BN- HELLS Angels from across the nation are coming to Melbourne for a big birthday bash. The original Melbourne chapter of the club in He...
The original Melbourne chapter of the club in Heidelberg Rd, Fairfield, is hosting a 40th anniversary party on August 29.
The California headquarters of the world’’s most infamous bikie gang granted the Melbourne group its “charter” in 1975.
The party will be monitored by Victoria Police and its anti-bikie Echo taskforce as tensions continue to simmer between gangs — most recently in Melbourne’s east.
Hells Angels’ members have been agitators in most of the violence with the rival Bandidos and Comancheros in the past three years, but trouble at the event is not expected.
The Angels, like all Australia’s big outlaw bikie clubs, have been recruiting and expanding rapidly since 2010.
In Melbourne, they have opened and closed at least two heavily fortified clubhouses, in Seaford and Boronia.
Since then, there has been speculation of another chapter in Melbourne’s outer north west. However, the original chapter’s home is still a converted Fairfield house.
As a sign to all bikies, Victoria Police ripped down its prominent Hells Angels gates in 2013 in dramatic fashion.
Unlike the factory setups preferred today, the Fairfield clubhouse has a few CCTV cameras, a room converted into a bar, a meeting room for “church’’ and a tin garage out the back for the members’ Harley-Davidsons.
The originals, such as Chris ``Ball Bearing’’ Coelho, have mostly retired. Coelho has been unwell and won’t be attending the party. A few veteran Angels remain active in the club.
They will have seen many changes over the 40 years, principally the increasingly profitable trafficking of drugs which changed the bikie scene in Australia forever.
One old-time source said: “They started off as the hard drinking, hard fighting bikie types, then hard drugs changed the entire culture.”
More: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/hells-angels-bikies-plan-big-bash-to-mark-40th-anniversary/story-fni0fee2-1227485181024
