It should come as no surprise to Canberran’s that at this time of year we get a few articles in the various media outlets about the Summernats. Invariably it starts with Chic Henry espousing how this year will be different and its a safe family friendly event which, I’m sure it is, during the day perhaps.
But a few beers later and we also inevitably get the following. In this article from yesterday’s the Canberra Times, reader Jessieduck noted the following corker.
Mr Henry said he had not had to face any major security complaints.
“I haven’t had any reports of any incidents of any significance. My security manager is very happy,” he said. “I spoke to him late last night and he said everything was moving along very smoothly, no accidents that I’ve heard about.
“We took one unfortunate man to the hospital because he had a problem with his heart, but he is back at the event today, smiling.
“Essentially, it is all about cars that are driving on the street and so the people that come here recognise that. It isn’t a race meeting, it is a festival.”
Tool unearthed this story on News.com which quoted summernats spokesman Dale Britten with some nicely scripted responses.
“In relation to comments such as asking women to remove their shirts, regrettably this does occur at this event,” he said.
“It highlights the need for Summernats organisers to continue to improve the environment at Summernats so it is a tolerant and respectful environment.”
“Alcohol was a factor”.
“It is a new phenomenon; we have never had that happen at the event before,”
And this is different to the past 20 years how? For those readers who went to the Nats, Does this match with your experience of the event or are the media blowing things out of proportion by taking small isolated incidents and making the Nats out to be the bad guy?
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“It is a new phenomenon; we have never had that happen at the event before,”
How long can one have their head in the sand before they expire?
Obviously about twenty years….
I think they mean the angry mob, not the frightening attitude to women.
Either or….
I’m sure I’ve read reports from previous Nats about unruly crowd behaviour.
Whatever, it would appear that the event ran reasonably smoothly, without to many disruptions to nearby residents, and if that is the case then the organisers need to be congratulated.
Apparently the quality of car was exceptional this year. I got to see a few while in Mitchell on Sunday and I have to admit their was some nice pieces of steel on the road.
Would anyone who went care to comment?
I went to the Nats on Sunday, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. I’ve been every year for the past 10 years, and this was by far the best-behaved crowd. Security was everywhere (I think I passed a guard about every 50 metres) and although there were the usual ‘show us your tits’ comments, they were only directed at one particular woman who was happy to oblige.
Up until about 5 years ago, I used to always go on Saturdays. However after one particular year of being harassed the whole day by a mob of bikers I thought I would get more enjoyment going on the Sunday, where I could look at the cars in peace. I think next year I will venture out on the Saturday again, because with the amount of security as well as police at the event I think its safer at the Nats than Civic on any Saturday night.
One other thing – I know the Nats has a bad reputation for the attitude of attendees towards women, and while this reputation is warranted I still find it ridiculous that women go to this event wearing next-to-nothing, flashing their boobs and then wonder why they get harassed. I think women should be able to go wearing whatever the hell they want, and it’s not fair that it contributes to the behaviour of some people, but at the end of the day what is more important – promoting women’s rights by dressing like a slut or your own safety and security?
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that women dressed like sluts deserve to get hassled/raped etc. but surely common-sense has to prevail.
Thumper, the cars this year were absolutely amazing. It was a return to what the Nats is really all about – the restoration and alteration of classic cars, like the old American classics and the quintessential Aussie beasts. There were very few late model cars, and almost everything was V8 as opposed to the rotaries and turbos that seemed to be dominating for the last few years.
There also seemed to be a lot more emphasis on uniqueness – e.g. the old Valiant that looked plain, simple but managed to pump out 1080hp on the Dyno, a completely original 450SLC Mercedes and a lot of the old 50′s Roadsters.
Sorry for the double-post
AH, spelling mistake by me
‘There’, not ‘their’…
Need coffee…
See ‘women’ is lots of different people.
So the ones flashing are actually different to the ones who are complaining about being harassed.
Good point Sepi, I apologise for generalising. I guess it just irks me because out of the thousands of women I saw at the Nats, I only saw about five who wore actual clothes, not a loin cloth and a handkerchief wrapped around their boobs.
It will all be ok.
Our Deb, former Narrabundah snout-trougher, wants SummerNats to have hybrid cars and solar powered vehicles to reduce Chic’s carbon footprint.
