Memories.

[Vince]

 

[Legs]

Memories alright.

 

[lavgert]

... great period video, Vince!
Ciao, Gert

 

[mauricejota7604]

Now they were the good old days hey Tom!!!!

 

[ozijotati]

Was I there? Seem to remember heading there but the rest is a bit of a blurThey reallwere good days , having fun with thousands of like minded individuals. Cops really fucked the place over in the end sadly. Although nowadays you couldn’t race bikes around there safely
Tom

 

[DaveB]

Was I there? Seem to remember heading there but the rest is a bit of a blurThey reallwere good days , having fun with thousands of like minded individuals. Cops really fucked the place over in the end sadly. Although nowadays you couldn’t race bikes around there safely
Tom

I was there the year the cops compound was firebombed. They were wandering around dressed like stormtroopers in the dark leather pants, jackets and caps, with reflecto shades on at night FFS, and antagonising anyone in their path.
I stayed well clear of them, but observed their macho bullshit from a safe distance, as they arrested people for being drunk in public and then giving ‘em a tune-up if they protested. FFS, it was Bathurst, not Oxford Streey on a Saturday night…

 

[Vince]

Myself and 3 other mates first went in 1977, we sused the mountain out in daylight and camped out near Safarla the first year after hearing horror stories about the Mythical 21 Division, specialist head cracking cops lead in the old days by a Bloke called Bumper Farrel. He played Prop for Newtown and wasn't a cop to mess with. Years later a worked with his son on the tallest building built in Sydney, he rode the hook as a Doggy, nice bloke. And then for the next 10 years never missed it. Some History

Frank Farrell (rugby league) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Legs]

Was there the year one of the Laverda NSW blokes got a touch-up from the cops on the Monday, was on his way through McPhillamy Park to visit a mate with the Guzzi mob.

 

[piranha-bro2]

Yeah, they firebombed the Channel 9 car. The whole thing was absurd - talk about eh cops creating a situation!!

 

[Vince]

What was funny was getting up on Sunday and reading the papers, yep they were sold in the Mountain campsite. And reading the stories about the previous night's riot. The reality never matched the stories in the papers. The way it was written made it sound like it all happened in the main street of Bathurst, not in a campsite where 30,000 people were 6ks up a dirt road. The nastiest cop action we had was on a Monday Morning. One of the blokes blew the clutch in his Goldwing Sidecar Outfit. So we were attempting to push and tow it into town and a bike shop and that attracted some attention from the last bunch of cops down at the race circuit entrance. They were not happy chappy after a pretty rowdy couple of nights and went through us for all they were worth. Lots of threats and wind blowing that did result in ONE fine for not wearing a helmet while sitting on the dead engined sidecar while being pushed.

 

[BlackJota]

Rode there from Adelaide 5 years in a row '77-'81. Leave Thursday afternoon quick sleep off the road in leathers and helmet next to the bikes in early hours of the morning then onto Bathurst Friday am. Always camped on the rugby field in town, was safer and closer to the pubs. Would ride up to the mountain each morning and see the carnage from the previous nights party's etc. Pretty full on I thought. One year entering the track a car came driving head on at me so I gave him the bird, out jumps 2 NSW coppers and start pushing me and the bike backwards off the road. Got chastised and interrogated for a while, luckily no arrest. Anyway good memories from those trips, and still some of the best racing I have ever seen.

 

[piranha-bro2]

I;ve got a few of those badges stashed somewhere too. Geez, the NSW coppers sound like the biggest c#nts on the planet. I've been picked up by the fuzz in every state but while they are rarely pleasant they aren't as nasty and thuglike as the ones I'm hearing about here. Maybe they all came from the same school as Georgie and Dim from Clockwork Orange, recruited for the violent criminal ranks!

 

[Bottler]

I;ve got a few of those badges stashed somewhere too. Geez, the NSW coppers sound like the biggest c#nts on the planet. I've been picked up by the fuzz in every state but while they are rarely pleasant they aren't as nasty and thuglike as the ones I'm hearing about here. Maybe they all came from the same school as Georgie and Dim from Clockwork Orange, recruited for the violent criminal ranks!

Not all of us mate.

 

[piranha-bro2]

Very glad to hear it. I'm sure that's the case and especially these days. I was more thinking of the 70s and the Bathurst contingent, and some of the stories of people being roughed up unnecessarily. I'm happy to say i know a few fuzz in Vic (my Godson recently joined) and they are good people, and well-trained. From personal experience the encounters I've had have been either one camp or the other - the reasonable copper talks 'to' the others talk 'at' you and give you the impression they consider you fair game for unfair treatment. Maybe becoming an 'elderly gent' has made some diff from when i was the same person but had long hair and looked pretty scruffy.

