Words, Eliot Samson 

Eliot, our intrepid émigré newbie, acclimatises to Australia’s wonderful and bewildering idiosyncrasies.

I’ve learnt a new word. Hoon.

Like all the best words, I picked it up in the playground. Five to three on a Tuesday afternoon, waiting patiently with a gaggle of mums for Mrs Curtis to open the door and let out our various charges, a lime green ute screams past the gate, brakes sharply, then screams away again leaving a black rubber signature on the tarmac.

Mum, in a day-glow orange top, turns to mum with far-too-short shorts and says: “Bloody hoon.”

Wary of coming over as the predatory dad in this hallowed arena of mums, I resist the urge to strike up a conversation and pry and instead head home, intent on googling this strange new word – and it turns out that it’s got nothing to do with Geoff, the illustrious WMD-confused former Defence Secretary.

A hoon, though, can be just as unpopular, it transpires.

They are, then, Australian boy racers. This fair land’s Waynes and Dwaynes, the chaps who boast an illogical love of wheel-spinning, gear-crunching, fat exhaust pipes and dayglow steering wheel covers. Giddy boys, we called them in the West Country, due to their habit of driving round and round market town ringroads, but here they go under the banner of ‘hoon’.

And, like all things Australian, the similarities with their English counterparts are manifold, but the differences make them a breed apart. Yes, the squeal they produce when they tear away from lights to the vast indifference of other road users sounds the same, yes, the acne is as acute and boiling. Even the end result of their folly is similar – acres of kerbside garage flowers marking the end of the road for the over-confident hoon and his unfortunate car load of buddies – but there is one huge area in which they part company with their British peers.

And that’s the cars they drive.

First up, there’s the ute, one of the kings of hoon haute couture. Yep, while Barry in Bournemouth is red-lining an admittedly pretty 1994 Golf GTi, Shane in Subiaco is putting the pedal to the metal in . . . a van.

OK, they’ve generally gone to the trouble of pimping their metal. The one that caused the mums to glare that Tuesday morning simply gleamed, the sun bouncing of its elongated contours, the windows tinted coal black, a pipe the diameter of a dinner plate growling a farewell as it disappeared into the distance. But for all that, it’s still a van, isn’t it? What do they put in the back? Do they all have day jobs cleaning windows? When they’re not wheel-spinning around mall car parks, is there a ladder, bucket and a cluster of old rags bouncing around behind the No Fear livery? I just can’t get away from the fact that they’re drag racing a tradesman’s work horse. My theory? Lack of mates. No need for a back seat, you see.

Of course, it’s not just utes that turn a hoon’s head. There are saloons out there that get their hearts beating faster. And here’s where it just becomes surreal.

My first impression is that the must-have motor for your average young urban petrol head, in WA at least, is a beast called a Holden Commodore.

No, I’d never heard of it before alighting at Perth International but, three steps into the car park, and you can see how ubiquitous they really are. They’re everywhere, kitted out with spoilers, body kits, 1980s graphics. Which is all fine until the reality dawns that the Commodore is, in fact, a Vauxhall Belmont.

Yep, the car of choice for the antipodean boy racer is a staple of the business fleet in Blighty, the no-imagination choice of the suburban father-of-two-point-four who thinks a Mondeo is a bit too risky.

They have whole magazines devoted to the thing. And Easter Eggs. I kid you not; Kmart was full of them during that particular holiday. The other day I stood behind a burly chap in a petrol station who was resplendent in a massive puffer jacket emblazoned with ‘Holden Commodore’. I tried to picture an English petrol head portraying his love for the Belmont in the same way, but couldn’t do it.

The final irony? I’ve got one. Yes, I may well be unknowingly channelling my inner hoon. Day three of our Australian expedition saw me in a pleasant used car lot charged with picking out a family car as quickly as possible and getting it home. I went for the cheapest: a 1998 saloon with a badge I didn’t recognise, handed over some plastic, filled in some forms and pootled home. Little did I know at the time that I’d picked up an Australian icon. I’d best start practicing my hand-brake turns.