That message went out to members of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club warning them to be ready for trouble on the night of September 27, 2013.

“Hello brothers. This Friday night, every member and probate (probationary) must be at the clubhouse by 7.30pm. Anyone who’s late will be ­black-eyed and prospected (demoted). NO EXCEPTIONS. Those who are legal to ride must be on bikes. All members must be in club gear.”

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Around 50 gang members, led by Jacques Teamo, walked from the clubhouse in full colours, climbed on their bikes and set off for their destination – Aura Restaurant and Tapas Bar on Broadbeach’s Surf Parade, the city’s premier dining hub and a tourism magnet.

Teamo was looking for a fight with Finks member Jason Trouchet who he had a long and intense rivalry with.

The heated rivalry had only intensified after Teamo began dating Trouchet’s former girlfriend. The dining precinct was packed.

It was Friday night, the school holidays were in full swing and the weather was warm. Nobody but the Bandidos roaring north from their Mermaid Beach Clubhouse knew what was coming.

GROWING TENSIONS

Tensions had been growing between the Gold Coast’s bikie gangs for years leading up to the fateful night in late-2013.

While bikie clubs had been a fact of life since the 1960s and 1970s, it took a shocking outbreak of violence to bring them to the fore of public concern.

That moment arrived at Royal Pines resort on March 18, 2006, at an event which became known as the “ballroom blitz”.

Members of the Finks and Hells Angels battled each other at a kickboxing match.

The fight was supposed to be in the ring but the battle raged across the room in front of an 1800-strong crowd, sparking fears of a bikie war.

Members and associates of the Hells Angels were sitting ringside at the tournament when a large group of rival Finks, including now-deceased Shane Bowden and Nicholas “The Knife” Forbes arrived.

The fight started when Forbes threw a punch at Christopher Wayne Hudson.

That punch began years of escalating violence and bad blood which repeatedly spilt onto the streets in the years to come. Tensions hit a high in April, 2012, when Teamo and an innocent shopper – caught in crossfire – were shot at Robina Town Centre by Mongol Mark James Graham.

Campbell Newman’s newly elected LNP state government vowed a crackdown but incidents continued to occur, including the June 2013 killing of Bandidos associate Max Waller in Broadbeach.

Surfers Paradise MP John-Paul Langbroek was Education Minister in the Newman Government and recalls lobbying his Brisbane colleagues to take the threat seriously.

“We got into government and we’d had a major weather event, Cyclone Oswald which had stripped sand from the beach and (Gold Coast Mayor) Tom Tate was saying that the state government should pay for sand to be replenished on the beaches and Campbell (Newman) said to me one day, ‘John-Paul, you are the senior member on the Gold Coast, is sand on the beaches the biggest issue at the Gold Coast?’

“I said, ‘no, the biggest issue was bikies’ but at that stage we hadn’t had the big blow-up, so I asked the Premier if I could meet with the police assistant commissioner and police minister in my office, which we did and I said to him, ‘If you don’t fix this problem, the next person who comes down and fixes it will be the premier’.”

THE BATTLE OF BROADBEACH.

The roar of motorcycle engines filled Broadbeach’s dining precinct as the Bandidos arrived at 8.30pm, with around 30 walking into Aura to confront Trouchet, who was dining with Finks associate Matthew Jason Sward.

They tried to order drinks but were refused by staff before approaching Trouchet, for a conversation which rapidly became heated. Trouchet allegedly said “Really? Not in the restaurant – let’s take it outside” before walking out onto the footpath where more Bandidos were waiting.

The confrontation reached boiling point just outside the restaurant and a court was later told that Trouchet, a prize fighter better known as “JT” threw the first punch.

Footage captured by Aura’s in-house photographer Martin Brookes revealed the chaos as the brawl broke out and customers ducked for cover.

He told a court in 2015 that several ‘serious’ bikies walked in and “one with a shaved head and tattooed face whistled and told his fellow gang members outside: “Oi, everyone inside.”

Tables were overturned in the restaurant, with Aura licence manager Chantelle Pollock later giving evidence that “three or four tables” of customers in the packed restaurant ran for the fire escape.

“The restaurant was almost full – we had probably two tables to spare,” she told a court in 2015.

“About 10 to 15 men entered the venue in prohibited items – they were wearing the unlawful motorcycle gang colours.

One approached the bar and asked for eight Coronas and that’s when I refused them service and asked them to leave.”

Waitress Sarah Louise Page grabbed knives and forks from the tables to prevent them being used as weapons and hid behind a door as the battle raged.

