Well, Summernats has come and gone. As a resident of a suburb very close by I must say that it was all going rather swimmingly, that is until the early hours of Sunday morning.
Not content with staggering down the middle of the road yelling “Summernats” at the top of their voices, a group of males decided that we really didn’t need a tree at the front of our house. And thus they smashed it up. That can go with the two that were destroyed in a similar manner during Summernats 2006.
I’m guessing that if significant damage happened to a car at Summernats then there would be action. Trees and locals just don’t seem to count.
The Summernats office were contacted. They didn’t care and told us that it was Canberra Connect’s job to sort out damage caused by Summernats. Canberra Connect (who are always awesome when we have used them) were happy to come and take out the tree but we can do that ourselves. ACT Police were only interested if we could identify the people involved – great. They also told us that no crime statistics relating to Summernats are collected and passed on to the organisers.
What would we like? Well, Mr Henry could spend the money he saved on his speeding fine and get us a new tree but I fear that it would meet the same fate when Summernats rolls around again.
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Maaaate, ya caahn’t go bashin Nats. ‘Ave ya soin the detail that goes inna them cars? Bloody byeeeewdiful. It, loik, fully makes up for everythin’ else. Mate.
fully sick?
Can you blame them? Really?
Petrolheads… ripping out CO2 converting trees… it’s all a part of the Great Global Warming Swindle of Boganites.
Really though, that is more than annoying. Buying plants/trees is expensive and don’t grow overnight (well significantly anyway).
Dob them into Environment ACT. I’m sure the provisions of the Tree Protection Act 2005 will see you right. [/irony]
Next year stake your tree with a star-picket. And attach 240 volts to the star-picket. And film it.
Destructive scum. I wonder what else they wrecked? Trees of any size are really expensive, and you won’t be able to plant another one until the end of summer when it cools down.
I thought that there were stats taken from that event. I am sure that years ago i was told about the number of cars stolen from the event and how many rapes there were, however i could be wrong. Chic Henry should have a better liability for damages caused by his event.
If it’s any consolation we had a couple of small eucalypts knocked off from our front yard over the Christmas break. As far as we can work out this happened in broad daylight too. This is in addition to two hedging plants that were stolen about 3 months ago.
The two trees that were stolen had previously been uprooted in the past, along with several agapanthus. Presumably the thieves got interrupted on that occasion as they were all just left on the ground. Odd, frustrating and bloody annoying.
While we do live in the inner north too, we’re far enough away from the Nats to attribute these thefts to their patrons.
This is part of the economic benefit that the Summernats brings to the ACT – even plant nurseries benefit.
Part of the problem is that you actally need proof that it was people from the summernats that did it. We all know it was but unles you have a video of them, with their summernats wrist bands on, Chic Henry can deny responsibility.
My bad SummerNats experience occured while coming to work this AM. I driver in a poor excuse for a hotted up ute sat on my tail down the parkway. Apparently the 100km/h I was doing wasn’t fast enough. I was in the right hand lane as I was about to turn off at Glenloch to come into the city. When he could he overtook me and sat in front of me for staggering 2 seconds before crossing over tall other lanes to go to Belconnen. In doing this he squeezed between several other cars failing to slow down to find an appropriate gap, making those behind him hit their brakes to avoid an accident. His indicator also failed to work as he never used it in any of the lane changes he made.
There was a SummerNats entrants sticker on the back window and I can only wonder how much the other attendees laughed at this tryhard clown as his car was a pretty crap flat-bed ute with a red cab. It looked like S**t. The driver was an overweight 20+ year old bogan. As he went past me I gave him the mandatory finger salute. He then spent quite a bit of time laughing at his stirling abilty to P**s off the other drivers around him, safe in the knowledge I couldn’t follow him as we were in different lanes heading to different places. I know his rego and what his car looks like. I really, really hope I see him again.
BerraBoy68 said :
he probaby lives nearby, on marconi, perhaps?
please ignore the bad spelling on my previous post. I suck.
Mmmm, Thanks Peterh, I might go for a drive down there after work.
might not be the same guy, but sounds like it….
If it is, prehaps you could “fix” his indicators for him?
*LOL*
“Put in the boot!” I sez. “Put in the boot!”
I live near some guys who have cowboy hats, cowboy boots, utes, country music on the radio, but i am damn certain that they have never seen a cow… this fella comes over from time to time.
My grandmother in law bought some small plants and planted them near the front of her property. Later the same day she spotted her neighbour in her front yard carefully digging them up and putting them into her wheelbarrow. To make things worse when she was confronted she denied she was stealing them and said that she had just bought them.
Report the idiot to ACT Traffic Intelligence https://www.afp.gov.au/email_forms/act_traffic_info.html
Report the idiot to ACT Traffic Intelligence https://www.afp.gov.au/email_forms/act_traffic_info.html
Worked for me !
What happened Danman?
Voting For and Against Summernats on the CT website is 50/50.
You can’t blame the summernats for the tree… why not blame the people that did it?
Gee if you had a party, and your guests got drunk and walked home… on the way they ripped out a tree… is that your fault?
Adza, if I had a party at my place that made a profit of a couple of million dollars then I reckon I might want to be the best corporate citizen that I could be.
However, if one of my neighbours complained that one of my guests had damaged their property then, yes, I would want to do something about it.
On another note, I have had a go at tree surgery today, fingers crossed it can be saved.
BerraBoy68 said :
Seriously sounds no different from tha standard Canberra Driver TBH! .. I’ve driven in every Major city in Australia, and Canberrans are by far the worst!
ChrisinTurner said :
The mind boggles as to what they do in Traffic Intelligence!
Another possibility is to report his obviously defective vehicle (indicators not working) to http://www.rego.act.gov.au/registrations/regodefective.htm and get him shortlisted for a compulsory rego inspection.
Yeah summernats ….f***n fantastic
my car was stolen that weekend….coincidence ? I don’t think so.
Her’s some stats on vehicle theft in ACT from The National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council
http://ncars.on.net/docs/quick/ACT_summary_finyr.pdf
homepage is at http://www.carsafe.com.au/t_01.html
but I couldn’t find any specifically related to car theft and other incidents ( property damage, assault etc )in the Summernats week ( how convenient )
ACT taxpayers support the event, wear the consequences and get to wear the crap
I often report cars that are belching black smoke.
As a rusted on folkie, yesterday I made my now annual tradition of driving back into Canberra and through the EPIC grounds on the Monday after to see just how much devastation had been wrought, three months before the National Folk Festival. The place looked like a ****ing tip, and the flouro-wearing clean-up crew were more interested in playing football than tending to the mammoth job of rubbish removal. (We do this crazy thing at the National and actually clean up DURING the festival. Having said that, the session bar on any given morning at about 7am can resemble a metropolitan city’s landfill.)
Being on the road back from Australia’s largest festival, I only had about a hundred folk CDs on me, so I grabbed a favourite and conducted a cleansing ceremony: driving slowly through the grounds with ‘The Road to Port Fairy’ by Trouble in the Kitchen cranked up to 11. The looks on the faces of the clean-up brigade were priceless.
I’m mostly in favour of the Nats being in town, and speaking to a number of retailers in Dickson last night, they didn’t suffer much except for having to employ extra security. But reports like johnnycash’s of mindless acts by punters just sicken me.