Destiny puts a speed bump into a boy racer’s fast lane

On a rainy night, almost 40 years ago, a crack in the universe provided a second chance: to slow down, take nothing for granted, and hold on for dear life.

Illustration: Emelia Tottarella

Frank asked if I could take his car to get the radiator fixed, given the Euro specialist’s workshop was across the road from Sydney Uni. He’d drive mine for a few days.

“Don’t worry, Dusey, we’ll see each other over the weekend and we can swap back.”

Frank’s car looked identical to mine – a white, two-door Alfa Romeo Alfasud Ti. Always Looking For Attention. And we were as well in the mid-1980s: fast, young, free. Those three words ablaze, Alpha-ing for supremacy on Pirellis. We were top-grade dickheads on 40c a litre petrol, F1 reflexes and megawatt amps.

We’d pack a lot into a little on Friday and Saturday nights when we worked behind the bar at the Croatian Club. Chatting up girls in the crowded half-minute it took to serve a punter at the disco, slipping double rum into mixed drinks for our mates.

As soon as the shift ended at 1 or 1.30am, we’d race – three, four, five cars red-lining along empty streets – to the pizza joint 10km away. All the while flying on sneaky routes to outdo each other in early 20s stupid, and to get the last orders in for a few garlic and prawn, washed down with a “wog Coke” chinotto.

When Frank was still in high school, he’d spun out an old Beetle driving home from the club on a greasy road and crashed into a power pole. I was way back, in Dad’s Kingswood, and first to come by the wreck: car pointing the wrong way, its front wheel extracted, and a dazed Frank slumped inside, eyes closed, smiling and serene.

He’d been trying to keep up with two VW car-freak workmates at the tail end of their uni studies. It was clear then they were bad role models on the road. Anyone could be a boy racer in a locally built V8, but we were consumed by an urge to push small cars to their limits. I rebirthed a $2000 Gemini into a Holden Hubris with a grand’s worth of racing shocks, lowered springs and stabiliser bar. You could take a bend at any speed you wished in that four-cylinder and tell yourself it was all skill behind the wheel.

We soon stepped up through the classes into Golfs and Alfas. A few times every winter we’d work on a Friday night, then race to the snow in convoy, stereos blaring to ward off sleep and be at Thredbo or Perisher as soon as the lifts opened. Once, one of the boys was pulled over for speeding. The highway patrol officer ran up to the driver’s side window, pushed through a ticket and said: “Here you go, sir, I know you’re in a hurry.” We’d find a place to crash after a day of skiing, scrounge and squeeze in at a lodge. After another day on the slopes the aim was to get home as quickly as possible, following each other’s tail lights in the chilly darkness. The prize? A Senna v Prost grand prix on the telly at 11pm for the students, a proper sleep for the tradies with a 5.30am Monday start.

I’d spent years in Frank’s car, could feel its low rumble as it rounded the corner to my street, before the Bon Jovi fade-out as it rolled into my parents’ driveway. But this would be the first time I’d driven his Alfa; it purred, felt looser in the steering, not at all like the car I shared with my brother. On the way into town during the morning peak the temperature warning light demanded I stop several times to top up the water. I cursed Frank’s Alfa, but I owed him for years of lifts.

Second-hand Alfas kept the mechanic in clover. No job was ever simple, no ailment cured by the man in crisp white overalls. But we lived at home and worked on weekends. What else was there to throw money at?

I was seeing my girlfriend that night; she stopped me dead in my tracks eight months earlier when, cocksure as ever, I’d asked her at a backyard 21st if she’d like to check out my Alfa.

“What’s an Alfa?”

“Aren’t you Italian?”

There’d been no sign of rain that day, but a light drizzle had made the track wet. I’d picked up a wood-fired pizza and was on my way to see my girl. The rain got heavier; there was thunderclap as the clouds burst tropical. I passed through the Meccano set lights on the Hume and turned right at The Horsley Drive.

At the first curve I hit the stormwater surge spilling down the hill, double-clutching through five gears of disbelief: aquaplane, oversteer, spin-out, slam, boom. A smoky haze, a whiff of petrol.

I was covered in every one of the glass groups – shopfront, windscreen, window, mirror, sunroof – and wet, still clutching the sports steering wheel, bent back and useless. As the music blared, a tiny impulse seeped in. I realised I’d kept the engine running – wait till I tell the boys! I was in narrative shock mode, writing the story on adrenaline before I had any idea what the story was.

Maybe I can reverse out of here, mind shifting to flight mode. But I was inside a shop or on the footpath. Stuck. Then the body surrendered to slow waves of pain; oh, here it comes, sharper, deeper, spreading wider.

People came from their homes amid the downpour to ask if I was OK. Would I like to use their home phone? One of the tow truck drivers on the scene asked if he could have the pizza on the passenger seat. It was still hot. The young cop who breath-tested and booked me for “neg” driving said I was lucky to be alive.

The panel beater told Frank the car had hit the pole at the hatchback’s pillar, the strongest point of its frame. The seat belt had done its job; the car crumpled as it should have in the crash tests, the concertina of metal missing my head by an inch. I’d been wedged in and survived. The entire rear seat space mashed to oblivion. Years later, Frank’s insurance company would continue to stipulate the vehicle was not covered if I drove it.

I stumbled from the wreckage, shamed yet oddly composed. In my last term, with big plans for the next year, my brain instinctively turned to the thousands and thousands of essay words I owed the economics faculty in the coming weeks. Work first, recovery later. I was learning and living deadline to deadline, the curse of the newsman I soon would become.

On that night, almost 40 years ago, it didn’t seem to me I’d been reckless. Sixty clicks, tops, I swear. But I was not fit to be witness or arbiter on this or much else, frankly. Lightning strikes. The god Fortuna had had enough of this boy-man wildness: die if you must but stop before you kill someone else.

You can’t outwit or drag-race destiny. The terror of weightlessness on the road, especially if I was carrying a passenger, would remain for years. So, too, intermittent aftershocks, as self-belief trembles. But a crack in the universe provided a second chance: to slow down, take nothing for granted, and hold on for dear life.

Tom Dusevic is The Australian’s national chief reporter.