“I just went and grabbed some of the cutlery and some bottles,” she said.

“I remember hearing the crashes. I saw just punches being thrown, just kind of like a brawl of people.”

Police issued an emergency call for back-up, with officers from as far away as Brisbane mobilised to deal with the unfolding situation.

Among those first on the scene was Constable Annelise Young who was patrolling in Surfers Paradise at the time of the call.

“A broadcast came over the police radio that approximately 15 Bandidos were walking through Broadbeach,” she recalled in 2018.

“Someone jumped on the radio and said it was more like 50 Bandidos … we thought ‘this doesn’t sound good’ and put up our hands to go down there straight away.”

“I saw a massive brawl,” she said.

“We were definitely ­concerned they may have had weapons. At that point, we were really outnumbered and calling urgently for more crew … We felt like they were miles away but we had to keep calm. I drew my taser and deployed it.”

Police body camera footage revealed the intensity of the confrontation between the bikies and police as it spilt into the street.

“Put your hands behind your back, motherf***er,” one officer yelled.

A Bandido screamed at one of the police to “taser me you pussy”.

Trying to defuse the situation, one of the police warned the gang members: “There’s a lot of young boys (junior police officers) with guns … they’re scared. You’ve got to get them (the other bikies) back.”

Police arrested six people in Broadbeach, including Sward and Trouchet and took them to the Southport watchhouse.

‘OUR JANUARY 6TH’

Mr Langbroek, who had been dining in Nobby Beach the same evening, arrived in Surf Parade shortly after the arrests and was shocked at the number of police who had flooded Surf Parade’s dining hub.

“The bikies defied the police – we were on the edge of anarchy and that’s why it was important we had such a response,” he recalled.

“A lot of us rely on people to do the right thing – 10,000 police and 4.8m people (in Queensland), if they decide to do the wrong thing you are going to have anarchy. And that night … we were on the edge of anarchy.”

Despite it being long claimed he was in the Aura restaurant and present at the time, Mr Langbroek insisted he arrived in the aftermath of the violence.

“Subsequently, I’ve heard from many people I was in here that night, that I was hosting a fundraising dinner and so partly it was because of my involvement that this is why the crackdown happened, – which is only good for my local reputation, but absolutely untrue,” he said.

By 10.30pm the bikies had ridden north and circled outside the watchhouse, with members entering Southport Police Station to demand the safe release of those arrested.

A further battle between the bikies and police broke out, leaving four officers injured.

With the sounds of police sirens echoing up and down the Gold Coast, Mr Langbroek recalls his reaction.

“You’ve got people threatening to smash down those doors of the watchhouse to drag out the person who they said they wanted out there and (if it had got any worse) the police there wouldn’t have been able to cope,” he said.

“We would’ve had our own American January 6th incident (when hard right wing supporters of then-US President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol building to prevent Joe Biden being certified the winner of the 2020 election) or the equivalent here, had they decided to go further.

“They didn’t do it, but this (led to) authorities saying ‘we need to do something about it’.

The next morning, Saturday September 28, Mr Langbroek got a call from Mr Newman, in China on a trade mission.

“If there is one thing you can say about Campbell Newman, it’s he was definitely proactive and he called me both as a ministerial colleague and as the local MP to say we were going to fix this, which is what led to the VLAD (Vicious Lawless Associate Disestablishment Act) legislation that got brought in during the next sitting week”.

GALLERY: Complete history of Gold Coast bikies

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THE AFTERMATH

The bikie brawl lasted moments but had a profound impact on Broadbeach and traders in the area.

It became nationally known as the location of a violent confrontation during school holidays, something tourism leaders were dismayed by as they launched new marketing campaigns. Long-time hospitality figure Glen Day owns Mexican eatery The Aztec Broadbeach, whose staff witnessed the brawl and police response. With a decade’s hindsight he said the negative impact was short-lived.

“My staff were there that night and it was pretty hectic,” he said.

“It was a real shock to the system and nothing like that had happened before and it was detrimental to business at the time but I don’t feel we have that problem today in Broadbeach. In the long run we were able to move on from it and a lot of the new rules around tattoos being covered up helps on that front.”

Fellow long-time trader Lincoln Testa, owner of Madisons Cafe agrees: “I’ve been operating here for 30 years and before Broadbeach I’d done 16 years in Surfers Paradise and seen a lot in that time.

“I wasn’t there and it sounded bad and personally I was hocked something like that had happened in Broadbeach given it’s a family zone.

“After the VLAD laws came in we didn’t see the colours or the gangs anymore so that was good for Broadbeach.”