SHAKE, RATTLE 'N' ROLL

A CAR-MAD COMMUNITY THROWS A HELL OF A PARTY AND RAISES OVER $5000 FOR CHARITY

- LIAM QUIRK

SOUTH Western Sydney's car culture is famous all over the country, with an over-representation of chrome-bumpered muscle cars hiding in garages throughout the Wollondilly Shire. Visit any pub in the region and you're bound to find a carpark full of toughies, their rear screens littered with stickers of famous go-fast parts. You'll inevitably bump into a bloke in a fading Street Machine shirt and overhear beer-fuelled yarns about cars being built in garages that may never see the light of day.

Pick the right pub on the right day and you might even see Tristan Ockers's famous MINCER Capri cruising the Shire or pulling into a local watering hole. It was arguably Tristan and the Thirlmere Fryers Car Club that put the region on the map for Street Machine readers and gave exposure to this car-mad microcosm merely an hour from Sydney's CBD.

So, when mates Josh and Shakey thought about staging an event to raise some funds for the Variety Bash charity run, they knew a humble Bunnings sausage sizzle wasn't likely to rally the Shire's troops. And thus, the Shakey Nats was born. "I thought that if we charged 10 guys $200 each to pop a set of tyres in the carport, we'd raise more than a barbecue," Shakey explains.