For the first time, the inside story of Sanders, and many other secret police operations, has been told by veteran SOG member John Taylor in the book Through Fear and Fire: The explosive true story of a bomb squad veteran.
Usually, an author includes a CV on the back cover. For the sake of brevity, let me produce Taylor鈥檚 edited package. He is one of the longest-serving and smallest (in stature) SOG members, and its longest-serving bomb disposal expert. He has been shot at three times, fired shots at armed offenders, and been in three major collisions (once driving into an armed robber trying to escape with a million dollars). He has run nearly 20 kilometres with a broken ankle, disabled countless bombs that could have blown him to Iran, set charges to blow open fortified targets, suffered frostbite, and required two knee replacements.
Oh, and he climbed Mount Everest.
Taylor served at the SOG for 33 years. He was known as JT, although for a while he was called 鈥淜elvin鈥 for attempting to shoot an armed offender through a fridge (the shot stopped in the meat-filled freezer). 鈥淭he fridge was a Kelvinator,鈥 he explains.
We will return to JT, but first to Sanders and the stand-off at Derrinallum, which sits under Mount Elephant on the Hamilton Highway.