Burning tyres are highly carcinogenic and prevented me from even being outside my house when the burnouts were on. Residents are well used to flowover effects of events from the Showgrounds but it was never planned as a motor sports facility. When Summernats invades this tranquillity, it destroys the illusion, and leaves people to ask “Is nothing sacred – is there nowhere I can just *be* – without the modern world intruding on my consciousness?” And it’s that feeling, I think, more than anything else, that creates the ongoing anger towards the event.īecause of the burnouts, Summernats is a toxic and noisy imposition on the several thousand households living in nearby suburbs. It’s an implicit acknowledgement that so much of our shared environment is ugly, aggressive and boring – that we have collectively given up on having beautiful and genteel public spaces. This is why modern houses have everything built in, so you never have to leave the house, and you have a tranquil place to escape the modern world. Perhaps a feeling that much of the modern world is out of our control means that our surroundings become more and more important to us. In modern Canberra, much of that original architectural vision has been destroyed, replaced by endless ugly, car-dependent suburbs. Marian Mahony Griffin’s original drawings of Canberra reflect a place that was classically beautiful, and genteel. In recent years as Canberra has become denser, how people want to perceive it is changing. I have written about this topic before here: A lack of soundproofing and hard surfaces mean that we’ll always hear the kitchen and coffee machine noise as well. We can’t seem to do quiet spaces like Japan or Taiwan do – not only can we not seem to talk loudly, but there is nearly always background music playing. Try using an app like Sound Print next time you’re in a cafe or restaurant, and see if you can find a place below 50 decibels. Australians broadly have a problem with quiet spaces. I am not interested in Summernats, and Tim’s article has made me wonder why not. Soon, motors will advance and larger ones be stuffed into carbon-fibre frames until we can achieve Nirvana with Burnouts on Bicycles. Given the sensational torque of electric motors from rest, I envisage future Summer(green)nats where the front motor is disconnected and still more extraordinary burnouts are achieved, while a sonic actuator against the firewall and windscreen (they have been fitted to many production cars for years) produces fabulous vroom-doof noises matching the virtual cylinder count dialled up in the cabin, and special tyres produced for the market vie for maximum smoke with minimum carcinogenicity. The fact I have negligible interest in the Summernats vehicles is no more important than my lack of interest in many other hobbies, or those people’s in mine. Such achievements can be highly personally rewarding. However, I appreciate the effort, interest, devotion, expense choices, sometimes ingenuity that can go into restoring older cars (or any things really) or developing new notions on older frameworks, and having those recognised by others. I think burnouts are a ludicrous, and damaging activity. Not a topic on which I might normally comment, except two options idly occurred to me so here are both of them.
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