The naivety and stupidity of our youth
Sometimes we are not mature enough to understand the risks, says Paul Blizzard
AS a 17-year-old living in a share house with six of my mates in Stanley I remember welcoming home a few of the older crew from the Easter Motorcycle Racing meeting in Bathurst, NSW.
This get-together was the pinnacle for Australian motorcycle riders. Australia had two riders in Gregg Hansford and Warren Willing who were challenging for world championships. When our older rent contributors (over 20 years old!) returned from this event and roared up the driveway with their stickers, patches and bikes with that four-week grime, I couldn’t wait to get organised for the next trip to the Bathurst Easter Motorcycle meeting.
I remember my father’s last words to me when my family moved from Stanley to King Island around this time. He said to me as he boarded the plane at Smithton airport: “Paul if there is any truth in the rumour that you are about trade in your 500 Suzuki in on that 750 Suzuki without my approval, I don’t care if planes are not running from King Island I will swim home to kick your arse.”
At 17 what he said really resonated in my head. He was my father. He obviously cared for me and he did not want me to get hurt and did not want me to succumb to that horsepower/alcohol, drug, party atmosphere that was raging after the liberating sixties.
A parent could talk until they were blue in the face but we were going to try it all.
Three weeks later I had the new 750. I did 75,000km on that bike and did not lose too much skin.
So, from memory, one month before my 18th birthday I was on my big 750 Suzuki setting up my tent on Mt Panorama. It was 1975. The Bathurst Easter Meeting had become the major motorsport event in the country and I’m here and who gives a rats. There is no question it is an amazing time in your life, it’s party time.
This event had it all. An entire week of no peace. Riders running the gauntlet down Conrod Straight late at night, only to be nailed by the awaiting “pigs” as we affectionately called them in those days. It turned into just a big party over the years and people probably didn’t appreciate the racing. Motorcycles would be started at 4am and revved till they blew! I remember one gang called the Sydney Rats that went 24/7 partying, burning sleeping bags, setting off explosives, etc etc. The police would arrive en masse for a big onslaught to calm the farm but would retreat in minutes realising they were fueling the fire.
End result. Bathurst Easter Motorcycle Meeting banned, never to start again. On reflection, it was behaviour that escalated beyond the tolerance of society. Today you can go to Phillip Island to watch world-class racing with a massive crowd of well behaved interested people supporting amazing riders.
Switching to 2019, if certain youth of today think getting off your face on some sort of concoction made by some pack of bastards who don’t care if you live or die, just to make sure that the sound coming out of the event impregnates in the user’s brain as the “greatest time ever, and I want to do this again” is living, think again.
Pill-testing might have some credence but just like the Bathurst Easter Meeting that attracted certain behaviour, banning certain music events that obviously only attract people that need dubious party drugs to enjoy the event might be a circuit-breaker.