BURN BABY BURN
Colour of Darwin drift driver’s tyre smoke to reveal baby’s gender
A RACETRACK might be one of the last places you’d think of when planning the final stages of a pregnancy, but today proud parents to be Joelene Puntoriero and Blake Hertel will find out the gender of their unborn child from billows of coloured smoke.
The pink or blue smoke will be left behind by the tyres of Mr Hertel’s Mazda FC RX7 at Hidden Valley Raceway which have been fitted for the Top End Drift Association’s Round 1 event by the couple’s friend Shane Davidson, who has been the only one in on the secret since being given a sealed envelope from the sonographer.
Mr Hertel said he is almost certain that he is going to see blue smoke coming off the tyres of his car today.
“I’m 98 per cent confident that it is a boy,” he said. “When we went for our ultrasound I thought I saw something but everyone reckons it’s not. Joelene saw something different. Then the lady that did the ultrasounds said something else totally different from what we both thought.”
Mr Hertel said the couple then decided to have a bit of fun from the confusion.
“So we both thought, all right, we’ll just leave it in an envelope and then I gave it to Shane and now we’re waiting for him to break, which he is close to, I know he is,” he said.
Ms Puntoriero said she was not as certain as her partner about the sex of her first child.
“I’m really conflicted, I know Blake is convinced it is a boy,” she said. Mr Davidson was proud to have been trusted with such a secret.
“It’s locked in the vault that’s for sure, but it has been a bit hard just trying to not have a slip of the tongue when we are discussing and organising things,” he said.
“For me it is a bit weird, obviously I’m a slightly older generation than these guys and we didn’t do that sort of thing when we had our kids. But it seems to be the thing now, where you have some kind of balloon release or coloured something.
“So this was something a bit different and a bit unique that we thought would be a bit of fun. I dare say it might set a trend for a little while.”
“It might set a trend for a little while” TEDA PRESIDENT SHANE DAVIDSON