For four days now we have been subjected to the most intolerable noise pollution. On the first day, my husband thought it was an alarm that had gone crazy. On the second day and third days I thought there was an excavator at work in our area. By the fourth day I realised that we were victims of the Formula One car racing event.

The noise can be heard over most of Melbourne and it sounds like a howling wind. As if that’s not bad enough yesterday we thought we were being attacked by suicide bombers as in New York in 9/11. They were the supersonic jets that were part of the fanfare.

Now I’m not an environmentalist but think of the EMISSIONS or black balloons or carbon footprints (lol) of those cars and those jets. Ironic, don’t you think, that we should also be switching off our lights for an hour on Earth Day at the same time that those cars and jets have been fouling up the atmosphere for the past four days.

One of the spectators, some young kid of six was interviewed by a TV crew on the way to the car races. When he was asked what he looked forward to the most, the budding hoon said that he looked forward to seeing the cars crash. Ain’t sport uplifting! Oh yes, and doesn’t it make pots of money too.