Richie "Bra Boy" Vaculik

[hellwoman]

Jet Pilot Signs 'Bra Boy' Richie Vaculik

Posted 02.21.2007

Jet Pilot is pleased to announce the signing of 23yr Old 'Bra Boy' Richie Vaculik to the team. Richie Vass as he's known is the epitomy of what Jet Pilot is about.......a no bullshit, hardcore attitude to action sports. In Richies case it's charging mutant death slabs where he is regularly seen at places like Shipsterns and Ours.

Marketing Manager Rob Cribb continues by saying... " Jet Pilot can rest assured that our Boardies, Wetsuits, Vests and Tow Gear will cop a flogging as long as Richie has them on his back. What a great Test Pilot!

As well as being close friends with Kobe Abberton and Mark Matthews, Richies commitment to putting his life on the line in the most evil waves he can find is exciting to say the least. Big Wave Surfing is and will always create a buzz. His goals are simple; to become recognised as a leading global big wave surfer, both freesurfing and in global big wave events. Jet Pilot recognises that guys like Ritchie need to be supported and we're excited that we can assist Rich with the tools to achieve his goals."

Richie was equally enthusiastic...."I'm absolutely stoked to be a part of Jet Pilot and to have the help and support of an awesome brand. I'm looking forward to using all their products and supporting Jet Pilot by pursuing heavy waves".

Richie and mate Mark Matthews recently did a tribute to the late Steve Irwin by towing into giant Shipsterns with a blow-up Croc. Richie is also the Australian Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Champion for his weight division and recently entered and won his first cage fight.

Rob Cribb
Marketing / Brand Manager

[Shawn Alladio]

Blood brothers of the beach
By Greg Stolz

March 02, 2007 11:00pm

Article from:

OF THE many tattoos adorning international big-wave surfer Koby Abberton's muscular body, none speaks louder than the three inked words he wears around his breast like an oversized necklace.

"My Brothers Keeper", it reads, half-affirmation, half-threat, no apostrophe considered necessary.

Saltwater may course through Abberton's veins, but when it comes to protecting the brotherhood that is notorious Sydney surf gang the Bra Boys, blood is thicker than water. And much blood has been spilt in defence of the Bra Boys, who took their name both from Maroubra, the tough beachside suburb they call home, and "bra" – street slang for brother.

Shootings, stabbings, wild brawls, drug deals and even a murder in which Abberton, pictured, and his older brother, Jai, were implicated have given the Bra Boys the sort of infamy reserved for Australia's most-feared bikie gangs.

But while the bikies ride the highways on their Harleys, the Bra Boys ride the waves on their three-fin thrusters. For many, the ocean has been their salvation from prison, drugs or worse.

"We were just lucky to live by the beach, otherwise who knows what would have happened?" says Koby Abberton, one of four siblings born to a heroin-addicted mother and three different fathers, and raised in poverty in Maroubra's housing commission ghetto. "The beach has been the saviour of so many kids in Australia."

Abberton is speaking during interviews to promote Bra Boys, a documentary on the controversial surf gang, which premieres in Sydney and Gold Coast cinemas next week before being released nationally.

The film, made by gang members and narrated by Russell Crowe, gives a raw insight into the often tumultuous lives of the Bra Boys, their powerful connection to the ocean and their struggle with a relentless tide of violence.

Maroubra, Crowe tells the audience, is Aboriginal for "a place of thunder" – an apt name for a suburb in which white settlers would experience much conflict.

A housing commission enclave, the biggest sewage plant in the southern hemisphere, Long Bay Jail and a rifle range set up Maroubra to fail its children, Crowe suggests in his narrative. "Maroubra, with its challenges, saw many of the younger members of the community born into an environment rife with domestic conflict, parental neglect and drugs," he says. "(The Abbertons) along with their childhood friends, were raised by the beach tribe at Maroubra. For years authorities have battled to disperse the beach tribes. But as the centuries passed, and the tribe names changed, their culture has survived."

Koby Abberton, now 28 and revered as one of the world's most fearless big-wave surfers, says he and his brothers – Sunny, Jai and Dakota – survived much of their childhhoods eating breakfast cereal for dinner.

