Saturday, August 22, 2009

The Members - Dave Grant

Dave lived around the corner from Monkey and Me.
He was a couple of years older than us and was the first to get his license, a car and his bike.
Dave lived in a downstairs part of his mothers house. It had its own entry and for a long time it was the gathering place for all of us younger guys. It seemed that half the neighborhood used to stop in there after school or work, have a couple of smokes before going home. I became a part of this group when I arrived from Melbourne and quickly became good friends with Dave. A group of us would always be doing something at his place. He had an old FB Holden Panel van, it was purple and he hotted it up as much he could afford to. One day we nicked one of his mothers lace table cloths and gave it a "lace" paint job with a white spray paint can.
We used to push his mothers car out of the garage in the dead of night and drive down to Coolongatta on the Gold Coast, do a U turn at the border and drive home again. Probably full of piss.
I and probably most of the other blokes learned to drive in his old purple van and a group of us developed a leaning towards bikes at the time. When I was 15 or 16 and still at school, I joined the Surf Life Saving club at Pacific beach on the Gold Coast. It was there that I met John Jerrins, a mad bikie. He had a Kawasaki Mach 3, a two stroke rocket and sometimes he  took me down to the coast on the back of his bike. It was maybe his influence that steered me towards the bikes, maybe the radical element sub culture thing was another influence.
Dave bought a brand new Yamaha TX 650. It was bright green. The Brisbane Dogs, being the local MC,  took a keen interest, not only because Dave was a local lad but because the more members the club had, the more prestige and cred the club had. There were several other clubs in the neighborhood at the time.
The Confederates, a bigger membership than ours, had two chapters, the Northside Crew and the Southside Crew. More on the Confederates later.
There was a club called the Dogs and Daughters. I met the president once and from memory he was a charismatic and good looking bloke with a mysterious air about him.
The 2nd Foundation was a club from around our way but they came and went pretty quickly.
There were others but the names are too distant memories. I dont know what became of them.
The Rebels, The Finks, the Black Uhlans and the Hells Angels where a major force in Brisbane at the time as well but the smaller suburban clubs like ours went fairly quietly compared to the press these big outlaw clubs got.
You have to remember, we were all really young, probably the second generation of bike gang members in Australia. The Old Guys from my memories, were in their 40's, revered and notorious.
Anyway, Dave joined up with the Brisbane Dogs. I cant remember when this was and I cant remember in what order, but I joined at about the same time along with Monkey and a few other locals.
Dave met the love of his life, Jeanette, during this period and they are still happily married with 2 adult sons and grandchildren. Dave was by no means a violent or radical man. He was placid, I cant remember seeing him angry or in a fight and I know he rarely broke the speed limit. Like all of us, he drank a lot and smoked but I dont think he smoked anything other than Winfields.
When he and Jeanette were married, I was his best man and I have a photo somewhere of us in white suits and long hair. Dave was out of the club by then.

There will be a distinct lack of pictures from this era. Although a lot of stuff was photraphed at the time, I lost all my albums in the Ash Wednesday Bushfires in 1983. Ocaisionally, I will get a few pics from someone going through an old album, but none specifically of the Dogs, or not yet anyway.

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