I didn't write this up for a week, I was too annoyed. I would have said something libelous.

What would you do?

Late Friday afternoon, my wife, who had been out, was due home. She rang me, agitated. "There's two cars, looks like teenagers, doing burnouts in the paddock across the road." A bit of back and forth, more details, and I said I would come out. I rang Rob, who farms the paddocks across the road. He doesn't live far away. He was gobsmacked when I passed on the message.

"I'll see you out there", I said, and jumped into my ute.

Sylvia was parked in the driveway entrance, so I parked inside our gate and walked across the road. (It wasn't Rob's paddock, it was the very wide grassy verge that runs along the road, between the paddock Rob farms and the road. )

A white Toyota was hooning past on the grass, and spinning the car into a hand-brake turn. They'd done it more than once, you could see the gouges in the paddock. I took photos of the parked car, and the white Toyota pulled up next to me. As that happened Rob arrived and got out.

"Mate, what do you think you are doing?" was how the conversation started.

We got a rambling story from the driver. According to him, the ski-chain hire place in Myrtleford had suggested this location for his theatrics.

"No one in town would tell you this is OK", we flatly refused to believe his story.

He sort of apologized, along the lines of he didn't know he was doing anything wrong.

"You don't do this anywhere. This is someone's paddock, this grass feeds his cattle. He's mowing this tomorrow and you are doing this."

My take on this sort of thing is if they are a nuisance here they are probably causing trouble elsewhere. I said " I have both rego's, and photos.. Do you want me to call the police?"

Rob told him, "Just get out of here. I don't want to see you again."

So, to put it into context......

- The area they were skidding around in is right next to the Great Alpine Road. Friday afternoon, traffic both ways. If they had slid out of the paddock they would have been amongst the traffic.

- The skid marks curve around the mobile road safety billboard!

- Further down the road the skid marks swerve around a power pole.

- The swerve takes you towards towards a big gum tree on the side of the road.

- A couple of years ago someone ran into that tree and died.

In one way I guess its probably a good idea to do this in a public place where people can see you. If it had been off the main road, and the farmer who owned the paddock came across this. he might not say "Just get out of here".

He might not be so kind.

Post-script: Two weeks later I was coming out of our place. I stopped to open the gate. Across the road two cars were parked next to the road safety billboard. One of the people out of the car was taking photos...of the gouged divots in the ground. They saw me, piled into their cars and took off.

I would say they have learned nothing from this experience.