From Mad Max To the Mayor.

Lord Mayor: Bertrand Cadart-and his boots.

By Micheal Stedman Via: The Daily Tasmanian

"BEFORE Bertrand Cadart became mayor of Glamorgan Spring Bay Council he was a member of a brutal bikie gang that terrorised travellers on outback roads.

If you don't believe it, check the credits of Mad Max.

The role of actor and motorcycle designer in the classic Australian film is just one of his many past lives that also include broadcaster, motorcycle racer, shock absorber salesman and tourism operator. The Frenchman's glittering blue motor-trike gives the first hint at his larger-than-life persona.

Then there is his wacky frog-themed souvenir shop in the middle of Bicheno, appropriately named Le Frog's -- his nickname and trademark since arriving in Australia almost 40 years ago.

Mr Cadart snatched the mayoral robes of Glamorgan Spring Bay Council in November by just two votes after only two years on the council. But he is unperturbed by the slim victory. "How many horses have you seen winning a race by a nostril? It still makes them a winner," he chortles.

His wispy handlebar moustache twitches excitedly as he speaks and his hands carry as much expression as his flamboyant French accent. Local government is the latest in a series of twists and turns that have shaped an extraordinarily colourful life.

Like a true raconteur, he recounts his life as a drifter -- happy to go where the wind or a pretty woman has led him. Mr Cadart was always destined for adventure -- it was instilled in him as a child on the family farm just south of the Somme in northern France.

"It was right on the battlefield of the First World War," he said.

"I was raised in the middle of a bomb crater, with old trenches, underground networks and graveyards containing the bodies of close to 100,000 young German soldiers. This was my playground." He and his friends would disappear underground for hours, exploring the network of tunnels dug deep in the chalk.

There they discovered war relics and works of art carved by cold and lonely soldiers in the soft, powdery walls. But for all the adventure the farm provided, it could not hold his attention forever.

The aspiring actor moved to Paris at 17 to become an apprentice radio announcer at a large radio station. When he turned 18 he was recruited into the French Army and shipped out to New Caledonia. Because of his training in radio he was made the head of the media unit for the French Pacific Force, a position that required him to accompany the commanding general wherever he went in the Pacific.

"I was always in a special Spencer super-white uniform, with the golden bits everywhere because I was with the general and I got to go to all the private parties and ribbon cuttings," Mr Cadart said.

"I discovered that France was not the belly button of the world."

Leaving the army, he returned home in the dismal winter of 1969 and almost immediately began plotting his next adventure.

His plan was to ride a motorcycle around the world, through the Pacific and to Australia before hitching a ride on a freighter across to Africa and riding up the French-speaking west coast to Morocco, Spain and eventually back home.

But he and his travelling companion ran out of money in Sydney and started doing odd jobs. He met a fetching girl and secured a job with the ABC as a producer and occasional announcer and stayed put for close to 20 years.

In 1975 the ABC sent him to France to report on a motorcycle race in Bordeaux where he was introduced to the world of modified Japanese motorbikes. He returned determined to introduce the trend to Australia, but was laughed out of every dealership in Melbourne.

Then in 1979 he received a call out of the blue.

"This guy said `I have been sent away by the entire motorcycle industry as a lunatic and I have been told the only one who can help me with my project is you. I am George Miller and I want to shoot a bikie movie, but I don't know anything about motorbikes'," Mr Cadart recounts.

The movie was Mad Max -- then just a far-fetched idea with a no-name cast and a pitiful budget. Miller wanted Mr Cadart to design the post-apocalyptic motorcycles that would eventually be idolised by the film's legion of avid fans. He was also asked to act as an adviser on all the motorcycle scenes in the film.

No one believed the movie would ever be finished, let alone become a success, so he and his business partner demanded payment up front.

"We all thought it would be one of those Z-grade movies you see for years in open-air cinema in the Congo," Mr Cadart said. As part of the deal he was given a bit-part as Clunk, one of the bikies who roamed the outback roads.


"Remember the scene where we chase a car down and smash it to pieces to the horror of the couple inside?" he asks proudly. "There is a big bloke who rams a mighty crowbar into the roof -- I am the crowbar man, that is my claim to fame."

And he still has the boots to prove it. The bikes themselves were slapped together on the cheap. Clapped-out Kawasakis and Hondas were transformed with a fairing from a Ducati here and a race seat from a Suzuki there to create the grungy look that made the film a success. Tin foil was even used to create the spokes of one of the bikes used in a spectacular crash scene. Tragically for the movie's fans, none of the bikes survived.

After the shoot Mr Cadart was offered the lot for a song but, still believing the film would be a flop, he instead took them to a wrecker where they were destroyed for a miserly $1500.

Just one of them would be worth more than $200,000 to a collector today. Once the film hit the screens everyone wanted their bike to look like the ones in Mad Max and for a while Mr Cadart was a millionaire. He raced motorcycles and even bought his own racing team.

But in the late 1990s his marriage collapsed, one of his business ventures imploded and the winds of change again began to blow. "I was in the doldrums and I somehow got on a love scent and she lived in Bicheno," he said.

Ironically, the relationship didn't work out but he fell in love with the new pocket of Australia he had discovered.

Politics, like everything else in his colourful life, just seemed to happen. His amiable and extroverted personality lent itself to the theatre of local council meetings. "Then I realised I could actually do things and achieve things like making this the first motorcycle-friendly municipality in the world," Mr Cadart said.

His first action as mayor was to trade in keys to the mayoral vehicle for a scooter, a controversial move that attracted the attention of the BBC World Service, which broadcast the story of the world's first scooter-riding mayor to 46 million listeners.

More seriously he is determined to end the water woes that have plagued his municipality for decades. And it seems he may finally have found a place to settle down.

"In April I am going to turn 60 and that's when you know you are past the halfway point of your life," he said."