A police officer has been injured after a car meetup attended by thousands of people north of Canberra turned ugly, with the crowd throwing rocks and bottles at assembled police.
Police were called to Eaglehawk, just north of the ACT border, about 11:45pm on Friday, where they found about 2,000 people and 500 cars, which videos of the meetup showed were driving dangerously.
Eaglehawk is a short drive from EPIC Park, where Summernats car festival is being held this weekend.
One eye-witness, who wanted to remain anonymous, described the incident as "a riot".
He was at the front of the 2,000-strong crowd where drivers had started to veer towards spectators.
When police moved in to de-escalate the situation, sections of the crowd became violent.
"At least 50 to 60 people started converging on the police," he said.
"That's when the beer bottles and rocks started getting thrown. It was absolutely appalling to see."
The witness said he was heavily involved in the local car community and believed the agitators were all from outside Canberra.
Additionally, he said none of the cars were from the Summernats festival.
"They were definitely out-of-town people," he said.
"We've got a fairly large car enthusiast community here in the ACT and 99 per cent of them are absolutely furious."
Summernats co-owner Andy Lopez said people who behaved in such a way were "absolutely not" welcome at Summernats.
"Any illegal or dangerous behaviour on the roads is completely unacceptable," he said.
"We take a really dim view if it was reported to us by police that drivers … were Summernats entrants, we'd be certainly looking at sanctions against them about attending our event in the future."
Mr Lopez said dangerous behaviour on the roads was particularly outrageous this weekend, as it diverted police resources from other emergencies across south-eastern NSW.
The witness who spoke to the ABC said members of the local car scene were disappointed the meetup gave them a bad name.
"As long as we're safe, we're not causing any dramas, the cops are pretty cool," he said.
"There's a lot of police out there who are car enthusiasts.
"Now that's screwed up everything for everybody."
