On top of Mount Panorama, Smarty’s Circus is erected for the 50th year

Its 2pm and the afternoon practice session on the Bathurst circuit is under way. As the grid of supercars circles Mount Panorama over and over, a pig does its own circuit, rotating instead on a spit at the summit.

Though many who plan to spend the race weekend on top of the mountain have brought their camping chairs to the edge of the track this Friday afternoon, their heads darting left to right as the cars shoot past McPhillamy Park and across the skyline, those responsible for the pig are some distance away.

Their chairs are ringed around the crisp pork, which has been cooking over hot coals for most of the day’s best sunlight and will continue until eight hours of slow rotations have been completed. Only then will it feed the 42 adults and five children who are temporarily inhabiting the camp they call Smarty’s Circus.

A pig just like this has been put to the same spit for eight years, turning on account of an old windscreen wiper that once belonged to a Holden Commodore VP, a model that won the Bathurst 1000 in 1993. This particular mechanical part had been consigned to the Bathurst tip, only to be purchased by Baz Attrill, 78, on his way to the racetrack from Warrnambool in south-west Victoria.

“It did the sheep next door a couple of times, too,” Attrill’s son Warren says of his father’s engineering.

It’s one of several upgrades that Attrill has made to the camp since first erecting it in 1976. This year will be his 50th time attending the Bathurst 1000.

Although it’s one of the most famous car races in the world, Attrill insists that he gets greater satisfaction out of the hog roast than what is on the course.

“It’s something to do, it’s my annual holiday,” he says. “I don’t come for the car racing. I’m a speedway man. You’re not at a real race meeting unless there’s dirt in your beer.”

Some of the camp’s furnishings are more than half a century old, including a blue-and-white-striped circus tent, which gives the settlement its name, but most of its additions came later, including Attrill’s children and their children.

The silverware is said to have come from a mental asylum by way of an op shop, while the extraordinary number of tongs, Warren explains, is the result of going without one year and overcompensating every other.

Some who no longer make the pilgrimage with Attrill every year are remembered, their camping chairs unfolded, though no one will sit on them. One such patron, called Eagle, was only one year behind Attrill in the record for most Bathurst 1000s attended by a Smarty’s Circus camper.

“He died three years ago and he was only one year behind,” Attrill says. “He said, ‘one day, I’m going to beat you’. I’m still bringing him, I’m still counting, he’s still counting, but he’s still one behind me.”

Inside the circus tent, three men watch the practice session on a TV, though the real thing is only metres away. Next to them, rows of swag line up against the plastic-coated fabric.

Outside, children run around, staying clear of the hot coals. They are some of the camp’s newest enhancements as, for much of the 50 years the Attrills have been coming to Bathurst, women and children have stayed at home.

Warren recalls now-banned customs, including attendees who would bring cars to the mountain just to destroy them; doing doughnuts on the dirt until they exploded.

“Eventually, one year there was, like, 30 burnt cars on the way out,” Warren says. “Brand-new cars they’d rented. They brought them out here, did ‘doughies’ with them; they blew up, they set them on fire and just never returned them.”

As for whether there was any bad behaviour at Smarty’s Circus over the years, none of its denizens can say.

“What happens on the mountain stays on the mountain,” Attrill says.

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