First published in the January 2008 issue of Street Machine

The notebooks are long gone, discarded between moves, marriages and regrettable bouts of mayhem. But the images remain vivid and unforgettable.

Some of those never-forgotten Street Machine Summernats images are on the slides — mostly Ektachrome — I shot back back then. Remember slides? The most vivid of all, however, come flooding in when I simply close my eyes.

If you want to get all mystical about it, my Summernats meditations are a kaleidoscope of incredible people and their equally incredible cars. Hell, they’re even accompanied by a redline soundtrack, complete with the smell and taste of burning rubber. If you don’t believe it’s possible to taste burning rubber, try crouching trackside, camera glued to your face, for three full-on days of burnouts, 13 years in a row. Let’s just say you go through a lot of Napisan getting your clothes clean.

Australia’s biggest horsepower party — arguably the world’s biggest — is something you don’t forget in a hurry even if you’re a first-timer. When you’ve been in the thick of so many of ’em, they’re branded into your memory banks forever.

I wasn’t at the first Street Machine Summernats, when the seed was sown for a formula that’s been buffed over the years to a high-gloss finish worthy of Howard Astill, Robbie Beauchamp, Rex Webster, Owen Webb, Ron Barclay, Ed Brodie, John Taverna, Norm Longhurst, Rod Hadfield and more.

Even though I missed the first, I dived head-first into the next 13 events in my capacity as reporter, photographer and editor of the aptly named annual magazine that burst onto newsstands weeks later. If I wasn’t physically crowd-surfing the Summernats, every year was near-as-dammit that kind of experience.

Perhaps inevitably, some years stand out in my memory more than others. And for different reasons. But they’ve all been monumental in their way and, although I can recite the names, the cars, the burnouts, the cruises and the rest even without the benefit of the notes I took or by dragging out the transparencies, watching the highlights DVD that’s packaged with this special edition of Street Machine made those memories and so many more come crowd-surfin’ back.

I don’t pretend to be alone in experiencing vivid Summernats flashbacks. I’m certain that the street machiners, organisers, judges and the rest of the people who’ve been more times than I have know exactly what I’m talking about. Even those who’ve been to one or two — it’s that kind of event.

Lost in the same blackhole as my notebooks is a photograph which is technically a write-off but certifiably gold in my eyes. Even though it’s blurry and badly composed, for me it comes with its own brain-rattling soundtrack — and a lesson never forgotten.

As a CAMS-accredited motorsport photographer, I knew plenty about shooting racing cars. What I knew zilch about was shooting Top Doorslammers. Especially at extreme close range.

Picture Victor Bray’s legendary shoebox Chevy crackling, rocking and snarling on the Summernats burnout strip start-line. Picture big Victor’s smile as he prepared to unleash two tonnes of menacing, blown muscle that’d momentarily accelerate the Earth’s rotation while dumping enough CO2 to send the Kyoto signatories spare.

Then picture your earnest Street Machine correspondent — laden with notebooks, lenses and lead-weight 70s motor-driven Nikons — foam earplugs wedged in, crouched within spitting distance of the Chevy’s left rear tailfin.

There was a kick-arse sequence of launch photos to be taken and I was the man who was gonna take it. Or so I thought.

The thunderous staging launch should’ve been warning enough. It set off every car alarm in Natex and wider Canberra. And it rattled my brain and my every bone.

Nevertheless, sweating like the proverbial, eyes watering from the fumes, eardrums pounding and heart thumping, I took a step closer to the guardrail.

The crowd was pumped, the Chevy was crackling, Victor was in full attack-mode and I had adopted the classic photographer crouch with a faceful of camera. Then the volcano erupted!

You had to be there, that close, to appreciate the full force of that explosion. About 8.0 on the Richter Scale, I reckon. Just thinking about it makes my brain rattle again. If you’ve seen the footage of Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson with his face mashed onto his skull as he slingshots the Ariel Atom around the track, you’ll know how I looked.

And the kick-arse photo sequence? One shot. If you squint your eyes, you can make out the crazy angle on the blurred guardrail and a huge, black thing in a cloud of smoke. That was taken in the split second between pressing the shutter release, dropping the camera, slamming the palms of my hands over my ears, and screaming blue murder. The great sequence of photographs should’ve been of me in full cry.

Summernats 6 is unforgettable for different reasons. No bleeding ears, no ricocheting off the guard rail. But, I must admit, a severely shaken and stirred brain. At least for the first couple of days. Who needs drugs when you’re high on a mix of maximum strength jetlag and high octane Summernats action?

I’d always approached Summernats as a walk on a gigantic film set; one where anything could, and usually did, happen. It’s where Fellini meets Tarantino, Fear And Loathing crossed with Star Wars — all the greats. All larger than life and never short of colour, noise, cars, people and, of course, the original horsepower heaven. And the finished product is always a five-star epic.

For Summernats 6, getting there was the adventure and an epic in its own right.

On Christmas Day I was in Edsbro, south-east of the Swedish capital, Stockholm. It was -15C, my mother-in-law had locked the keys in the Volvo and the plane was leaving in two hours. Summernats officially kicked off in less than 48 hours. Major public holiday, no spare keys and the airport’s 90 minutes down icy farm roads.

The solution? Wake a hung-over Swedish relative and convince him that helping me get to the airport would be a fine and noble thing to do. I’ll skate the front-wheel drive Audi to the airport, he can dawdle home.

Edsbro to Stockholm mostly sideways and in a blur. Burst through the airport doors and straight onto the flight to Heathrow to wait 4.5 hours in the world’s most chaotic airport for the connection to Bangkok. A couple more hours at Bangkok, then Sydney, a taxi-ride home, shower, pack and drive to Canberra while seriously zonked.

A lot of memories of that day are fuzzy. My brain started working late the next afternoon. But the conversation with another Street Machine contributor that first day isn’t one bit fuzzy. I won’t name him here because he has a reputation to live up to, and I don’t want to be the one who exposes him as a wuss.

“I’m absolutely buggered,” he said as we jostled through the first day crowd. “I’ve just flown in from Perth on the red-eye.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. After which, I must admit, I gave him both barrels.

Other memories? A zillion. There’s the year the gate girls were wrapped in blankets because it was a freakish 10C at midday. Or any one of those early Supercruises down a packed and tumultuous Northbourne Avenue that inevitably brought TV news crews out of the woodwork and ultimately locked the big cruise inside Natex.

Any thunderous Gary Myers, Chris Christou, Mark Arblaster burnout, an Ahmet star-turn in his ‘Highly Dangerous’ ute. Any Lawrence Legend stunt. Any equally distracting wet T-shirt competition and Saturday night extravaganza. Tonnes of speared spuds and churned main arena grass. Peter Fitzpatrick breaking records galore and again holding the Champions’ sword aloft. Stepping out of the cavernous judging hall into the blazing sunlight and a motorcade of some of the most incredible cars on Earth.

Talk about epic movies! They’ve got nothin’ on the Summernats.