I can just imagine the lads queuing up to look at them.
Do these hippies live in the same universe as the rest of us?
“Oi Deb, show us ya tits!”
“I was only joking! Please don’t! Noooooo!!!! Stop – my eyes are burning!”
Can the hybrids drop a burnout?
why don’t they just ban booze? then people would be much better behaved, and you wouldn’t get the knobs who only go there to get pissed and harrass women. It would be an actual car show.
Yeah Mr Toad, I read that as well.
Talk about being out of step with a section of the community.
As I’ve said before, people are different, some like flower shows, some like museums, some like car shows, etc etc.
This is a good thing, it’s called diversity.
People like the Summernats, that’s fine.
Something Ms Foskey doesn’t really seem to appreciate.
Oh, and after reading her self grandiosing (and so self idulgent in a navel gazing way) blog about her worrying about her carbon footprint from flying to NZ for a climate change meeting I can never take a thing she says seriously.
I couldn’t get over Chic’s complete change of attitiude last night on the news as he stated that Summernats is an event for “mainly 18-25 year olds, and it isn’t a family event”.
Well, in all the ads leading up to Summernats he said it was a great event for the whole family!
Mind you, why would you trust anyone called Chic!
Just another case of Deb Foskey chasing a headline.
While I might dislike some aspects of Summernats, I dislike Frothsky much more!
Listening to her waffling on (and blinking constantly!) on tv last night made me want to throw up.
Who voted for her? I want names and addresses!
it was most pleasing, when driving in and out of canberra on the weekend for a quick trip to sydney – to see lots of police cars on the highway pulling over lots of cars for speeding and car inspections. and before anyone bleats about the police targetting the summernats demographic – if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you won’t be booked, simple as that.
I attended in a volunteer position, and think that this year was pretty good. Some great cars, and mostly pretty good crowd behaviour was witnessed, even when there was a bit of a mob walking along chanting. As per any event (and I mean any) there were drunken f#%ktards who don’t understand the difference between having fun, and being a cock.
Was pretty surprised that I saw more breasts on the friday (family day?) then I did saturday or sunday….
toad you are also pretty far out of step with the community with your aggressive chauvunism.
“Oi Deb, show us ya tits!”
I reckon you’d have to look at her knees to see them!
You obviously live in a very different community sepi – most hippies do.
“Can the hybrids drop a burnout?”
No. Idiots and cretins probably don’t drive hybrids.
Qbn Survivor. I also went along yesterday. Spent quite a lot of time loving some of those old cars. The burnouts got old rather quickly. Apart from that the Soundoff was fairly enjoyable. I noticed quite a bit of Security, and 3 Police cars out the front when I left around 3pm. I didn’t have any issues with anything yesterday.
Openly admitting that the summernats is not a family event probably indicates that this kind of behavior has given it the reputation it needs to stay true to what it is – a hoon fest. It’s not bad; the hoon culture represents a sizable proportion of Australian culture, so why not have a festival for it?
Big Zed has his say…
Haha, well, that worked well, I tried to post the URL and article title, but failed miserably, so, please copy and paste the following…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/07/2133258.htm
I’ll happily accept remedial lessons if anyone cares to oblige.
I’m surprised that Simon even realised it was on….
As I don’t know if this will work until I try it:
<a href = "Site you want to link to">Text you want to be the link</a%gt;Should give the result
ABC Online Article “Summernats troublemakers should be banned: Seselja”
Wonder what would happen if they banned alchohol altogether at the Nats?
There would probably be a group of about ten blokes standing on the side of the road saying “excuse me madam, if it’s not too much trouble could we possibly see your breasts? No? Ok, no worries”.
I was there for the 4 days but what surprised me was on friday(Family day)there was a white limo doing the rounds with a female doing a full frontal from the passengers window for at least 3laps, I am presuming that this was some form of advertising for a strip revue. I only went for a few hours on Saturday but I did notice that some of the “women” who were passengers were actually encoraging the crowd gatherer’s in order to show their wares. Sunday for what I saw was fairly quiet.
Lol@Doctor Evil.
I do agree with the suggestion of giving repeat troublemakers lifetime bans. Does anyone know how well that worked with the Rugby? I paid about as much attention to the bulldogs fans fiasco as I did to the actual game.