Rebels & riders

The Australian feds brand them ‘outlaws’, squealing in the shrill tones of bored fish wives about illegal gambling, money laundering and drug mules. Newspapers (we’re looking at you, Australian Daily Telegraph) shriek and flap their collective hands, front pages plastered with references to ‘motorcycle gangs’ and how to spot them. Sitting here on the scalding tarmac, outside Phnom Penh’s only dedicated biker bar, the shocking truth is… you can’t bloody miss ‘em.

It’s 10am and myriad rays of Cambodian sun are bouncing, in every direction, off the hot metal of more than a dozen big-bore motorcycles. The effect, best described as ‘blinding’, is not unlike being caught in a web of lasers trying to steal a Picasso from any Museum of Modern Art (I would imagine; haven’t tried yet). Around me, the burly riders of these glinting, snarling, chromed behemoths stand, lean and sprawl in various states of morning-after-the-night-before dishevelment. Welcome to Day One of the Rebels MC’s national Cambodian run.

It was 1969, deep in the bowels of a Brisbane pub, when Australia’s largest so-called ‘outlaw bikie gang’ first fired up its ignition. Slightly right of centre on the political spectrum, a small band of biker pals chose as their insignia the Confederate flag, atop which they stitched a grinning skull sporting a Confederate cap at a rakish angle. In the near-half-century since, the Rebels have amassed more than 2,000 members and now boast chapters in 20 countries, making them – they announce with pride – the biggest big twin Harley-Davidson club in the world (take that, Hells Angels).

Unsurprisingly, given their sheer number and the amount of time that has passed since the club’s inception, a small percentage of Rebels and their associates have – GASP! – been occasionally accused of behaving in a manner unbecoming of Boy Scouts. Which may or not have something to do with the fact they never set out to be Robert Baden-Powell (that said, the law of averages dictates that at least some Rebels once wore a woggle and declared ‘Dib dib dib’).

Yes, there have been drug convictions, feuds and the occasional fire-bombing. Believe the hype and the Rebels have also been linked to Melbourne’s gangland wars, a Home and Away star’s drug bender and a Facebook photo of a baby holding a loaded gun. But, in the heavily inked flesh, just how badass are these alleged badasses, really?

Here in Cambodia, the Rebels’ national president is a short, swarthy Australian by the name of Sid. A quiet man, quick with a smile, he sports closely cropped dark reddish hair with the tiniest suggestion of a kiss curl at the nape of his neck. We’re outside Lone Bros on Street 51, waiting for the last stragglers before we gun our engines in the direction of Sihanoukville, and Sid offers me a small bottle of sunscreen. “Are you going to lube me up?” I grin suggestively, offering my shoulders. Sid blushes crimson, giggles and tosses the bottle to a long-haired biker who looks uncannily like a pirate (for the purposes of this story, ‘my’ Rebel). “Ozzy! She’s all yours…”

Being invited to ride with an MC of this stature is an honour not to be undertaken lightly, especially when nature endowed you with breasts and internal genitalia (the fact I used to be a road tester for the world’s finest motorcycle magazine is neither here nor there; this is a boys’ club, plain and simple). There are rules, after all, and as the pack swings out of the shade and onto hot tarmac I’m reminded that we must ride in strict formation and, as one of only two non-members, it’s up to me to bring up the rear (the other, a rookie male rider, fails to heed this and incurs several tuts and head shakes). All in all, not a bad spot: mine is the best vantage point from which to watch this long, reticulated mechanical python as it coils and uncoils along National Road 3.

For an event billed as a run, the pace is more akin to a crawl: the tacho needle on my black, 875cc Triumph Speedmaster barely passes the 60mph mark, a fraction of the eyeball-flattening speeds I’m more accustomed to (Ozzy laughs: “I tried to go faster, but no one would follow!”). Perhaps as a result, the ride is mostly incident-free, barring me having to dodge a flying crash helmet that’s come loose from its owner’s head, and the untimely demise of a bird that flies straight into another rider’s leg. Rob, an unfailingly charming British ex-boxer (he kisses the back of my hand) who’s a dab hand at customising bikes – is, for the rest of the trip, laughingly referred to as ‘DK’. Duck killer.

Kampot. Lunch. A restaurant called Mea Culpa. Claus, a magnificently handlebar-moustachioed German whose knuckles are encrusted with silver skull rings, is fast asleep on the lawn. Rixsta, who sports a handlebar and modest Mohawk, is curled in the foetal position on a sofa, nursing a particularly vicious chest infection/hangover combo. Glen, a silver-haired Australian riding a Honda Gold Wing the boys call ‘The Bus’, emerges from the bathroom clutching a wad of small wet towels which he proceeds to distribute among the leather-clad masses. “I found these in the bathroom so I ran them under the tap!” he beams. Mounds of soggy flesh, in various shapes and sizes, murmur in sweat-soaked appreciation. Light lunch banter turns from road tales to the trouble with ageing metabolisms.

