Cars from Summernats 35 cruise along Northbourne Avenue. Photo: James Coleman.
It arrives like a clap of thunder on a warm January afternoon – the first crack of a modded engine out the front of a Canberra hotel. It fills Canberrans with the kind of dread the ancient monks must have felt when they peered out of their coastal monastery and saw a Viking longship on the azure bay.
What ensues over the weekend goes against everything Canberra wakes up and wants to be. Tyre smoke rises from a civilisation that aspired to environmental concern, unmolested street trees, quiet EVs, active travel and 8 pm bedtimes.
As the chariots of the barbarians roar around the Rainbow Roundabout, balconies above are barricaded. Inside, groodles whimper. It’s the end of days, for all four of them.
I forgot about Summernats once. I landed hopefully in Braddon for an evening of gin and politics. A yelping scooter almost collected me, mullet billowing like the mane of a brumby. All my bars were overrun. I scurried through the anarchy to Knighty’s – the Goulburn hooligans will never find this place, I thought – but like the safehouse in a zombie movie, it had been breached.
I fled.
But I got over it. And it’s probably time we all did. It’s at the point where the bitching about Summernats is the worst part of it all.
Commentary runs malevolently about how it should be banned, starting with the burnouts. “The government is all about reducing emissions and yet it permits this event” goes a common cant, as if the government has all events under its heel and this is an annual oversight by the Ministry of Fun.
Some argue it needs to move on to another city – one presumably more dependent on tourists than taxpayers.
KINGXA whips up a fairy floss plume at Summernats 37. Photo: Summernats.
Against this we have the apologists’ favourite retort, that Summernats is great at feathering the ACT economy as thousands of bogans demand beer and lodgings.
It’s true that Summernats is the only Canberra event the rest of the nation cares about. You would, if you were here in September, stop and smell the flowers, but no one comes from Queensland for 500 metres of tulips and a sloppy Magnum for the price of Ghana’s GDP.
Some insist that it’s not Summernats they hate … it’s the antisocial element. The event has in fact become more family-friendly. But let’s not fool ourselves.
Loud cars and burnouts will always be antisocial. This isn’t the Goodwood Festival of Speed on the Duke of Richmond’s estate. No one is here to talk with erudition about Art Deco Alfa Romeos.
This is not mere car-love; this is a festival of crass power. And Canberra loves every type of power except that one. Summernats will always be a middle finger up, and particularly so to Canberra.
Yet Canberra needs Summernats, in the same way Parliament needs Lydia Thorpe and Bob Katter. It’s a prick to the Canberra Bubble. An ear-splitting cannonball through the ivory tower. A particularly acidic litmus test of our tolerance.
We talk more than the rest of the nation about diversity and inclusivity … but can we show it to the rest of the nation when it rocks up here like it owns the place? When it takes our couch in Knighty’s?
Can we swallow our arrogance, our intimate knowledge of noise regulations and Cressida Campbell, our love of all that is green and pleasant … and fan that smouldering childlike curiosity for something rude and unfamiliar? Maybe manage a soft “I bloody hate that sound … but what a dashing colour” from our Turner balcony when a VY SS farts by?
Before we go inside and slam the door shut.
Summernats, like everything important that lands in Canberra, doesn’t actually give a damn about the place. We can return the apathy – just nothing worse.
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