It was an era of growth in a local market despite a raft of contradictory laws effecting the use and ownership of paintball markers across Australia. In some states it wasn’t possible for individuals to own markers. In others, it wasn’t legal to use them. And yet in spite of these problems paintball was experiencing a slow but steady growth on the east coast of Australia. With this growth, came a demand for semi auto markers suitable for the rental market.

Into this uncertain arena in early 1993 stepped Bruce Roberts and Darren Hayes. The two were long time friends who had pursued quite different careers up until that point. With Bruce joining the Army at an early age and becoming an armaments fitter whilst Darren had followed his love of flying to become a commercial pilot flying light aircraft in the outback.

They both became exposed to paintball on their return to Melbourne and seeing a need in the market for a locally produced semi auto and the chance to work in a sport that they had grown to love, Perentie Paintball and the Badger semi auto was born. They soon had a workshop set up in the back room of Bruce’s house in the small town of Seville, just outside of Melbourne. And since paintball markers are considered firearms in Victoria, they had to run the gauntlet of a firearm dealer’s licence application with its inspections, background checks and the taking of fingerprints.

The first prototype they developed was a blow back design but it never proceeded beyond the first stages of development. Bruce wasn’t satisfied that a blow back design fitted his requirements for a rental marker. He wanted a design that was robust, had few moving parts and was simple to maintain. Important features when you consider the tough conditions that the average rental gun is subject to.

The next prototype off the drawing board was a blow forward design that used the same principle of operation as the AutoMag. However it would be wrong to call the Badger a copy of the AutoMag as Bruce hadn’t actually seen one at the time. He had only read an article in Paintballer the Australian paintball magazine about how the blow forward action that forms the basis of the AutoMag functioned.

I saw that second prototype in late 1993 and wrote it up for the October edition of Paintballer. It featured only three moving parts, the bolt, trigger and the pin in the on/off valve assembly. Unlike the AutoMag, early Badgers were designed to operate at full bottle pressure and had no regulator. I remember being impressed with the rugged simplicity of that prototype with its absence of external gas lines or openings. It was a complete marker in every way and certainly looked ready for production. A few weeks later during the photo shoot, over 500 rounds were put through it by the referees at ML Skirmish with very few problems.

One area that I feel that Bruce improved on the blow forward design was in the selection of the seal for the bolt pin. Instead of the o-ring found in the AutoMag, production Badgers use a hydraulic cup seal. So far, I haven’t heard of any of these failing and my Badgers are still running their originals.

Whilst the prototype was fitted with a milled from alloy billet grip frame, early production models came with sand cast frames. Above the grip frame sits the stainless steel tube holding the power tube assembly. Gas is fed to the working end of the marker by an airway drilled through the grip from the integral bottom line fitting. All the internal parts were CNC machined to close tolerances and proved to give little trouble. The only known problems being the occasional bolt pin failure in early models and pitting of the bolt head if the marker was repeatedly stored without cleaning. The aluminium barrel is brass lined and incorporates an anti double feed spring and the then fashionable power feed. This whole barrel assembly is fixed to the frame by a single screw and can be easily removed for cleaning. An interesting side note here is that the seamless brass tube used for the barrel was actually curtain or towel rod and it shot surprisingly well. Makes you wonder if this is why .68" was picked as the size for paintballs in the first place.

There were the inevitable teething problems as the first production Badgers came off the line. These ranged from fine tuning the trigger, to o-ring selection, to weird little functioning problems like the bolt intermittently refusing to return home properly. This last little problem turned out to be the result of gas leaking down a thread and then bleeding back into the power chamber to lift the bolt off its seat after some shots. And being an intermittent problem it nearly drove Bruce nuts. It took several weeks of frustrating work to finally work out what was going wrong.

The first large sale of one hundred Badgers was to Skirmish Adventures in Helensburg New South Wales in 1994. These markers were powder coated like all Badgers but in a distinctive fire engine red (early Badgers are usually found in a black powder coat, whilst later models are in a dark metallic grey). Although the production of the components was high tech, the assembly of this first batch of guns was definitely a family affair with relatives and friends pitching in around the lounge room to get the markers completed in time for the overnight dash to Sydney.

