Then there were more cars carrying friends of the club.
At John Boy’s graveside, seven members lined up with shotguns which they fired into the air, in the traditional Comanchero seven-gun salute. It made the TV news.
On his headstone we inscribed the words: MAY HE RIDE HIS KNUCKLE FOREVER .
NOT LONG after we lost John Boy, I was up the Cross when I got into a punch-up with a bunch of heavies. A gun came out and I got shot in the side. The bullet hit my hip and embedded itself in my stomach.
I was bleeding heavily so Donna ripped off this soft top she was wearing and whacked it in there to stem the bleeding. All the way home to Ashfield on the bike she was pressing it into the wound. We only just made it.
Back home, Donna got out the scalpel and the tweezers, then started feeling round for the slug. She stuck a probe in the wound but couldn’t feel anything so started squeezing and prodding around the rest of my stomach. She reckoned she could feel something on the left, four or five inches above where the slug had actually entered.
We decided to give it a go, so she made a cut straight over where she thought she could feel the bullet. She burrowed down a couple of inches and there was the slug. She used the tweezers to pull it out. Then she cleaned everything out and stitched me up. Never got infected. I don’t think I even missed the next meeting. I just drove the car instead of riding the bike.
***
SHADOW, SNODDY and I were spending a fair bit of time together during the week, so we had a lot of opportunity to yak on. Snoddy told us about his mate Leroy, who he’d known for years, and who he really wanted to get into the club. The problem, as Snoddy told it, was that Leroy used to hang round the Comos before I joined, and for some reason Foghorn and Snowy didn’t like him and had given him the boot.
The way I saw it, though, there were blokes coming into the club that weren’t half as good a quality of bloke as Leroy. I got to know him and he was big and strong, but more than that – Leroy had plenty of heart. Shadow and I met him a few times and on each occasion found him to be a top bloke.
Shadow, Snoddy and I agreed that at the next meeting we’d put it to the club that Leroy be made a prospect. If Jock, Snowy and Foghorn didn’t like it, well, then we’d put it up again at the following meeting. We’d keep putting it up until they got sick of it or they ran out of excuses. And that’s exactly what happened. I couldn’t even tell you how many meetings it took to get Leroy into the club. But when we finally did there wasn’t a happier bloke.
When he got his colours eleven months later he was picking blokes up everywhere and throwing them around. He had Lout straight up above his head, like a rag doll. After that he came around and thanked Snoddy, Shadow and me. We were shaking hands, and he was squeezing mine and I was squeezing his. We stood there for about five minutes just shaking hands. Neither of us was going to give up. Finally Shadow came over and said, ‘I think youse have been shaking hands long enough.’ I think Shadow could see that me and Leroy were a lot alike. In fact he was a lot like all us Campbells.
One night at the clubhouse I saw Chop carrying Leroy’s colours around, and Bull carrying round Snake’s colours. I thought, What’s going on here? I fronted Jock and he told me that he’d heard there was another outlaw club over at the Sundowner pub at Bankstown and so he’d sent Leroy and Snake over to blend in and suss things out. Hence them leaving their colours behind. I said to Jock, ‘You don’t send fuckin’ Leroy and Snake out anywhere together. You know what’s gunna happen.’ Because Leroy was like Snake – if someone gave him a dirty look it was on. Neither was the type of bloke you sent somewhere to be inconspicuous.
I headed straight out to the Sundowner.
The Sundowner was a pretty rough pub at the time so they’d hired some big blokes as bouncers. I rocked into the lounge where they had the bands on, and there were chairs going everywhere, bouncers lying on the floor. Here in the middle of it all were Leroy and Snake. Leroy had some bloody hunk of wood and Snake had a chain that he used to carry, and they were bashing the shit out of people left, right and centre. This big bouncer, six foot five with long hair, came running in and as he got near me I put my arm up and hit him in the throat. His head stopped but his body kept going, so he ended up bouncing on his back on the floor. I went over and grabbed Snake and Leroy: ‘Get back to the car.’
