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The Beattie files: Mountain Mayhem
Trial by fire and the
legend of Ajay
(Ed's note: These are excerpts from young Beattie's book
on some of the more colourful incidents in an
action-packed life. See the end of the piece for more
info.)
(by Chris Beattie, Feb 2024)
The flaming toilet roll
smacked into the fence and bounced
to a stop between us. The police sergeant and I had just
been discussing the
likely outcome of the evening’s festivities.
“So, given the history of
riots up here on the mountain, how
do you reckon tonight is looking?” I had said,
attempting to convey the veneer
of an earnest, hard-headed journalist that I definitely
wasn’t feeling.
“Well, I’m hoping for a
pretty quiet night,” he lied, eyeing
me with suspicion.
As the fiery roll
smouldered at our feet, there was a brief
pause in the conversation as we each considered our
options. My overriding
instinct was to run. His was to retreat into ‘Fort
Bathurst’.
“Actually, you’d better
get the fuck out of here!” he said,
before ducking back behind the walls of the police
enclosure at the top of
Mount Panorama in the NSW town of Bathurst.
Meanwhile, I was left literally in the spotlight. Powerful search lights illuminated the night and the no man’s land of dust and empty beer cans as the angry and restless mob of bikers bristled with menace. Hundreds had encircled the compound as darkness descended on the Saturday night of the annual Easter motorcycle races.
Above: vintage early
eighties mountain craziness...or at least the
aftermath.
For several years, the
Bathurst race meeting had been
embroiled in controversy as up to 25,000 motorcyclists
made their way to the
iconic circuit to watch their heroes do battle on the
track. The problem was, a
battle of an entirely different nature had become almost
a ritual in the
campground on top of the mountain on the Saturday night.
Fuelled by large
quantities of beer, liquor and whatever
else they could smuggle through the security checkpoint
at the entrance to the
track, restless groups of bikers would mill around
campfires waiting for the
main game to kick off. It could start with someone
dragging a mate behind a
bike on an upturned car bonnet, and there would be
impromptu races through the
dusty tracks that wound their way through the
campground. The excitement level
would ramp up as the almost compulsory car burning would
get the crowd fired up
– literally.
After repeated riots and
hundreds of arrests in the late
‘70s and early ‘80s, NSW police convinced the state
government to fund the
construction of a fortified compound on the top of the
mountain with the aim of
enforcing peace and order. Having a large police
presence didn’t do much to
restore peace, though. If anything, it had the opposite
effect. Racegoers
turned into rioters as boredom set in after a day of
high-speed and sometimes
fatal action on the racetrack. The compound was like a
giant, barbed wire
target, attracting beer cans, rocks and other missiles
as the night inevitably
unravelled.
This particular year I had
drawn the short straw as the
rookie reporter for Australian Motor Cycle News.
Only in the job a
couple of months, I had ridden up with the rest of the
editorial crew from
Melbourne. Apart from covering some of the minor races,
I had been assigned to
cover activities on the mountain on the Saturday night.
“You’re going to love it
up there,” grinned the Editor at
the time, Bob Maron.
“Yeah, you’ll make a bunch
of new friends and come back with
some great stories, I’m sure,” smiled publisher Mike
Hanlon, with an
encouraging pat on the back.
Having attended the race
as a spectator in prior years, I at
least had a fair idea what to expect. Two years before
I’d only just avoided a
pummelling when a group of riot police from the NSW
Tactical Response Group
rampaged through the campground late at night, wielding
batons and
indiscriminatingly belting anyone they could find. I
ducked into a tent at the
last minute, listening as victims fell screaming and
cursing, only to be
dragged back to a bus and handcuffed for transport down
to the cells in Bathurst.
By 1983, it seemed the
stage had been set for a truly epic
riot. Word around the traps was that campers were coming
armed to the teeth and
the police had boosted the number of TRG volunteers to
over 100 for the Easter
races.
As I stood alone in front
of the compound, missiles began to
rain down overhead. A beer can sailed past my head and
rocks began to impact
the fence behind me. It was definitely time to flee the
scene, I decided,
sprinting towards a nearby clump of trees to better view
– and report on – the
action.
“Fuck the cops! Fuck the
cops!” went the chant, which grew
louder as the crowd edged closer to the compound.
From behind the mob a
large, rolling ball of flame emerged,
which later turned out to be a Volkswagen that had been
seized and set alight.
It was pushed towards the fence as rioters attempted to
breach the compound,but
was eventually overturned and left to burn as
proceedings approached fever
pitch.
“Fuck, they’re coming!”
yelled someone as the gates of the
compound burst open, black-uniformed and helmeted TRG
members fanning out
behind large riot shields.
Most of the crowd
immediately turned and ran, while a
handful of more hardy and determined souls defiantly
stood their ground,
brandishing tree branches, metal bars and other
impromptu weapons. All to no
avail, though. As I watched on, a wave of TRG officers
swept through them like
a black tsunami, bodies falling to batons amidst the
dust, confusion and
mayhem.
Those bikers left lying on
the ground or trying to limp away
into the night were grabbed by the police and dragged
struggling and swearing
back into the compound. The cycle would be repeated
several times throughout
the night as the number of rioters gradually dwindled
due to attrition and
waning enthusiasm.
Largely unscathed, save
for a fine layer of Mt Panorama
dust, I retreated back to our motel in the centre of
town, to find the rest of
the magazine team fast asleep. Still buzzing from the
scenes on the mountain,
it took a while for me to doze off.
In the morning I attended
the official police press
conference at the Bathurst police complex. As I was to
hear, I’d obviously
departed the scene before festivities had reached their
climax.
