Spot fires, mullets and a general air of rubber. Alice Springs festival of wheels is a sensory feast

From plumes of purple and pink smoke, it rained rubber on the Alice Springs Inland Dragway.

“You’ve got yourself a souvenir, son,” one man said as his kid proudly presented a piece of shredded tyre.

“It’s still warm, Dad!” he proclaimed excitedly.

Stationed in the spectators’ quarters, motor enthusiasts, car connoisseurs and anyone partial to a sound-and-light show watched vehicles of all shapes and sizes pump smoke, pop tyres, bang into barriers, go up in flames and ultimately run rings on a burnout pad for the Friday night opening of Red CentreNATS.

“We have a sunroof open for maximum ventilation,” the commentator said over the loudspeaker as one car spun itself into a spark-fuelled frenzy.

“It’s the skid that wasn’t meant to be,” they said of another burnout contender.

Now in its ninth year, the Red CentreNATS desert festival of wheels is an automotive meet and greet of grunt machines, petrol guzzlers, hot wheels and shiny classics. Over the weekend, 834 registered entrants (and many more vehicles) from across the country converged on Alice Springs to compete in burnouts, drag racing, grass driving and 4WDing. There were also showrooms for polished vehicles, a stage for the best child mullet, a parade through town, and an opportunity for unregistered cars to cruise around freely — apart from the cost of a $51.10 temporary registration permit.  

Trackside was a visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and — for the fans collecting strips of shredded tube — tactile experience, but for those behind the wheel, everything was amplified.

“If I get smoked out and can’t see, I always look for light towers,” Wagga Wagga pro burnout driver Jack Seaman told Crikey.

“When I look up and it’s right there, I know there’s a wall.”

In short: walls are bad news for burnouts. They inflict damage on both the car and the scoreboard. Drivers lose points for hitting barriers, reversing, catching fire and failing to pop tyres.

“You don’t want to be driving off on tyres. If you don’t pop them, you don’t get points,” Seaman said as a post-burnout car rolled past clanging on its rims. “Drive off on rims, that’s the plan.”

Seaman was driving an electric-blue Holden one-tonner ute called LOOSEQ (noted on his plates) that had done 15 years with him. In burnout mode, it churns 60 to 70 litres per minute and costs thousands in replacements and repairs after each time on the pad.

“This car owes me more than I paid for my first house,” first-time competitor Jason Marshall said.

“To build the car, you’re looking at probably about 150 grand, and that’s not including maintenance costs. Any time I drive this car, it’s probably a minimum of 1000 bucks.”

Marshall drove his bright-green VY SS Ute up from Whyalla with his wife and two kids for the event. It’s kitted out with an engine up front (protruding from the bonnet) and goes by 1MAADSS: “It’s an SS Ute and it’s a pretty angry car.”

The family unit was wearing matching 1MAADSS merch and the two kids both sported healthy mullets. Sadly, they said, these would not get to go before the judging panel this year because it clashed with Dad’s burnouts. The mullets were respectively two and three years in the making.

“Hey Dad, there’s always a way,” Marshall’s youngest said.

While many of the vehicles were hotted-up renditions of their former selves, there were some visually stock-standard models that resembled your everyday car. Stephen Bishop from Mt Isa sported a neat white Holden Calais VX with the numberplate #SenderLink.

“It’s actually SenderLink 4825, but I didn’t put the area code on there,” he said.

The car exterior looked immaculate, and internally it was even better.

“Goodness, it’s got a luxury tortoiseshell dash,” Crikey commented.

“Yea, it’s a Calais,” Bishop said, adding that the car doubled as his drag racing vehicle (tomorrow) and tripled as his ride home (a few days later).

“The first year we brought it over, I drove from Mount Isa, skidded and dragged it all weekend, then drove it home again. My skid was terrible because I knew in the back of my mind, I had to get home in it.”

The smoke, fumes, spot fires and general air of rubber at the Alice Springs Inland Dragway was a stark contrast to the grassy showgrounds where (apart from the odd smoky exhaust) it was all shiny cars and family-friendly fun. Of note was the Harley-Davidson replacement bucking bull and the intergenerational mullet competition (which Marshall’s kids managed to make).

“I just love it, especially when I’m racing motocross, it comes out the back,” young mullet winner Tom told Crikey.

He explained that his two-to-three-year-old hairdo was relatively low maintenance (care routine of shampoo and conditioner) and “naturally straight” compared with other competitors who’d opted for a perm.  

“I just wake up and brush it in the morning. And then an hour later, it’ll be all knotty. So I have to brush it again.”

For his efforts, Tom won a $100 voucher to the local mall. He thanked his mum and dad and told Crikey the win was a dramatic improvement on last year’s performance: “I did terrible. I slept in and missed it.”