Soaring bullets sent men flying from the seats of their motorbikes, scattering bodies across a bridge that should have been reserved for a quiet Sunday afternoon drive.
It was the story that stopped the nation; a shootout between rival bikie gangs Odin's Warriors and the Outlaws, a headline only trumped that year by the death of Princess Diana.
Only 30 seconds stood between Senior Constable Richard McTaggart and the centre of the chaos that shutdown the Mackay city centre that Sunday afternoon on August 31, 1997.
The plain-clothed constable had been discreetly tailing the group of Odin's Warriors along Barnes Creek Road as part of a six-month operation during the era of Australia's bikie wars.
"I came around that dogleg, and all I could see was fellas being knocked off bikes and flying through the air," Senior Constable McTaggart said.
It took a moment before the constable registered the piercing sound of gunshots accompanying the bedlam on Fogan Bridge.
"I am absolutely dumbfounded that there were no fatalities that day," Senior Constable McTaggart said.
Senior Constable McTaggart was the first man on the scene at the infamous Mackay bikie shootout outside the Outlaws clubhouse; The Roundhouse.
"I jumped out of my vehicle and I was just in a pair of jeans and a King Gee work shirt," he said.
"There were bullets flying everywhere.
"I had my gun out because I didn't have a holster. So my gun was either in my backpack or in my hand … and I thought it prudent that I had it in my hand at that particular time."
Senior Constable McTaggart said he initially feared he was being ambushed, that the bikies had caught on that he was following them.
"I thought to myself, 'I'm in strife,'" he said.
But as he got closer, Senior Constable McTaggart realised he was not the focus and quickly managed to block the road so innocent passers-by would not become involved.
How it erupted
At the time, Senior Constable McTaggart was the District Intelligence Officer and had been following the 20 Odin's Warriors that day.
He had been stopped at a red light just outside the Kooyong Hotel intersection, 30 seconds behind the bikies and less than 1 kilometre from the soon-to-be battleground.
"As the Odin's [Warriors] had been riding past the clubhouse, someone — an unknown person in an old Ford F100 pick-up truck — drove straight out and straight into the group of riders," Senior Constable McTaggart said.
"In hindsight, [the crash alone] should have killed a couple of them."
Senior Constable McTaggart said the Outlaws began firing from the barricaded clubhouse with the Odin's Warriors firing back.
Despite the abrupt outbreak, police had been monitoring the situation for several months after the Outlaws began to move into Mackay, a region that was already home to Odin's Warriors and The Rebels.
"Three outlaw motorcycle gangs in this one little town, [it] was fairly unusual," Senior Constable McTaggart said.
"And of course, there was going to be some opposition from the existing two clubs that were here already."
He said police had heard whispers and had Special Emergency Response Teams (SERT) on stand-by, who were then able to land in Mackay within an hour of the shootout's eruption.
"[SERT] basically had the clubhouse in complete and utter lockdown," Senior Constable McTaggart said.
"We then spent the next 10 or 12 hours extracting each person very carefully and very slowly from the clubhouse and taking them to the police station."
Despite five bikies being seriously injured, with one even losing sight in an eye, no one was charged with any wounding offences.
Senior Constable McTaggart said this was because being able to actually identify who did what was near impossible.
"You've got to remember they're all wearing their club gear. For all intents and purposes they look identical," he said.
"I had a fairly good view of everything that was going on ... and I was not able to identify them ... to stand in a court and say I saw him do this and him do that."
Senior Constable McTaggart said there were two things that stood out for him on that day, including the bravery of officers who were able to recover the victims, outlaw gang members, from the carnage.
The second was the "absolute audacity of the situation … The total disregard for the safety of the public".
"On that day these two completely self-indulged groups thought it was okay to air their differences in such an outrageous display of violence in a small regional town. [It was] absolutely contemptuous," Senior Constable McTaggart said.
