The Australian Man Cave Harley-Davidson

Santino:

I’M A part of The Australian Man Cave Support Group. I consider myself to be a helper of the Man Cave, and wherever there’s something to be done, I always put my hand in and do it if I can; and when the opportunity came to do an event for the Australian Man Cave — we came up with the Automotive Woodstock event at the Grey Gum Cafe— I immediately thought about converting my personal Harley-Davidson into the Man Cave colours, to brand the bike. It was a very knee-jerk-reaction right there on the spot. I jumped on the Transport NSW website and I secured the TAMC number plate. And the journey started from there. 

I’ve been in the custom paint airbrush industry for about 30 years so I’ve got a few friends in the game that I could tap into and get support from.

Although I’m an airbrush artist myself, I wanted to get as many people on board as I could, so I distanced myself from actually working on the bike; just more sort of managed the project. But I wanted to turn to key people in the industry, with the likes of Kyle from Smith Concepts which I considered to be one of the top custom painters in the country for this particular style of paint work. Kyle was just fantastic. He and his team put the bike together with the whole scheme and the colours and the branding. Fantastic.

Adam Hogg from PPG Automotive Paints, one of the biggest paint companies on the planet, came to the party. Adam supplied all the base coats for the bike.

I was just overwhelmed by the generosity of Burleigh Bars Australia, for example, who donated the handlebars and the accelerator cables, clutch cables, pretty much the whole kit, sent it down to Dave from Mild to Wild Custom Cycles, and Dave’s done an exceptional job. He’s actually put the whole bike together. It was about a 12-month project and Dave didn’t ask for anything out of it. He just wanted to be part of the cause.

I am just grateful and humble to be associated with so many great people who came together for such a great cause and extremely honoured to have my bike represent such an important cause. 

Lou Greco:

I’M ONE of the co-founders of The Australian Man Cave Support Group. The whole idea of the Group, and where we’re a little bit different to other organisations like Black Dog and Beyond Blue, is that we are a ‘mateship’ concept, meaning we’re mates, helping mates; it’s men helping men. And we push the fact that it’s not weak to speak. 

We deal with all men’s issues, but our main priority is lowering the suicide rate amongst men. When Ag and I first started this, the suicide rate was from five to six men a day; it’s now jumped to more than seven men a day, here in this beautiful country of ours, of Australia. 

Our initiatives are really, really different, and hence the Automotive Woodstock is one of our initiatives. I thought of just a car, truck and bike show. I gave the idea to the brothers and one of the brothers being Santino — I call all our members brothers, and that’s what we are — came up with this great idea of calling it Automotive Woodstock, and something that’s started off as just a simple car, truck and bike show has turned into a massive event. But look, guys, we’re grassroots, we’re hands on, we’re front-liners.

And again — I get tongue-tied because we’re all passionate about the message — it’s not weak to speak. We need guys sharing how they feel, hopefully relieving them of the burden of bottling everything up inside. So please reach out to us. We are approachable. 

One of our main rules is the sanctity of trust. Whatever is shared at The Australian Man Cave stays at The Australian Man Cave. There’s no ridicule. No judgment and true freedom of speech — to give you an example of true freedom of speech, no political correctness. Speak freely, knowing that you’re not going to be ridiculed, knowing that you can trust it’s not going to leave The Australian Man Cave Group. And knowing that you’re not going to get judged. 

So brothers, if you need anything, please reach out to us. We’re there for you. 1800 979 794. Reach out to us, call us, we’re here for you. 

At the Automotive Woodstock, we’re going to be launching this amazing The Australian Man Cave Harley. We want to spread the message and we’re using this platform to do it. Again, Skol and all the team from Ozbike, thank you for this opportunity and thank you for doing what you’re doing.

Agostino Gattellari:

AS Lou said, we’re the founding fathers of The Australian Man Cave. We had some suicides happened within our community and a friend of mine had committed suicide roughly at the time we were talking. So we got together and said, look, we’ve got to do something.

So we started The Australian Man Cave Support Group. We felt that men needed to have a men’s group to talk to. So we saw that need. We didn’t know what we were doing, in the sense of how it was going to work, and we just said, let’s just do it.

Since then we have our monthly groups getting together and having that support. At the end of the day, it’s knowing that you don’t have to do things by yourself. There’s people out there who genuinely want to be with you, to help you to walk through whatever you’re walking through. And each of us has an experience in life that we can bring to the table to help those who are going through.