It was a wheelie good time

As I reached for its handle while it laid there flat, wheels one end looking like it should be pushed like a sled rather than pulled like a trailer, a vivid flashback of the Thoona Wheelie Bin Championships shot across my mind.

It was a big event in a little town that I’d stumbled across on social media, probably while doom scrolling, before COVID-19 wreaked its havoc on our long-running events and tourist attractions.

I packed the kids, who were then 8, 9 and 11, in the car and headed towards this uniquely Australian-sounding festy-val of filth.

(You can’t tell me wheelie bins don’t conjure visions of rotten scraps and buzzing flies, especially in this heat we’ve been having.)

After Google Maps had a meltdown and led us to a dead end after a seemingly circular maze of dirt, gravel and dead cockatoo-lined roads, we finally found the quaint little town of Thoona and joined the festy-vities of what is — or was — no doubt its biggest annual event.

It was March 2019.

We had no idea life as we knew it would look vastly different 12 months into the future.

We had inadvertently placed ourselves at the historic last-ever wheelie bin races in the town.

A post on the event’s Facebook page down the track, in 2024, announced that after the pandemic, there was no longer enough interest to bring it back to life.

The bins had been raced for the last time.

The event invited teams to take regular household wheelie bins and turn them into racing vehicles without engines, their momentum to be gained by a big push down the hill in the town’s main street.

The bins were fitted with bike wheels, pram wheels, unidentifiable wheels, any wheels they could roll freely on, old-fashioned billy cart style.

While there were no doubt several people contributing to the design, assembly and testing phases of each racing bin, race day teams consisted of two members: one pusher and one driver.

I’m sure from inside a bin’s chamber, it felt like they were barrelling down the hill.

But from a spectator’s vantage point along the hay bale-lined street, some passed by so inconspicuously and could have gone unnoticed had your attention not been on the track.

I think mostly it was the absence of a roaring engine or galloping hooves that made it less thrilling than I was expecting.

Nevertheless, the excitement came from the uniqueness of the event.

The town’s population of 130 must have swelled tenfold that fine autumn day.

If my memory serves me right, we could only find a car park a country block away.

And as we approached the action on foot, we were blown away by the sight of the set-up and buzz of the crowd.

There were market stalls and car boot sales, food vans and a barbecue.

There was even a roaming alpaca with its handler.

It was free to enter for spectators, with entrants in the race paying a minimal fee.

The event was quirky and I’m sure it served as a stage for an annual catch-up among those in the wheelie bin racing community, which I believe might have only existed in the Thoona area.

How brilliant that a town that size inspired so many to take part in an event that ran every year for 20 years.

How devastating that a pandemic destroyed it all.

Sadly, I fear that even if there weren’t a lack of interested contestants and followers in the aftermath, the ever-tightening health and safety restrictions at community events would probably make something like this too hard and too expensive to run anyway.

I don’t know about anyone else, but it feels to me like having lived through COVID, I now use it to bookend our lives into pre- and post-COVID sections.

In my 40s there are many things I can reflect on and say, “those were the good old days”, but who’d have thought those ‘good old days’ were as recent as seven years ago?

How great would it be if the disposal of this event was reversed?

I vote that Thoona gets it out of the bin.

Let the trash dash once more.