I'm really annoyed that for the first time in 19 years I couldnt be bothered making the trek to Bathurst this year for the event.
The do gooders have absolutely destroyed what used to be an Ozzy institution and right of passage with their family friendly rules and regulations. For the past 18 years in a row, me and a group of about 20 blokes have knocked off work on thursday and headed up to our pre booked camp grounds at McPhillamy Park and settled in for 3 full days of raucous partying and fun.This year only 5 guys have gone.
The Bathurst experience has been totally devastated and tamed down to the point that an RSL club is a wilder day out. When I first started going I was 17 and thought I was bullet proof…until I hit the mountain and realised just how far down the totem pole I really stood. What an eye opening experience that was to say the least! Mad buggers running around causing havoc, pissed bogans cutting down telegraph poles with chainsaws, cars on fire, brawls, burnouts, circle work in dedicated donut arenas, totally excessive drinking, massive parties and 3 days of very little sleep....I was in heaven.
People used to walk around filming the whole thing, then making dvd's that were sold the next year. The series was called 'go hard or go home' and only the craziest buggers made it onto film. I made the cut one year when I had a knuckle with a Hells Angels maggot who hit me in the face with a lit dunny roll soaked in kero. This was the motto of life on mount panorama for many years to come. 10 000 + lunatics...mostly men all there for the same reason. To get loose and enjoy the great race. We had a motorised keg trolley complete with tv, barbeque hotplate and esky that was a mainstay up there for at least a dozen years. We'd need one ute for the trolley, one ute for the bags, one for all the food, 3 utes for the camping stuff and another for the 6 kegs minimum that we would take with us. It was a huge logistical effort just to get us there! Other peole were even more adventurous. There were people in hovercrafts, on lawn mowers with v8s running them, motorsied lounge chairs that shot fireworks like cannons, uni cycles powered by lawn mower engines..it was side show alley.
Every morning you'd get up from your couple of hours of sleep and go straight down to the track with the trolley, hit the keg up for a heart starter whilst cooking breakey and watch the convoy of dumptrucks making their way through the crowd to pick up all of the cars that were desttroyed the night before. You would then settle in for another day of craziness. It was like everyone there was on a bux party. i have made many friends over the years with other attendies that we would only run into for the 4 days a year we were there. They are my Bathurst mates.
Then the nazis started coming in. About 8 years ago they tried to put a lid on things when on the friday they brought 100's of security gaurds in to put a lid on activities. After a very long night for them they packed up and were gone by the Saturday night. That however was the start of things to come. The very next year they came back at least 500 strong with 100's of coppers as backup. They bashed a few people and word got around which sparked a massive riot that lasted for hours. This was exactly what the do gooders wanted and allowed them to completely sanatise the event from that day forward. Bathurst as it was, was never the same again. Fast forward a few years and just about everything was banned. No more kegs, no more bottles, no more fireworks, no more motor bikes or anything motorised, no more lounge chairs that had been engineered to run off a v6 motor....the lawn mower that ran off a 350 chev were all gone. In their place were families, clowns making baloon animals and grog tents where you had to pay $8 for a beer. Music wasnt allowed to be blasted anymore and people were getting arrested left right and center for drunkedess. They had succesfully killed the last bastion of adult maleness. It has steadily got worse ever since.
What used to be an event attended by a pretty rough crowd was now like a picnic in the park for wankers with gel in their hair wearing designer clothes and posing for the whole world to notice. Gone were the bikies, bogans and scoundrels and in their place metros and families. It completely sucks. The bottom of the hill was for the nancies and was kid friendly but the top was for the nutters. Now the whole mountain is for them.
I will never, ever go back to Bathurst....I barely even watch the race anymore. Such a shame....
The do gooders have absolutely destroyed what used to be an Ozzy institution and right of passage with their family friendly rules and regulations. For the past 18 years in a row, me and a group of about 20 blokes have knocked off work on thursday and headed up to our pre booked camp grounds at McPhillamy Park and settled in for 3 full days of raucous partying and fun.This year only 5 guys have gone.
The Bathurst experience has been totally devastated and tamed down to the point that an RSL club is a wilder day out. When I first started going I was 17 and thought I was bullet proof…until I hit the mountain and realised just how far down the totem pole I really stood. What an eye opening experience that was to say the least! Mad buggers running around causing havoc, pissed bogans cutting down telegraph poles with chainsaws, cars on fire, brawls, burnouts, circle work in dedicated donut arenas, totally excessive drinking, massive parties and 3 days of very little sleep....I was in heaven.
People used to walk around filming the whole thing, then making dvd's that were sold the next year. The series was called 'go hard or go home' and only the craziest buggers made it onto film. I made the cut one year when I had a knuckle with a Hells Angels maggot who hit me in the face with a lit dunny roll soaked in kero. This was the motto of life on mount panorama for many years to come. 10 000 + lunatics...mostly men all there for the same reason. To get loose and enjoy the great race. We had a motorised keg trolley complete with tv, barbeque hotplate and esky that was a mainstay up there for at least a dozen years. We'd need one ute for the trolley, one ute for the bags, one for all the food, 3 utes for the camping stuff and another for the 6 kegs minimum that we would take with us. It was a huge logistical effort just to get us there! Other peole were even more adventurous. There were people in hovercrafts, on lawn mowers with v8s running them, motorsied lounge chairs that shot fireworks like cannons, uni cycles powered by lawn mower engines..it was side show alley.
Every morning you'd get up from your couple of hours of sleep and go straight down to the track with the trolley, hit the keg up for a heart starter whilst cooking breakey and watch the convoy of dumptrucks making their way through the crowd to pick up all of the cars that were desttroyed the night before. You would then settle in for another day of craziness. It was like everyone there was on a bux party. i have made many friends over the years with other attendies that we would only run into for the 4 days a year we were there. They are my Bathurst mates.
Then the nazis started coming in. About 8 years ago they tried to put a lid on things when on the friday they brought 100's of security gaurds in to put a lid on activities. After a very long night for them they packed up and were gone by the Saturday night. That however was the start of things to come. The very next year they came back at least 500 strong with 100's of coppers as backup. They bashed a few people and word got around which sparked a massive riot that lasted for hours. This was exactly what the do gooders wanted and allowed them to completely sanatise the event from that day forward. Bathurst as it was, was never the same again. Fast forward a few years and just about everything was banned. No more kegs, no more bottles, no more fireworks, no more motor bikes or anything motorised, no more lounge chairs that had been engineered to run off a v6 motor....the lawn mower that ran off a 350 chev were all gone. In their place were families, clowns making baloon animals and grog tents where you had to pay $8 for a beer. Music wasnt allowed to be blasted anymore and people were getting arrested left right and center for drunkedess. They had succesfully killed the last bastion of adult maleness. It has steadily got worse ever since.
What used to be an event attended by a pretty rough crowd was now like a picnic in the park for wankers with gel in their hair wearing designer clothes and posing for the whole world to notice. Gone were the bikies, bogans and scoundrels and in their place metros and families. It completely sucks. The bottom of the hill was for the nancies and was kid friendly but the top was for the nutters. Now the whole mountain is for them.
I will never, ever go back to Bathurst....I barely even watch the race anymore. Such a shame....
