engine temperature down in the VT while the 53 cars behind him gridded up.
At 10:06 the flag had dropped, the light had gone green, it was all on for the young and old and Dick Johnson. I sat in awe of the seemingly never ending freight train of V8 Supercars as they flew around Murrays Corner in the early laps.
RACE REVIEW COMING SOON
But at the end of the race when Holden
had won, I was proud to be up there holding a home made HRT flag made by
Sunny and his mum. But if you thought that all the Bull Pit shenanigans
went on only up the top of the mountain, then you were wrong. For the fire
brigade had to come in and put out a couch that had been set alight because
they no longer needed it. That was the only time I actually saw the Fire
Brigade actually put out a fire.
The drive home was fairly uneventful
except for the trip through the McDonalds drive through. The conversation
went some thing like this.
Attendant "Hello, how are you"Well, besides that little incident, nothing much happened on the way home, probably because I was asleep. When I awoke, I was at Jeremy’s place so I grabbed my stuff and thanked James for the great weekend.
James "Hello, a bit burnt and in need of a shower."
Attendant "Can I take your order"
James "I’ll have ‘Two all Beef Patties-special sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions in a sesame-seed-bun’ with Fries and a Coke"
# # # skipping a few lines # # #
Attendant "Thankyou, see you later"
James "Probably not, I don’t live around here lady"
Now as I sit here in front of my computer listening to Rage Against The Machine and writing the Tale, the only thing I can think about is . . . I’ve gotta take my gun next year.
In relation to the sacrifice of the XE Falcon in the bull
pit, myself & 3 mates were the poor bastards who were sitting on the
bonnet as it blew. Two of us were thrown onto the deck, while one other
couldn't hear or keep his balance for quite a few hours. It rocked him
pretty hard. We also had an esky train planned for last year but the bloody
thing broke down just days before we were due to leave. Did you happen
to see the white VH commodore in the pit that just wouldn't die?
That was one of ours. Hopefully there will be 3 or 4 of them this year.
If you need more photos of pit or burnout comps, I have a few good ones.
See you in november for THE best week of the year.
This has been a
Scansen Parresker production
written in association with
Bathurst Freak Productions
for the
Society of Mistreatment of Yobbos Worldwide