The conflict had escalated
later in the evening to the point
where police had been targeted with high explosives,
according to a police
spokesman. At least two sticks of gelignite had been
flung at the police
compound, one damaging the front gate and the other
injuring an officer, who
suffered serious injuries to his foot.
“He’s very lucky to be
alive,” said the sergeant,
coincidentally the same one I had encountered the
previous night. “If it had
exploded before he kicked it away it would have blown
his legs off. As it was,
the blast knocked down two other men standing near him.”
Other weapons used on the
night included bricks and rocks,
Molotov cocktails and nuts and bolts apparently
catapulted from slingshots.
In all, police arrested 77
people on a total of 134 charges,
including resisting arrest and assault causing actual
bodily harm. Another was
arrested after riding his bike into a group of police
standing near the
compound.
“The men in hospital said
it was the worst year they’d
seen,” continued the spokesman. “They said it was
terrible … it just didn’t
stop.
“The bikies are a strange
breed,” he said. “You just can’t
reason with them. The police made repeated requests to
them to stop, but they
just didn’t listen.”
I have to mention one
other highlight of Bathurst 1983,
which is forever etched in my mind. At one point during
official practice on
the Friday, mate and legendary motorsport photographer,
Lou Martin suggested I
join him at a camera spot near the bottom of Conrod
Straight. This was well
prior to the legendary straight being tamed by the
inclusion of the Chase,
which had the effect of slowing bikes and cars as they
rampaged down the
mountain.
“Mate, you need to come up
here and watch Ajay as he comes
over the last hump before Murrays,” urged Lou when we
caught up in the pits
during the lunch break. “The Arai 500 practice is
straight after lunch. You
won’t believe Ajay until you see it for yourself.”
Above: Ajay at Bathurst
in 1983, depicted by Classic Two Wheels – see the
gripping flashback report, here.
Andrew ‘Ajay’ Johnson was
considered the ironman of
Australian road racing in the early ‘80s and had a
reputation for his
take-no-prisoners aggressive riding style. Get between
Ajay and a corner and
you better know your stuff because there were few other
racers who had the
‘right stuff’ to out-brake or bluff him into a corner.
Ajay had cut his nuts on
Australian Superbike racing, in particular with the
legendary Syndicate
Kawasaki, and had fingers and knuckles missing from one
hand as a result of a
tangle with some earthmoving equipment early in his
career.
For Bathurst 1983, Ajay
was the lead rider for the Honda
Australia team (his team-mate being the equally
legendary Mal ‘Wally’
Campbell). Because of the prestige of Bathurst, and in
particular the Arai 500
Endurance Race, Ajay was honoured by having Honda make
available a special
Grand Prix RS500 triple-cylinder two-stroke bike for the
event. Later that same
year, American Freddie Spencer would take out the world
title on almost
identical machine.
The fact that the world GP
motorcycle powerhouse of Honda
would deem Ajay worthy of a ride on an RS500 was a
special honour -- and also a
major drawcard for Bathurst that year. And with a couple
of factory people on
hand to keep an eye on their exotic and extremely
expensive thoroughbred racer,
Ajay was determined to show them he had what it took to
wring the best out of
it. By the end of the weekend he would reward the Big H
with a new Bathurst lap
record.
Meanwhile, taking up
position next to Lou for the Arai
practice, I waited as the field made its way around on
the first lap. But I
didn’t have to wait long.
“Here he comes, get
ready,” said Lou as we crouched behind
the barrier a mere couple of metres from the track.
It all happened so fast on
the first lap I barely had time
to comprehend what I was seeing. Having come off the
mountain Ajay had almost
two kilometres of downhill straight to wind up the
throttle on the 200-plus hp
GP weapon. By the time he reached us, with his engine
howling like a banshee,
radar guns were reading close to 320km/h, or 200mph in
the old money. The
effect as he emerged over the hump with about 300 metres
of braking distance
before the end of the straight was that he and the RS
were airborne, both tyres
well clear of the track.
It wasn’t until the second
lap that I realized that Ajay was
literally flying on the fastest part of one of the
world’s most dangerous
racetracks. Mere metres away, I watched lap after lap as
Ajay’s rear tyre
kicked up a puff of smoke as it came back to earth at
more than 320km/h. It
takes a very special breed of human to be able to do
that consistently, without
pulling in for a toilet break.
Ajay had his faults, for
sure. There is a legion of stories
about his occasionally outrageous post-race antics. He
was the absolute epitome
of the Aussie larrikin, a ratbag at times who was
definitely cut from a
different cloth and would struggle to put up with the
corporate bullshit that
nowadays infects and sterilises much of motorcycle
racing. But there are few if
any racers from that era that I believe could have
matched him on equal
machinery. When the visor dropped, he was 100 per cent
pure racer, and if you
shared the track with him you did it on his terms.
Unfortunately, he is no
longer with us, but I count myself lucky that I could
call him a mate and
always count on a laugh or two whenever we caught up.
Vale Australia’s
motorcycle hardman.
Similarly, Bathurst didn’t
survive into the modern era.
On-track fatalities and the threat of escalating riots
eventually doomed the
Easter road races, much to the disappointment of racers,
ardent fans and no
doubt the rioters and TRG police, who I suspect looked
forward to their annual
contest.
The excerpt is from Beattie's wild and woolly book. So far as we know it's had one brief print run and he's threatening to do another. Watch this space.
In the meantime he can be
contacted by email.
More at The
Beattie Files home page
Travels with Guido columns here
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