The seeds for the Bra Boys were sown in the early 1990s, he says, when he was bashed with a baseball bat by his mother's bank-robber boyfriend and thrown out of the house after walking in on them shooting up heroin. He fled to the beach and into the arms of his eldest brother and father figure, Sunny, now 34.

"From that day forward it made us all realise that family life at home can finish at any time but the boys will never die, you know – the boys will always be there for you," Koby says.

His eviction coincided with an upsurge in gang violence in Maroubra, according to Sunny, a former professional surfer who directed, co-wrote and produced Bra Boys.

"There'd been gangs or different groups of guys coming down and targeting surfers or fighting with surfers since the early 1950s, or as long as anyone could remember," he says. "But around the early 1990s, the gang violence really started to increase and we started to get weekly attacks from different gangs coming to the beach to fight surfers. We'd had a lot of stabbings and a few shootings. It just became a part of our daily lives, you know. It just seemed you had to always be ready, 'cos you never knew when it (an attack) was going to go down."

In the film, some of the Bra Boys show off their battle marks – a bullet wound here, a knife scar there – and detail how they got them.

"Growing up, we had a lot of crazy things happen, like guns being held to our heads or chased down the street with people shooting at us," Koby says.

"We were in a car one night and people shot up the car. It's good – it turned us into what we are."

The ranks of the Bra Boys swelled and members – who include NRL players John Sutton and Reni Maitua, a professor and even a reverend – forged their allegiance to the brotherhood not only in blood but in ink.

Tattoos of Maroubra's postcode, 2035, are popular among gang members, along with the club's forearm-grabbing handshake.

Koby, a former Cleo Bachelor of the Year finalist who is rumoured to have bedded Hollywood party girls Paris Hilton and Tara Reid, reportedly has a Bra Boys tattoo on his penis.

In 2002, scores of Bra Boys celebrating star member Mark Matthews' 21st birthday at the Coogee-Randwick RSL club were arrested after a wild brawl with hundreds of off-duty police who were having a Christmas party at the same venue.

The Bra Boys were also in the thick of the 2005 Sydney beach race riots – not as aggressors, they insist, but as peacemakers when they brokered a truce with the Lebanese-dominated Commanchero bikie gang.

"It's a brotherhood, but sometimes as we've seen it gets a little ugly. It just turns into tribal warfare, localism . . . whoa," respected Aboriginal surfer and surfboard shaper Maurice Cole says of the Bra Boys and their tangles with rival gangs.

Amid all the mayhem for many years for the Bra Boys was the only sanctuary they knew, aside from the ocean – Ma's house.

Mavis "Ma" Abberton was the Abberton boys' maternal grandmother and soon became de facto grandma to a generation of troubled Bra Boys she took into her home. The forerunner to the Bra Boys boardriding club was known as "Ma's Hell Team".

"Ma's house was like the clubhouse for all the Bra Boys – she was pretty much grandma to Bra Boys," Koby Abberton says.

"She'd just take care of us and make sure we were OK. If anyone started Bra Boys, it was her."

Mavis Abberton, crippled and mute from a stroke, died in 2005 but not before seeing Jai acquitted of murdering rogue Bra Boy member and convicted rapist Anthony Hines two years earlier.

Jai admitted shooting Hines dead but claimed it was in self-defence because the violent standover man planned to rape Jai's girlfriend and kill them both.

The jury believed him and set Jai free after he had served almost two years behind bars.

A charge against Koby of being an accessory to murder was dropped by the Crown but he was found guilty of lying to police investigators and given a suspended nine-month prison sentence.

Koby Abberton admits the Bra Boys are no angels but says they have learnt a harsh lesson from the Hines case and are determined to steer clear of serious trouble.

After losing a lucrative surfing sponsorship after his conviction and being declared bankrupt, he recently gained a new $1 million endorsement from an American sunglasses company and says he now just wants to focus on chasing "the biggest waves in the world".

But the Bra Boys' code of honour, he says, remains unbreakable.

"There's a responsibility to the brotherhood – you drop everything and turn up no matter what it is," he says.

"If the boys ring you, you turn up."

Bra Boys has its Queensland premiere at Birch Carroll and Coyle's Coolangatta cinema on Friday, March 9, and opens nationally on March 15.

The Bra Boys will appear at a special screening at Brisbane's Dendy George St cinemas on March 8. For details, see braboys.com.au



Blood brothers of the beach | The Courier-Mail