 

[Dellortoman]

The quality of coppers improved markedly after they established a police academy here in Tasmania (opened in 1976). Before that, it was an apprenticeship program and the main qualifications you needed to enrol were dimensional rather than academic. You just had to be over a certain height and weight, and pass a medical. The academic requirement was no more than basic literacy. Some of the dumbest kids I was at school with ended up in the army or police because they were too stupid to get a job anywhere else. A couple of them (who's names I still remember, and avoid) were notorious bullies at school.

I'm glad times have changed since then. The Police Academy (aka Cop Factory) provides recruits with comprehensive training and has a reasonable academic standard. All of the cops I've come into contact with in recent years have been pleasant and easy to deal with, whether they were issuing me a ticket or not.

 

[Bottler]

Very glad to hear it. I'm sure that's the case and especially these days. I was more thinking of the 70s and the Bathurst contingent, and some of the stories of people being roughed up unnecessarily. I'm happy to say i know a few fuzz in Vic (my Godson recently joined) and they are good people, and well-trained. From personal experience the encounters I've had have been either one camp or the other - the reasonable copper talks 'to' the others talk 'at' you and give you the impression they consider you fair game for unfair treatment. Maybe becoming an 'elderly gent' has made some diff from when i was the same person but had long hair and looked pretty scruffy.

Thanks PB2. I retired last year after 30 plus years in the AFP, and I believe there are good and bad in all walks of life, including in policing. In my defence I can say I never worked traffic! Popeye Doyle was my career inspiration. I went to school in Orange and was smuggled into the bike races at Bathurst one year in the boot of my neighbour's car so I saw firsthand where your Clockwork comments came from!

Dellortoman, mention of the Tasmanian Police Academy certainly brings back memories. Many years ago I spent a week on a CT Forward Commanders' Course at the aforementioned institution with police from all Oz jurisidictions. The staff insisted on serving dinner at 5pm and when we pointed out that only prisons and hospitals usually did that we were informed that that was how it was always done and if we didn't like it we could suit ourselves. (Not their exact words) It was a taxi into Hobart at a civilised hour for dinner after that.

 

[Vince]

It's always been a lottery, that encounter with the sidecar was typically hearsay. The idiot cops we encountered were not at the apparent riot the night before but were seeking revenge for said riot the next day. It's been maybe 80 20 over the years with 20% bad experiences and that's been Vic cops lately. I worry when their eyes glaze over and they start religiously resighting accident statics and how I must be protected from my Insane desire to ride Motobikes at death-defying speeds, 10kph over the limit, and how using the wrong Registration label holder makes people become kill-crazy.

 

[Dellortoman]

Hey Vince, your rego label comment reminded me of a time when I got booked for not having the rego label correctly attached to the bike. The label was stuck on the sidecar windscreen of my Kawasaki outfit. The cop quoted the rule that it had to be "on the left side of the motorcycle". As far as he was concerned a sidecar isn't a motorcycle, so it didn't comply even though the sidecar was on the left side of the motorcycle.

I must admit that his logic was sound, although his application of the rule was to the letter rather than the intent of the law. I tried to argue with him but he wasn't persuaded by my protests. So I gave up in the hope that if I didn't pay the fine, I'd be summoned to court and could plead my case to the magistrate.

That's exactly what happened, and the magistrate saw sense and dismissed the charge, saying that the sidecar windscreen was a perfectly acceptable position for the label and that infringement should never have been issued. A rare victory.

Actually, my argument to the magistrate was along the lines that I just had a very large rego label holder. So big that it needed a wheel on it to stop the bike falling over. Thankfully he had a sense of humour.

 

[Vince]

There would be some who would say that happens when you don't pass the attitude test, that's being completely submissive to the cop's authority, they call it arguing. Even asking a polite question is by some displaying contempt. To me, that attitude test goes both ways. The citizen and the cop to each other. The bad ones just have the personality types that should be weeded out in their training stage. There the ones that stay in your memory forever. Thankfully a minority.

 

[piranha-bro2]

And I do think modern policing is trying to weed out the Clockwork element. My godson had to undergo quite a bit of psych testing before being allowed into cadet training.

My reaction in the old days at being treated like shit was to ask myself (or if I dared, ask the officer in question) whether they would treat my mother like that after a routine pull-over and licence check.