As we were walking through the car park, Leroy noticed a car with a couple of cases of beer and bottles of scotch sitting on the back seat. He punched out the window, opened the door, picked up the two cases and gave Snake the bottles of scotch. They marched off to their car and I followed them back to the clubhouse.
IN JANUARY 1983, Roach got into a blue at the Lone Star Tavern, near Chinatown in Sydney, with two blokes from a club called the Loners. Snake, Gloves and Dukes jumped the Loners. Next thing they knew another Loner ran in with a sawn-off shotgun and pointed it at Snake.
‘Call your mates off,’ he ordered Snake.
‘D’ya want me to come over there and shove that thing up your arse?’ Snake replied.
Dukes intervened to calm things down and negotiated for the Loners to leave without further trouble. They backed out of there quick smart and took off with the coppers on their tails. Everyone made it home safely, but that night was the start of a war between the Comos and the Loners. The Comos didn’t let any club put it on us, especially using firearms.
From then on, every time we saw the Loners, whether there was one of them or ten, we kicked the crap out of them. It wasn’t long before they took off their colours and went into hiding.
We knew they had a clubhouse somewhere up in Kings Cross, so Sheepskin and his Strike Force were given the job of tracking the place down. It took them about two weeks. Then we had a special meeting where it was decided that Sheepskin, Shadow, Leroy, Davo and Lard, along with a few members of the Strike Force, would hit the Loners’ clubhouse, which they did.
They wrecked the joint and everything in it, but the Loners had it fairly well fortified and had an escape route over the back fence and down laneways, so the members got away.
We’d made our point, though, so after that I came up with a plan to organise a peace meeting with their president and sergeant; we wanted to declare a truce. One of our members, Zorba, knew the Loners’ sergeant, Julian, so he put the word out round the Cross that he wanted to meet up with him. Julian eventually fronted and he and Zorba arranged the meeting for midweek at the Milton Hotel at Auburn.
On the night of the meeting, Jock asked me and Snake to join him and Kraut on a run down Parramatta Road in Kraut’s Commodore.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘I’ve got some information that the Loners are bringing out a lot of heavies from the Cross,’ Jock said. ‘All these Islanders and Maoris are gunna be waiting down the road from the Milton for a call to come and hit us.’
So we took off down the road, but when we reached Strathfield I said, ‘There’s no one down here. I don’t think there’s gunna be anyone hiding this far away. The Milton’s eight K back.’
So Kraut chucked a U-ey and as we were heading back towards Auburn we spotted a bike coming towards us. As it passed we saw the rider had a set of Loners’ colours. I got Kraut to do another U-ey and we followed him for two or three K before we pulled him over. He was all bloodied up and beaten.
‘What happened to you?’ I asked him.
‘Mate, as soon as we pulled into the Milton all your blokes jumped us.’
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘They all knew it was a peace meeting.’
I asked him where his president was and he said he didn’t know.
‘So what exactly happened?’ I asked again.
‘We pulled up at the hotel, me and the rest of me members, and before we were even off the bikes a whole bunch of your blokes attacked us with baseball bats and started stomping us. I was lucky to get away.’
I let him go and headed back to the Milton. All the way I was turning the bloke’s story over in my head. It just didn’t
add up. But then it occurred to me that Jock had set me up; that the ride down Parramatta Road was just to keep me and Snake away from the hotel so that Jock’s Strike Force could hit these blokes and finish them off.
By the time we arrived at the Milton there was no one there, only a whole lot of blood on the footpath. We headed back to the clubhouse, where my fears were confirmed. The Strike Force were strutting around like great victors. The rest of the blokes were real down in the mouth, because they knew it was supposed to have been a peace meeting.
The whole thing had been a ruse to lure the Loners out. Jock and his Strike Force were the only members who’d known about it. As soon as the Loners rocked up they grabbed the bats from the ute, knowing that once the fighting started the rest of the members would be obliged to join in. I guess Jock figured that I was the only one who might have stood up to the Strike Force and put a stop to it.
