The first time I saw pornographic pictures was at the Bathurst 1000. I’m not entirely sure how old I was, younger than 10 I think? I was with my father on the top of the mountain somewhere near the esses. My dad was looking at the track, but I was transfixed by the shanty-like structure which was set up next to us.
They don’t allow it these days, but groups of people used to turn up to the track early, fence off the best viewing spots, put up a tarpaulin roof, and bring in a few old couches.
But it wasn’t the impressive infrastructure which grabbed my attention. It was the large esky one of the blokes had sitting next to his couch. It was adorned with a spectacular collage of pornographic pictures cut out from dirty magazines. It was meticulous work. He would have been hunched over those magazines for hours, carefully cutting around those perky boobs and artfully spread buttcheeks.
What was his artistic process, I wonder? Did he sit by the fire with his porno mag every night and decide which glossy woman made it on the special esky? Was this a sexy job, or did he have the same mindless contentment one has knitting a scarf? Or quilling? If I saw him today, I might ask him these questions. But at the time I remember just feeling deeply uncomfortable.
We’re just a few days away from the 60th anniversary race at Bathurst and all the saccharine celebrations that will entail. It seems the only time men are allowed to experience guilt-free sentimentality is when it’s partnered with something blokey like sport. Or beer. Or beers and sport.
Let’s be clear. I don’t want to take that away from anyone. But I’m compelled to write my own history of the Bathurst 1000. My feelings about this race are complicated. This event simultaneously got me into – and out of – V8 Supercar racing.
Bathurst is a bit like a reverse trifle: all the booze settles at the top. This is because most of the camping sections are up there. Thankfully, these days the campers have alcohol limits. You can only have one case of beer, per person, per day.
This is a profound amount of alcohol. 24 cans. Around 1,400 calories. 33 standard drinks. The ingredients for a hangover which would crack my skull open like an egg shell.
But even then, the one-case-per-day rule was introduced in 2007 to utter outrage. How much outrage are we talking here? Well, the police presence doubled to 700 people and they had a riot squad with a water cannon on standby. But when I was a kid no such limits existed.
My memories from this time feel a little like scenes from an apocalyptic film.
You might think I’m being dramatic here. Perhaps I am. But it did feel more than a little lawless when, after the race finished, spectators gathered all the old couches onto a big pile and set them on fire. An enormous burning pillar surrounded by drunken, stumbling men. The last scene of Wicker Man without the wholesome singing.
Couches are banned now. It’s the sort of rule you’d say was inexplicable and stupid had you not witnessed the pagan furniture sacrifice in person.
Honestly, I could forgive this particular brand of loutishness as an adult. As the bible says, let she who has not recklessly started a bonfire when drunk cast the first stone. Or something. I haven’t read it.
But it’s all the weird sex stuff I could have done without.
Yes, this means the porno esky. I cannot imagine lifting that thing into a car and thinking ‘this is a tasteful and good thing to bring to a public event’.
But there were other things too.
Like the man who jogged over to my dad in order to kindly inform him that there were strippers in one of the tents as we walked from one viewing area to the next. I was standing next to my father for the entire encounter.
Or there was the time I watched a man in his 40s ask to get his photo with a group of grid girls. This herd of beautiful women were all in their early 20s, walking around the unpaved track in knee-high boots. Between the five of them there wasn’t enough fabric to make a bath towel. The spectator crouched next to the women, put his arms about one of the their knees, and then buried his face in her crotch.
I should say that not all of the fans are cretins. Amongst my childhood memories are the men who made space so I could stand next to the fence, or who lent me their flags to wave on the last lap. As a young girl on a car racing track I was either indulged or treated as invisible.
But then I became a teenager.
Things are different now, but In the 2000s women’s most publicised role in car racing involved being dressed in handkerchief-sized lycra and draped over cars.
Given the above, is it any surprise that I had a grown man shout ‘show us your tits’, when I was just 16-years old?
It was humiliating. Perhaps that was the point.
Either way, I stopped watching V8s soon after. Thankfully Formula 1 and Touring Cars (and their much more civil fan base) filled the void. Car racing happily stayed a part of my life.
Almost two decades later, I started watching V8 Supercars again this year. A couple of good races dragged me back into the fan base. Next weekend I plan to return to Mount Panorama for the Bathurst 1000.
But I wonder how many women my age never will return?
There will be lots of nostalgic packages about Mount Panorama’s race history played this weekend. It will be the usual mix of archival footage, Peter Brock montages, and rosy-cheeked children wearing team shirts.
What won’t feature are the men, so sunburnt they’re red as a capsicums, passed out drunk outside their tents. The burning furniture piles. The sexual harassment. The grotesque, implicitly endorsed sexual harassment.
It’s part of the history of Mount Panorama they’d rather we forget. But I remember.
