The 86-year-old nana who loves burnouts

And how she helped me look forward

A few months ago, I think it was at Summernats, someone told me about a sweet little old lady called ‘Nan’ who liked doing burnouts. I was told she’s beloved in the car scene. So much so that every year, forty or so people come to celebrate her birthday in Leeton.

Everyone gets together, does some skids, and blows through a few sets of tyres.

I knew I had to meet Nan. So I put a note in my diary, and committed to attending her 86th birthday party – which is how I ended up in Wagga Wagga over the weekend. It’s the country town where I spent three very formative years while studying at Charles Sturt University.

This wasn’t meant to be a nostalgia tour, but it quickly became one. Walking down the town’s main street, I was bombarded by memories.

I wandered past Romanos, a pub which used to have the best dance floor. Like any Wagga venue with a liquor license in those days, you could walk to the bar, order a goon and juice, and be served a $3.50 drink without question.

That’s dangerously cheap, of course. But not cheap enough for a gaggle of university students. One night my friends and I brought a goon sack along with us to drink between pubs. We hid it in the bushes out the front of Romanos, and subsequently got so drunk, that we forgot to collect it on our way home.

Thankfully, the goon sack was recovered the next afternoon and finished soon after.

With that kind of reckless drinking, it’s not surprising that the occasional fight would break out. I was once collateral damage to such a scuffle. Sometimes after midnight, wo women, gangly and unsteady like fawns on their oversized heels, started brawling on the dancefloor. One pushed the other and she stumbled backwards, her stiletto heel piercing between my toes.

For a couple of years, I could pinpoint exactly where that incident happened, because there was a bloodstain on the carpet from my foot.

Queen Elizabeth once stayed at Romanos, you know. She spent a night there in 1954, as part of her royal tour of Australia. It amused me that she and I both left an indelible mark on the place. Or we had. The carpet has long since been replaced.

It’s nice in Romanos now. That’s a great shame, I think.

I kept walking down the main street. Over the bridge, I went. Past the Eternal Flame which drunken students once accidentally put out, past the cheap Chinese restaurant which gave everyone food poisoning, past the shopping mall where we’d buy tacky clothes.

At every step, I expected to see my university friends. Where is Chris? Where is Hannah? Where is Jono and Missy and Emma? We’re all still mates, so I knew the answer. They’re at home with their families in various cities around Australia.

But here, in our old haunts, those people I’m approaching middle age with with feel less real.

For a while, I walk among ghost versions of my friends.

I also walk with the ghost version of myself.

It’s a terribly bittersweet feeling, nostalgia. You visit a moment, but can’t enter it. It’s like looking through the window of a locked house. For me, it comes with a sense of longing.

But what am I longing for?

I go to The Victoria Hotel, in search of answers for questions I can’t articulate.

We used to dance here once. The upstairs area, which had a mirrored dancefloor and DJ booth, is closed.

Once the Vic used to hold themed nights. Fluro parties, traffic light parties, ‘tight and bright’ parties. Once or twice a year, they’d even fill the upstairs area with foam. We’d dance and drink in the piteous bubbles enjoying the absurdity. Two days later, everyone would have conjunctivitis.

I don’t miss the conjunctivitis.

You can’t order goon and juice anymore. I’m relieved. These days the smell alone is enough to give me a hangover. I order a gin and tonic instead, and sip on it while young families file past me on Baylis street. A few tables of old blokes watch the football on televisions around the bar.

This isn’t the venue it used to be.

But if I’m being honest, university wasn’t always fun. When you’re nineteen and fresh into the world, there’s so much to navigate. You’re unequipped to be an adult, but expected to act like one. Everything feels more intense, too. The joy, sadness and triumphs all feel bigger, perhaps because you’re experiencing so many pivotal moments for the first time.

The older you get, the more points of reference you have. Does time dull emotions? Is that a bad thing? Or is it a relief that our tumultuous inner lives are calmed through sheer experience? Like jagged glass made smooth by rough seas.

But if that were the case, surely I wouldn’t be so affected by an old, faded country pub. That night I go to sleep feeling a little melancholy. I’m not sure why.

I don’t go searching for answers at a burnout strip in the outskirts of Leeton. But strangely, that’s where I find them.

The next day, I watch a parade of clapped-out Holdens drive until their tyres explode into a storm of rubber. There was no sign of the promised burnout-loving great-grandmother. I began to think it had all been a joke.

But then suddenly a black ute screamed onto the pad. My jaw literally dropped when I saw the small, spectacled woman behind the wheel. She was grinning from ear-to-ear while she threw her car around in a series of donuts. One tyre went out with a bang, then the other.

I’ve had a couple of lessons on how to skid cars. It takes real skill. It’s hard to control the vehicle, and easy to stall.

I immediately knew that Nan, in her VY Holden ute, was no joke. This woman could drive.

When Nan was out of the car, and watching her friends on the burnout pad, I wandered over to say hello. I gave her some chocolates (it’s a birthday party after all…) and we talked about how she got into the burnout scene.

It turns out Nan’s grandson had taught her just six years ago. At that time, she was 80 years old. Since then, Nan has competed a few times and made a whole new community of friends. Her birthday party is a big social event. People come from all around New South Wales to celebrate.

I watched as someone blew kisses to Nan as they churned through a set of tyres, a plume of white smoke in their wake.

Nan grinned and waved back. Her enthusiasm was infectious.

You’re lucky if you can view life in your rear-mirror fondly. Certainly I have many good memories from my twenties. But who knows what’s on the road ahead?

Hopefully, like Nan, there will be plenty of surprises to come.