I am an atheist, not one of those leftie agro ones. I respect people who have faith; I just don’t share it. That means my cathedrals are not limited to grand old buildings and suburban churches. My holy places are many and varied, but one has a particular link to childhood innocence and awe.
A couple of weeks ago, like thousands of others, I made my annual pilgrimage to Bathurst to watch 6.21 kilometres of country road roar to life on Mount Panorama. For me, it’s a celebration of engineering, risk taking and a slice of an Australia that probably never was. A place where loyalties are passed from father to son and are as deep-seated and illogical as most sectarian passions. Put simply, you are a Ford or Holden man. From the outside, non-race fans can’t tell why one brand of car is better than the other and, to be honest, I don’t know either. But for me, I was baptised into the Holden faith. Our Saint was Brock and we worship his disciples Skaife and Lowndes. (I’ll give up on the religious stuff in a moment, but I’m on a roll here.) My love for Bathurst began when my father drove coach-loads of fans to the Mountain for their weekends of madness; long before it was fashionable to go to Vegas or get lost on the Gold Coast. He would always come home with the smallest toy or souvenir, and my brother and I would burn holes in the carpet re-enacting the feats of our holy men. In the late ‘80s Dad took us to Bathurst to soak it all up live. He took us to the last corner of the track before the start finish line: a place called ‘Murray’s Corner’. Of course, Dad told us it was named after us, and who were we to question him? In truth, it was named after a driver who crashed there in the 1940s. The cars were loud and the tyres would screech as they made the bend to Pitt Straight. I was hooked. Like millions of others I’d watch every lap on TV and Dad would come and go all day asking ‘How’s Brocky doing?’
This year I saw the track like never before. I was invited to do a hot lap with none other than Craig Lowndes driving his very own Commodore. The heavenly experience began with a trip across that famous footbridge where the main sponsor’s name has come and gone, then a quick trip to one of the pit garages. Mine was not the only childlike smile. I was there with my friend, the tech reporter Trevor Long, who was grinning and taking a million photos. We walked out of the garage and in a few steps were standing on the still warm track from a day’s racing and the hot Bathurst sun. A quick selfie for posterity and we were in the car with Craig (we are mates now, right?)
He slams the accelerator and we are off: 160k’s up the mountain straight, before slowing to a mere 100k as we rip up the cutting and the twists and turns to the top of this holy place. Trevor notices that he is doing all of this one handed, waving at fans, but to us it was full race conditions. A quick rip over the top, past the wild fans who’d kill to trade places, down the esses and now it gets serious. 200k down Conrod Straight. We’re all cheering like the first time Dad let you play corners on the back seat of his Kingswood. Through the chase and there it was: Murray’s Corner. I saw kids like we were all those years ago standing and cheering on the big loud Holden. When we pulled up I couldn’t help but think one of the things I love most about this country; your Dad might be a bus driver, but if luck turns your way and you work hard enough you can have a job where people invite you to live your dreams – like the one I just did. Thank you Lowndesy. GO HOLDEN!
What is it about the romance of former political leaders? The passing of Gough Whitlam brought with it a flood of twitter love and nostalgia for a PM who at worst they all called ‘far from perfect’. A lot was made of the schism between his leadership style and today’s, with article after article bemoaning why modern governments aren’t more like his. But, of course, they ignore how the people of the day viewed his government. Australia was given two chances to ‘right the wrong’ (as the Left sees it) and they resoundingly rejected him in both 1975 and again in 1977.
Despite their fears that today’s politics doesn’t resemble those days, they are wrong. For three years Rudd ran what was known as the kitchen cabinet; four people who made all the decisions that the rest of the cabinet just rubber-stamped. Whitlam’s duumvirate was literally a two-man cabinet that turned the nation on it’s head in just two weeks. Rudd, too, tried to clear the Left’s in-box of demands in his first term – producing chaos in the halls of parliament – and was punished by his own colleges who dumped him before the people had a chance to in 2010. I honestly do agree with those who lament Whitlam’s bravery, but the truth is you can’t do everything without there being a cost. While no-one is going to challenge greater access to education and health, you can’t ignore the great cost to the nation of such entitlements.
Like Whitlam, Tony Abbott faces a senate that could grind to a halt, but unlike Whitlam he must be willing to compromise his agenda in order to get it through. As a result, Abbott’s will be a government that will fail to deliver on everything it wants. The house of review will blunt the harshest of Abbott’s changes, but conversely the long term lesson for the ALP and the PUP is to balance promises with a plan to pay for the things that we now expect from government. For the reams of paper and hours of TV dedicated to Whitlam’s legacy, it would have been nice to see things in their full detail. Not just a tale of grand plans and government somehow stolen from the people.