Engines gun once more and an hour or so later, this creaking, groaning, coughing, wheezing, sneezing train finally pulls into Sihanoukville and the local chapter’s clubhouse, a palatial two-storey compound that’s more Playboy Mansion than outlaw safe house. Posters depicting vintage Indian and BSA motorcycles flap lazily in the soggy air. A vast courtyard, complete with ornamental fish pond, bleeds into a lounge where sprawling, supersized sofas squat beneath an ostentatiously proportioned TV. The pool table is in perfect condition. Even the floors are spotless. I lean both elbows on the bar. They don’t stick to it. Clean toilet paper is piled neatly in the bathroom. There isn’t a pole dancer in sight. It must be a ruse.

On the first night of what is to be a four-day bash, some 30 bikers, Wives And Girlfriends, and various other hangers-on amass in the Rebels’ clubhouse, once a bar called the Black Dog (a poster depicting an impossibly cute cartoon pitbull hangs in front, above the words ‘Warning: this dog has a gun and refuses to take his medication’). Here, among various posters testifying to the mechanical greatness of Misters Harley and Davidson, folk mill, chatting, drinking, shooting pool or watching Easy Rider on the big screen. Sorority houses aren’t this civilised.

At about 1am, the crowd having thinned ever so slightly, Ozzy pulls me to one side. As with any club, there is a hierarchy and it’s time for me to meet the main man, Sid, in his official capacity as Cambodian president of the Rebels MC. I’m ushered into the meeting room – a place usually out of bounds to women – and offered a plastic picnic chair next to a heavy wooden table. It’s the only chair, so Sid kneels at the opposite side of the table, his bulging arms crossed, giving me no choice but to peer down at him. The effect is comical and I can’t help but laugh, loud and hard. Sid smiles, reaching across the table to shake my extended hand.

When we part some time later, I offer a hug – and he graciously reciprocates. I’ve told him about my motorcycling pedigree, assured him I’m no hanger-on, congratulated him on his crew. The conversation turns to the feds. “They’ve been watching too much Sons of Anarchy!” We snicker. I point out – respectfully, of course – that I have yet to discover a meth lab hidden in the clubhouse and that the most heavily armed person here is, apparently, me (albeit only with a knuckleduster).

The following night, Friday, is The Big One. After a daylight ride en masse, the boys return to the clubhouse where the band, Psychotic Reactions, is setting up. A wall of tattooed muscle assembles before the makeshift stage, beers in hand. When we strike up, heads nod appreciatively. A man with a harmonica randomly joins in for a blues jam. A grinning Claus jams a horned helmet on my head while I’m singing. No bottles are thrown. Strippers are conspicuous in their absence. Ditto hard drugs. The most scantily clad person in the clubhouse is… me. A few joints are smoked. Again, mostly by me.

During one song, one of the burliest bikers – a strapping Dominican known as Danny – zooms up to me with his camera phone, capturing extreme close-ups of the show, much to the amusement of my fellow musicians. I bellow into the lens. Later, in the bar, he declares it his favourite song and hijacks the stereo, plugging the phone into the speaker jack. As my recorded voice screams out across the clubhouse, Danny yells the chorus, already word perfect: “PIRANHA! P-P-PIRANHA!” Guffawing with delight, he shows everyone the footage. There’s a split second towards the end when, courtesy of unfortunate lighting, my eyes flash red. Danny roars at me in mock horror before planting another kiss on my forehead: “DIABLA!” The only devil here, it seems, is me.

After the gig, Rixsta – occasionally spotted next to the bar’s framed Ned Kelly arrest warrant with a Vicks vaporub stick jammed up one nostril (the antibiotics haven’t kicked in yet) – ushers me into the ‘green room’, enveloping me in a big, pink fluffy towel and fussing over the air con. He brings me another Coke and worries quietly how the club will cover costs for the weekend (the large contingent of Rebels from elsewhere in Southeast Asia and Australia who were due to join us were scuppered by the coup in Bangkok and Queensland’s perversely draconian ‘anti-bikie’ laws, which ban MC members from being seen together in public).

By Saturday evening, the action has moved from the clubhouse to the beach and a bar called Gas & Surf, owned by a pair of Latino bikers by the names of Fernando and Diego. Both sport Mayan tattoos; both ride cafe racers; both speak with intoxicatingly exotic accents. So much so that catch them with one of the Finnish bikers and the conversation – which I’m told is mutually unintelligible but enjoyable nonetheless – sounds like an episode of Bill & Ben, The Flowerpot Men. The boys lounge in the shade of the bar, admiring the sea from a safe distance. I tease Sid for not taking his shoes off and threaten to plant him in the water. A little later, he theatrically tiptoes across the sand to say goodbye, his face a comical mask of mock terror.

The bar winds down and we move a few doors to The Dolphin Shack. Striding into a place where everyone else is sucking balloons and wearing little more than body paint, it’s hard not to feel invincible, flanked as I am by a dozen black-clad bikers. So I do precisely that, until they start dancing – which is truly a sight to behold. Arm in arm, these heaving masses of inked flesh wobble and shake across the dance floor, Ozzy going so far as to join me for a fleeting attempt at the tango. As dawn approaches, the otherv Rebels having sent us on our way with a rugby scrum of farewell embraces, this Nordic god ruffles my hair, his beard cracking into a broad grin. “Everyone says to me: ‘Your woman, she’s a badass!”