The dirtiest show on Earth: Bathurst - Australia’s biggest motorsport event

For 51 weeks of the year, Bathurst is a sleepy New South Wales town, home to 30,000 people, a few historic buildings and a thriving horticultural industry. But every October, 180,000 petrolheads pour in for a one-week orgy of arson, mayhem and alcohol-fuelled revelry.

That, at least, is the image of the Bathurst 1000, Australia's biggest motorsport event, held on Mount Panorama on the outskirts of town. While most fans come for the thrill of watching the cars roar round the hilly, winding circuit, the race is as infamous for the antics of those who camp on top of the mountain – "Hooligan Hill", as it is known – as it is famous for the drivers fighting it out on the track.

In the past, families steered clear of "the Hill", where old bangers were crashed into trees, flipped and set on fire. "Burnout" and "doughnut" competitions were staged, lavatory blocks were blown up. One year, an ice-cream van was fire-bombed, sofas were torched, and battles were fought with missiles including beer cans filled with concrete. It was reported that campers had played cricket with live chickens.

Things have quietened down since a large, fortress-like police compound was built last year. But the ingredients – high-powered cars, vast amounts of alcohol and hot-headed young men – have not changed, and the place remains volatile. "The Hill is no place for women," one motoring journalist warned before I left Sydney for the three-hour journey west.

It's no place for a Volkswagen driver, either. At Bathurst, just as in the suburbs of Middle Australia, only two marques count: Ford and Holden. Both are American-owned (Holden by General Motors), but these two manufacturers build cars locally, producing models – particularly the Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore – that are considered as Australian as XXXX lager. And no self-respecting bloke or sheila would be seen dead in a European car.

The Ford-Holden rivalry reaches its annual peak at Bathurst. In the early days, the 1,000km (625 miles) race, which draws spectators from across Australia, was a showcase for family cars; it spawned the slogan "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday".

Today's highly modified speed machines bear little resemblance to those in the car lots, but the passions aroused by brand loyalty remain fierce and tribal. And that, as much as religion or politics, or even support for a football team, defines many Australians. You're either Ford or Holden, usually from birth, and the allegiance lasts until you die.

At Mount Panorama, often referred to as Mount Paralytic, fans set up rival camps and hurl abuse – and sometimes flaming loo-rolls – at each other. But relations between the red (Holden) and blue (Ford) tribes are mostly good-natured enough. Trevor Dunn and Rebecca Wynn, diehard Holden supporters, drove up from Canberra this year and pitched a tent next to their friends, Ford fanatics Janine Winnell and Kenny Woodcock. Janine sprayed Kenny's hair blue. Trevor and Rebecca brought their 16-month-old son, Bryce, barely able to lisp his own name but already a Holden boy. "You drill it into them, so they've got no choice," Trevor explains.

Janine has two sons from a previous marriage. She recalls how her younger son, Bradley, when he was four, announced that he preferred Holdens. "I said to him, 'That's your choice, you're an individual,'" Janine says. "But his father wasn't too happy. It was almost like your son telling you he's gay."

This is a story not just about Fords and Holdens, but about V8 engines, which have powered the winning cars at Bathurst for decades. For Australian car-nuts, owning a Ford or a Holden is not sufficient: it must have eight full-throated cylinders.

The Bathurst 1000, the biggest motorsport event in the southern hemisphere, has an almost mythical status. Not only is it Australia's oldest race, but it is petrolhead heaven, with entry limited to V8-powered cars based on Falcons and Commodores. Moreover, for most of the year the fabled 6.2km track is a public road, looping across the mountain, which means that anyone can experience the excitement of driving it – albeit at a sedate 60kph (37mph), a speed limit assiduously enforced by police. (The school bus also travels along the road, which was built in the 1930s as a scenic tourist drive; during race week, the speed signs are taken down.)

The Great Race, as it's known, has been held at Bathurst since 1963. The Mount Panorama track is one of the world's most challenging; only Laguna Seca in California and the old Nürburgring in Germany offer similar changes in elevation. The long downhill straight is the steepest section of track anywhere; here, the V8s hit speeds approaching 300kph (190mph). Other hazards include kangaroos; in 2004, a driver was fortunate to escape unscathed after hitting a roo.

The Great Race, a classic endurance event that used to last eight hours (drivers would take a packed lunch), has been won by cars as diverse as a Mini, Jaguar and Volvo. But Fords and Holdens always dominated, and now no other marques compete; the sponsors and broadcasters prefer it that way, and so do most of the fans. When a Nissan Skyline triumphed in 1992, its drivers, Jim Richards and Mark Skaife, were booed off the podium. Richards, known as "Gentleman Jim" for his usually courtly manner, called the crowd "a pack of arseholes".

