Inside the top secret world of Victoria Police's Special Operations Group and Bomb Response Unit
It's all just a normal day at work for members of Victoria Police's Special Operations Group and Bomb Response Unit.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Taylor explains what it's like being VicPol's longest serving bomb disposal expert.
For 34 years it was a second family, and admittedly often first family for John Taylor, who is also the force's longest serving bomb disposal expert.
'Planning for the worst, hoping for the best. That's what the job does to you,' he said.
'You go to a restaurant with a whole lot of SOG guys... they all fight for the one chair that's looking at the front door.'
Eager and determined in 1989, he made it through the tortuous SOG intake course, and spent decades at shoot-outs, bomb threats and hostage sieges.
'With that group, I know that if I was lucky enough to be running through a door first, I didn't have to worry about who was behind me. I knew they were there,' he said.
The unit's elite operators are always sworn to secrecy, until now.
From his first shoot out in Deer Park, to foiling a million-dollar heist, chasing prison escapees in a helicopter and dismantling the biggest bomb blast in Australia's history.
The retired Sergeant revealing intense and dramatic police operations that have never been told before.
'We were there for 23 days going through it. It was a job that kept on giving,' Taylor said of dismantling a bomb blast.
'We clear some rubble, we find some explosives, we deal with those explosives, we found a trap door, we blew a hole in that, and it had over $200,000 in it.'
His new memoir 'Through Fear and Fire' exposes details of operations you would never expect to hear or see, especially from a cop, including annual catch ups with crooks and private pictures of evidence.
'We were all sitting around and playing cards with these wads of money. And as we were walking out the room, we were all getting patted down. There was no trust in the police force even then, you know,' he said.
An extraordinary career, to a high achieving private life, JT, as he's better known has climbed Mt Everest, kakayed from Melbourne to Tasmania, and has now written his first book.
'It's interesting to know that when you're in bed at night, two or three o'clock in the morning, what's actually happening out there,' Taylor said.
'Society is changing all the time the SOG and certainly the Bomb Response Unit are the last resort.
'These people do a lot of training to put themselves to that skill level that they have. You might not believe it but they are out there supporting you.'
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