Even though the Badger was envisioned only as a rental marker, our harsh importation regulations made it inevitable that players would want a more sophisticated version that they could own. I purchased one of the first Custom Badgers in early 1994 and Bruce spent a fair bit of time and effort on the finish of that marker. Inside, it was stock rental. But outside instead of the usual drab powder coat, it sported an anodised barrel, polished receiver and a bead blasted frame topped off with custom grip panels made from kangaroo hide.

As I’ve mentioned, these early Badgers operated at full bottle pressure and had no regulator. Surprisingly enough, velocity rarely spiked above 300fps. In most cases it hovered between 250 – 280fps depending on the ambient temperature. In my case, Bruce later supplied a couple of extra bolts to try in various weather conditions. The first had a couple of restriction screws in it whilst the second had larger gas ports.

Other players approached Bruce and soon a steady trickle of custom Badgers started to appear on the fields. Many of these early custom markers were simply given different colours of powder coat. Then a few began to sport quick detachable barrels, expansion chambers and custom anodising. But Bruce knew that for the Badger to be truly accepted as a competitive marker, a low pressure model fitted with a regulator needed to be built.

The first low pressure (LP) Badgers appeared in late 1994. The major changes required for this drop in operational pressure were the enlargement of the bolt pin and power chamber to allow for the larger volume of lower pressure gas. These changes had to be determined by trial and error and it was a slow process. The first few LP Badgers were fitted with Thruster after market regulators. An in house external regulator was produced but not in any quantity. With a view to keeping the cost down, Bruce experimented with and then standardised on a regulator built into the grip that used the pin valve of the attached Co2 tank. One of the later models that I have in my collection has this design and it works reasonably well.

It was around this time that the grip frame changed from a sand cast to a die cast design of more robust construction. Several of the early sand cast frames had broken under the stress of rental use so the change was for the better.

Not long after this Darren and Bruce went their separate ways. The business just couldn’t support the two of them any more. Bruce kept on with development of the Badger whilst Darren found work with an engineering firm that manufactured Perentie’s components.

In 1995 whilst Bruce and I were having a chat I commented that a double barrel Badger would be a pretty awesome unit. Two weeks later Bruce had some drawings to show me and the Perentie Viper was born. This marker is a story in itself but suffice to say it’s a pretty overwhelming sight in the flesh. Even today it causes double takes from anyone who casts eyes on it regardless of the fact that any modern tournament marker could run rings around it.

The Viper is in essence two Badgers turned sideways so that the sears are facing inwards. These sears are fitted with delrin rollers which are forced apart by a wedge on the top of the trigger assembly located in the lower frame. Whilst requiring a fairly long trigger pull, this system works very well and is set up to fire the barrels one after the other in quick succession.

Like the AutoMag, Badgers had a reputation for being hard on paint and certainly didn’t tolerate fragile varieties. Fortunately, this was in the mid-nineties before tournament grade paint had become so fragile that it broke if you looked at it too hard. However, breaking paint in the gun was to become one of the major reasons for the failure of the Badger to make large inroads into the local tournament scene. Bruce tried many remedies to resolve this situation but it wasn’t until after his death that a solution was found.

That solution proved to be fairly simple in the end and consisted of lowering the operating pressure of the Badger by enlarging the power chamber – the Swiss Cheese Mod. as it’s known. Plus chamfering the feed port edges where the paintballs enter the barrel and recessing the bolt head.

Bruce was a close friend, so it came as a great shock to me when he took his own life on the 26th of March 1996. I really felt his passing. We had both just returned from a tournament in Mt Gambier in South Australia and he gave no hint of the coming crisis as I said goodbye and handed him my latest custom Badger for a bit more work. Whether it was because of financial pressures or some other personal reason I guess I will never know.

Bruce the man was a very generous and entertaining person. I would often drop by for a chat and talk for hours about paintball, bikes, life and any other topic that came to mind. He was quick to see a good idea and even quicker to build it. An expert machinist, he could knock up a part for you in no time at all.

He also had a bizarre sense of humour. Just one look at the Borg outfit, complete with custom gun built for a big game, which he also wore to the premier of the Star Trek movie "First Contact" in Melbourne, or the double gun that he had fitted to a bicycle helmet and you would have to grin.

This tragic event brought to a close an interesting chapter in the history of the Australian paintball industry. All up around 300 Badgers were manufactured in Australia during this period. Bruce and Darren pioneered the local manufacture of paintball markers in Australia and I am proud to have known both of them.

Mike Wallis

Paint site design and contents Copyright Mike Wallis