"I was one of those arseholes," says Phil Attwell, watching this year's warm-up events on a generator-powered TV set in his tent. It was the eve of the big race, and Hooligan Hill was relatively peaceful. "Not like the old days," says Phil, 43, showing off a Ford badge tattoo. "One year they burnt 17 cars here. We burnt a car ourselves once. But it was only a Holden."

Would he consider driving a Japanese car? Phil nearly choked on his Victoria Bitter. "No, no, no." Why not? "The turbo-powered engines. You've got to have a V8. For the noise. You can't beat the sound of a V8."

So sweet is that sound to Ford and Holden fanatics that one Australian car magazine produced a CD featuring a selection of V8 engines revving up. The previous night, Phil and his friend Colin had put it on the stereo in their tent. "We played it really loud and there were heaps of people gathered round," he says. "But we turned it up too high and fried the stereo."

Most revheads, predictably, are men, but increasing numbers of them are female. I met Greta and Philip Burgess, a couple of advancing years, dressed in matching red Holden shirts and baseball caps. Why had they come to Bathurst? "For the noise," Greta replies. "You can watch it on TV, but it's not the same."

Philip shows me a photograph of his red Commodore SS on his mobile phone. Greta admits that she owns a Ford. "It's not good when you're in a family of Holden people," she says. "They tell me, 'Don't park that heap of shit in my driveway.'"

While most spectators savour the whiff of high-octane petrol, a hardened core spend the race in a haze of alcohol fumes. Police cracked down this year, limiting campers to one case (24 cans) of full-strength beer, or four litres of wine, per person per day.

The "restriction" was denounced by many as "un-Australian". However, some fans reportedly circumvented it by burying cases of beer on Mount Panorama the week before and returning armed with shovels. Certainly, by mid-afternoon on practice day, a lot of people were exceedingly drunk and the atmosphere on the Hill was ugly.

A Holden had crashed, to cheers and applause from the Ford camp, one of whose members lobbed a bottle at rescuers. Tattooed men towing "eskies" (cold boxes) of alcohol on specially adapted trailers brandished red and blue flags and rained cans on one another. A dance troupe, the XXXX Angels, met with a stream of obscenities as they circled the track.

One very inebriated man had done something unpleasant to his big toe. His friends laid bets, raucously daring each other to rip off the blackened nail. When the stakes reached A$300 (£120), one of them complied, then ostentatiously swallowed it. The news ran around. "He ate his toenail?" "No, not his own toenail." "For $300?" "That's right. They all chipped in."

In the campsite, each cluster of tents had an altar of empty cans outside: a public statement of alcohol consumption. Police officers who looked not much different from the punters – several had Australian flag stickers on the butts of their Glock pistols – patrolled in posses. The tension rose palpably as the sun went down. The aroma of smoking rubber from an illicit burn-out drew officers accompanied by several snarling Alsatians. One onlooker ran across the road with a blow-up doll under his arm.

The Holden company started out as a saddle-maker, going on to build horse-drawn coaches and then car bodies. The first Holden rolled off the assembly line in 1948, with Prime Minister Ben Chifley unveiling a car made "for Australians, by Australians".

The Holden, like the Falcon, was cheaper than foreign imports and tailored to the tough local conditions. The Commodore model, first produced 30 years ago, remains the country's bestselling car, with several specialist magazines devoted to it.

The man most closely associated with Holden is Peter Brock, who won Bathurst nine times and earned the title "King of the Mountain". Brock, also known as "Peter Perfect", was idolised by Holden and Ford fans alike, and grown men wept when he died in a rally crash in 2006. A bronze statue of him was unveiled at Bathurst, where many a tent, caravan, flag – even eskies – carried his name and racing number, 05. ("Brocky" was far from perfect in his private life; his ex-wife and girlfriend ended up fighting over his ashes.)

Brock was a hero to Nobby McIvor, aged 60, who celebrated his 40th anniversary visit to Mount Panorama this year. Nobby always camps in the same spot and watches the race from the same steep, grassy bank. He's usually accompanied by the same 30 or so friends: many of them men his age, all wearing, in defiance of the heat, army surplus trenchcoats plastered with sponsors' badges. They call themselves Team Coat Racing.

Nobby, from Victoria, says: "In 1994, I had a heart attack up here and spent seven days in Bathurst hospital. They let me out at 12 o'clock on the Saturday, so I caught the big race, then drove home, but only got as far as Canberra, had another heart attack and ended up having a triple bypass. Main thing was, I got to watch the race."

Of the Hill, he says: "It's quieter now. It used to be like Beirut on a Saturday night. We didn't mind it when we first came – we were even a bit wild ourselves – but now that we're older, it was getting a bit much."