They’d taken a few sets of Loners colours, but most of the Loners had made it back to their bikes and got away.
At the next meeting I got up the Strike Force and had a go at Jock. ‘You arranged for a peace meeting,’ I said. ‘It was a truce. There wasn’t supposed to be any punching on or anything like that. How are other clubs ever gunna take our word now? How are they gunna believe they won’t be attacked the same way the Loners were?’
I asked Zorba if he could arrange another meeting with the Loners.
‘I doubt it,’ he said, which I thought was fair enough.
‘I don’t wanna see the club as a whole,’ I said. ‘I just wanna meet the president and the sergeant. There’ll be me and Shadow, no one else.’
Somehow Zorba managed to tee it up and we arranged a meeting at Maxim’s Motorcycles in Leichhardt. As promised there was me and my brother Shadow, and the Loners had their vice-president, Bernie, and their sergeant-at-arms, Julian. After the ambush at the first meeting, their president hadn’t wanted to come. As it turned out their president, Kiwi, was actually the bloke I’d pulled over that night, riding his motorbike down Parramatta Road – the one who told me he didn’t know where his president was.
So me and their vice-president had a talk and I explained to him what had happened, told him it wouldn’t happen again. I gave him two options. That one, we’d close their club down, or two, they could come over as a prospect club for the Comancheros, called the Bandoleros.
‘You got my word youse won’t be touched,’ I said. ‘No matter what goes on. If you decide to break up and go your own way, you won’t get hunted down or anything like that.’
‘So what’s the go with coming over as a prospect club?’ he asked.
‘You’ll run yourselves,’ I explained. ‘You’ll be a separate club. But as we see members of the Bandoleros progress, we’ll grab ’em and pull ’em into the Comos. So you’ll be like a feeder club, a patch-over. There might be some of youse stay Bandoleros for years, there might be some of you only stay a Bandolero for six weeks.’
Bernie said he’d take it back to his club. I gave him my phone number and he said he’d get back to me.
Two days later he phoned to say that some of the club had decided to leave and become independents, but that most had agreed to join up and become Bandoleros, with Bernie as president. I told him I’d deliver the good news to the club at the next meeting.
Unbeknown to me, though, in the meantime Jock had again gone behind the club’s back and ordered his Strike Force to hit the house of the Loners’ president, Kiwi.
I don’t know exactly what went down, we heard all different stories. All we knew was that later that week the Strike Force rocked up at the clubhouse bragging about it; how Kiwi was cowering on the floor and all this sort of stuff. We heard from other people that the Strike Force had come in with baseball bats and guns, and smashed up the joint, thrown his missus round and threatened his kids.
I can only assume that to Jock’s way of thinking, he figured that if he intimidated Kiwi he could get the Loners to become Bandoleros. If he’d just waited till the next meeting he’d have found out that I’d already got them to do that. And that Kiwi wasn’t even a Loner any more. He was one of the members who, after our offer, had decided to drop his colours and ride as an independent.
Once news of the hit on Kiwi’s house spread through the rest of the Loners, we lost a third of the blokes who’d promised to become Bandoleros. They didn’t want to join a feeder club for the sort of blokes who would hit someone’s home. It was a real bad look.
It was the lowest I’d seen Jock stoop and it caused a real stink in the club. Not only had he snuck behind the members’ backs yet again to continue on his rampage, but he’d hit this bloke at his home. I went past Kiwi’s place after the hit and there were kids’ toys out on the verandah and the lawn. There is no more cowardly act than going to a bloke’s house where he’s got his missus and kids. It’s a pet hate of mine. The thing that surprised me most was that, as sergeant of the Strike Force, Sheepskin had been involved in the whole thing. He just wasn’t the sort of bloke to go to someone’s house. He was like me: you stood toe to toe with a bloke and punched on. Why Sheepskin would’ve gone through with it, I don’t know. All I know is that as much as we were mates, he was real tight with Jock too.
