The bikes – usually unsilenced – rip, snort, rort in the patches of bush in our inner-urban residential area almost daily, sounding like what I imagine a herd of rutting mammoths would have sounded like. They disappear into the bush to do doughnuts, rip through the creek-bed and rip up any poor native vegetation trying to recover from earlier outrages.

I often suggest to Mrs Whacked that we should track them back to their homes and put a ghetto-blaster on their front lawn playing Abba Gold at 3am.

The 4WDs are worse. Every night it rains they get out there in the small hours of the morning roaring and raging as they gouge out ever wider and deeper mud wallows.

Sometimes, the bush bites back and I want to tell you about such an incident from this week.

Often you’ll hear their vehicles raging in the dark for hours as they try to get out of a deep bog.

And it’s not uncommon to find wrecked bits the next day. We discovered two entire vehicles abandoned in the mud a while back.

We have found smashed bits of suspension, a drive shaft, two fuel tanks, various body panels and a warped bull bar.

So, with that backdrop, imagine our head-shaking bemusement the other day when we were walking the dogs. It had rained a day or so before and the mud pits were huge and deep. Deeper than the dogs who seem to regard the ruts as lap pools.

Out of the bush came an aging Ford Falcon with two young people on board. It wasn’t even a 4WD, just a normal street car. In broad daylight.

“This is going to end badly,” Mrs Whacked said, clinging tightly to the dog lead.

The young male driver waddled the Falcon through a lesser mud pit, revving the engine, but you could tell that already, his car was bottoming out.

He passed us, looking directly at us as we both stood there slack-jawed.

“Surely, he’s not going to go through the next one.”

He launched straight into it and for a second it looked like he might be able to keep the wheels on the shallower parts between the deep ruts.

But then it slid sideways and went nose-first into the deepest liquid mud pool.

It tipped severely on its passenger side and the muck, like smelly melted chocolate, was sent flying high into the air.

It then invaded the engine and parts of the interior and the car disappeared in a steam cloud like a mini Hawaiian volcano.

We don’t know what conversation was going on inside the car, but we could guess which category of words would be most common. Short, sharp Anglo-Saxon terms.

After a few minutes, the driver opened his door and climbed out into the knee-deep slop.

Being a much nicer person than me, Mrs Whacked asked if he wanted to call anyone.

He cheerily waved us off, saying it was just an old car anyway.

I tried to be diplomatic and observed: “Well, that was pretty silly, eh mate? And look what you’ve done to the bush.”

Mrs Whacked then suggested we decamp before I started to explore my world-class collection of short, sharp Anglo-Saxon terms.

By the time we got home, I swear even the dogs were laughing.

WAYNE GREGSON