One of Nobby's friends, Neil Beamish, has notched up 39 years at Bathurst. He lifts up his T-shirt to display an enormous beer-belly. "You know how trees have rings?" he asks. "This shows how long I've been coming here. It's probably the biggest thing in our lives. I've chucked in four jobs because they wouldn't give me time off to come here. My sister got married in Western Australia one October. I said, 'Sorry, it's Bathurst weekend.'"

Neil is Holden to the core. So is his daughter Rachel, a sweet-faced 23-year-old and a Bathurst regular since she was three. The family tell how she was instantly besotted by the cars, and how once, after being put down for a nap, she crawled out of bed, ducked under the campsite fence and was toddling back towards the track when someone spotted her.

Rachel missed school, and even postponed sitting exams, to go to the race. She grew up "hanging around the pits and stalking the drivers". She's now dating a Holden team mechanic: every female revhead's fantasy. She has two crossed chequered flags tattooed on her back.

Rachel had as her idol Brock's protégé, Craig Lowndes. In 2001, Lowndes left Holden to drive for Ford. "I was absolutely devastated," she says. "I remember sitting on the lounge floor in tears." (Lowndes received death threats from some former fans.)

The Hill, with its coarse language and rough behaviour, was something of a challenge for Rachel's mother, Karen. "I told Rachel, 'You're allowed to swear when we're here, but once we get in the bus to go home, it stops. And if I hear you say that stuff to your grandmother, I'll kill you.'"

Rachel drank her fruit juice, and later Coke, out of a "stubby" holder (used to keep beer-cans and bottles cool). She envied the men, who – determined not to miss a minute of the action – relieved themselves where they stood, by the track. "They once asked us at school: what if you could be a member of the opposite sex for a day? All I wanted to do was piss on the fence at Bathurst."

One of her father's friends, Jock McDonald, describes the race as "a magnet". "Every year you've got to go," he says. "Sometimes it rains for the whole week and you're standing in mud up to your knees, with the campsite sliding down the hill."

The Ford-Holden rivalry is not just about Bathurst. It's about car shows, and "cruising" in packs of up to 50 cars. It's about spending every cent you earn doing up and modifying cars. It's a way of life. Australians who would never consider a "flashy" BMW or Mercedes have no qualms about splashing out A$150,000 on the latest high-performance Holden. Andrew Broadley and Kirsten Nutting own nine cars, including a Holden Torana, which Andrew spent A$40,000 rebuilding. Kirsten used to be a Ford girl. "I converted her," Andrew says. Kirsten admits it. "I make jokes about Fords now. It's really bad. I'm a traitor."

At Bathurst, the idea that gas-guzzling V8s are an anachronism in a time of environmental responsibility cuts little ice. Holden sold more V8 cars last year than ever before, with some buyers saying that they thought it might be their last chance to own one.

A series of crashes and a hospital airlift enlivened the 2008 race. And history was made; Craig Lowndes, partnered by Jamie Whincup, completed a hat-trick of victories, the first time anyone had done that since Brock in 1984. But Rachel will never forgive him for defecting. "We'd take him back [to Holden]," she says. "But I'm not going to cheer him."

Long-distance love affairs Great endurance races

Paris-Dakar Rally (5,000 to 7,000 miles)

Traditionally a race between Paris and the Senegalese capital of Dakar, the 2008 event was cancelled after an al-Qa'ida bombing on the route in Mauretania. Next year, the organisers may stage an event in South America.

Gumball 3000 (3,000 miles)

The Gumball 3000 (pictured) is an annual race between two major cities, anywhere in the globe. Destinations have included Monte Carlo, Phuket and the Playboy Mansion; private flights between race legs push entry fees up to as high as £60,000.

Mongol Rally (8,000–10,000 miles)

This is a race from London to Mongolia, in which the maximum engine size of the entries is limited to a measly one litre. Hugely popular – the first 100 entry places sold out in 22 seconds last year – this tough rally often sees fewer than half the entrants reach the finish line.

Le Mans 24 Hours (5,000 miles)

This famous endurance race has taken place annually since 1923. The cars drive round the 8.48-mile track about 370 times. Participants are largely professional and the cars are racing thoroughbreds.

One Lap of America (4,000-10,000 miles)

Competitors drive the equivalent distance of one "lap" of America using a selection of circuits around the country, driving between racetracks overnight. Support crews, spare tyres and exceeding the speed limit are all banned. Gratuitously complicated.

Carbon Black Rally (900 miles)

The self-proclaimed "world's most exclusive lifestyle event" is an invitation-only race from London to Monte Carlo. Last year, the event featured 30 supercars worth a total of more than £4m and involved six-star hotels, private jets and helicopters.

Asia Cross Country Rally (1,350-2,600 miles)

A race across terrain including jungles, swamps and deserts, the Asia Cross Country Rally sees competitors put pedal to metal between cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Phuket. Considered to be the Asian equivalent of the Paris-Dakar Rally.

Harry Byford