In any case we went ahead with setting up the Bandoleros. The ex-Loners came down to our clubhouse and Jock handed them their Bandolero colours. As usual Jock saw it in military terms: he’d say we could always use the Bandoleros as cannon fodder in the next war.
The Bandoleros got a clubhouse out at Concord Road, Concord and within a matter of months they had the whole place set up. They held a lot of dos, usually of a Friday night, which we’d go to, and then they’d come to our dos on Saturday nights. It was a good way of supporting each other’s clubhouses, because a lot of money went over the bars.
Bernie became president of the Bandoleros and me and him started spending a fair bit of time together. We became good mates. He was a funny bloke, though. Other than the shoulder-length hair, if he didn’t have his deck and leather jacket on, you wouldn’t know he was a biker. He was a tennis coach and lived in a real posh house on the north shore. He played in club-grade tennis tournaments and had a straight wife.
NOW THAT we were over fifty strong, counting members and prospects – and with the Bandoleros to use as cannon fodder, as Jock put it – Jock was back in war mode. This time he wanted to wipe out a Christian club called the Brotherhood. The idea didn’t go down too well with the club, because there was an understanding among outlaw bikers that Christian clubs were off-limits. But Jock was adamant that he was going to get rid of them.
‘Whaddya wanna do that for?’ someone asked.
‘Their rockers are black and gold, same as ours,’ Jock replied.
‘They’re not even an outlaw club,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we just talk to their president and ask them if they’ll change their colours?’
We agreed that was the way to go, so we arranged for the president of the Brotherhood to come over on a meeting night. When he turned up, I could see straightaway the Strike Force was ready to stomp him. I went out the front and told this bloke to piss off, but he refused.
‘No,’ he kept saying, ‘I wanna talk to your president.’
‘Piss off,’ I repeated, ‘or you’re gunna get hurt.’
He stood his ground, so I backhanded him and sat him on his arse. It was a lot less than what the Strike Force would’ve done to him. He finally got the message and was just about to get on his bike when one of our fellas started laying into him. I pulled our bloke off and told the Brotherhood president to fuck off, which he finally did.
We went back into the meeting and got into yet another heated argument between the members and the Strike Force. It was becoming all too familiar. But the club had the numbers so this time we won the battle. We voted that we wouldn’t be going to war with any Christian club.
AROUND THE same time, Leroy was arrested over a matter that I won’t go into, but he was thrown into Long Bay on remand
. I arranged a roster between the members and the prospects to make sure Leroy would have a visit on every visiting day, and we assured him we were doing our best to get him bailed out.
Me and Snoddy went to Jock and asked him for some money from the club account to pay Leroy’s surety.
‘No, no,’ Jock said, ‘that’s me war fund.’
‘War fund?’ said Snoddy. ‘That money’s supposed to be there in case a member gets in the shit.’
‘I can’t help it if he got himself into it,’ Jock said. ‘He’ll have to get himself out of it.’
Snoddy and I knew full well that money was there to help members so we kept pushing Jock, kept telling Leroy we were working on it. But Jock wouldn’t budge.
So at the next meeting, me and Snoddy put it to the members that everyone put in a hundred bucks, or whatever it took, to raise Leroy’s bail money. Everyone seemed all for it, but Jock’s buddy Snowy was treasurer and he vetoed the idea. The plan went down the gurgler.
Snoddy pulled me aside after the meeting. ‘Whaddya reckon’s going on with the club’s funds?’
‘Whaddya mean?’
‘We should have thousands in there but Jock reckons there’s nothing.’ The money in the account was raised through things like club dues and bar takings, which were not insignificant. ‘He doesn’t seem to have any trouble getting money for Vanessa’s new car or that swimming pool he put in at the front of his house.’
‘It’s going to be hard to prove he’s ripping the club off,’ I said, ‘seeing as Jock and Snowy are the ones that have got the books.’
SNODDY TURNED up at my place one night with Bernie. He’d brought him round to see my finger collection. By this time I had about thirty fingers in the jar, which I kept hidden in a false back in my bull terrier’s doghouse.
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