CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
A NOTE FROM DONNA
PERFECT DAY
PROLOGUE SYDNEY, 1978
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHPATER 12
CHPATER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19 February, 1986
POSTSCRIPT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First published 2010 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney
Copyright © Caesar Campbell
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Campbell, Caesar.
Enforcer / Caesar Campbell with Donna Campbell.
ISBN: 9781405040082 (pbk.)
Campbell, Caesar.
Bandidos (Gang).
Comancheros (Gang).
Motorcycle gangs – Australia.
Organized crime – Australia.
Criminals – Australia – Biography.
Other Authors/Contributors:
Campbell, Donna.
364.10660994
Typeset in 12.5/16pt Sabon by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group
Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
These electronic editions published in 2010 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
Enforcer
Caesar Campbell with Donna Campbell
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I would like to dedicate this book to my husband’s brothers and their mum, Phyllis Campbell.
And to my parents, Max and Margaret Murrell.
—Donna Campbell
A NOTE FROM DONNA
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would meet a man like Caesar Campbell and end up living a biker lifestyle with him for more than three decades. This is why, over the years, I got Ceese to start telling me his stories. I took notes. We would laugh, I would cry, as the memories flowed. I started to think it would be a great way for our kids, our grandkids, my parents and friends to learn about this lifestyle, which is so different from their own. And also to fill them in on the real story behind what they called the Milperra Massacre. Then I thought it would make a great Christmas present for Caesar. A friend loaned me an old computer that I battered it all into before printing it up as a manuscript, covering our lives up to 1986. I never in a million years thought it would come out as a book, but a journalist rang Caesar one day and he seemed pretty interested in it all and he asked if we had any other stuff lying around. And that’s how the manuscript found its way to publisher Tom Gilliatt at Pan Macmillan and into your hands.
This is what really happened. Some of the names have been changed.
—Donna Campbell
PERFECT DAY
Thunder of the Harley between my legs,
out with my brothers,
a full tank of gas,
my colours proud above all else.
My ol’ lady on the back, the open highway.
Riding with my brothers.
The real deal,
being a Bandido.
—Caesar Campbell
PROLOGUE
SYDNEY, 1978
I’d left my lemon squash at the bar of the Ashfield Tavern and gone to have a leak when I was interrupted by John Boy, a bloke I’d just met from the Comancheros.
‘Mate, there’s some blokes out there trying to lift your bike onto a ute,’ he said.
Out the front I found three of them with the front wheel of my customised Harley WLA up on their tray. I reached them just as they got the back wheel on.
‘Whaddya think you’re fuckin’ doin’?’ I said. ‘Put the fuckin’ bike back down.’
I didn’t want them getting any dints in it, so I waited just long enough for them to sit it on the kickstand before – whack – I king-hit the bloke closest to me. He went down and I started stomping on his head. One of his mates came at me and the adrenaline began to pump. I could feel the rush that came when I was outnumbered and the odds blew out. I grabbed the second bloke by the hair and bashed his head into the back of the ute. Bang. Bang. Still stomping on the bloke on the ground.
The third bloke was just about to jump on my back when John Boy stepped in and wrestled him to the ground, the two of them punching the shit out of each other. I finished off my two and picked up John Boy’s bloke. Put a sleeper on him and he was out cold. I dropped him to the ground with his mates and John Boy went boot, right in the mouth. Teeth everywhere.
I pulled my boning knife from the sheath at the back of my belt. Curved, four-inch blade, perfect for boning rabbits. I took the first bloke’s right hand and cut straight down at the base of his knuckle, slicing off his little finger. Then I did the same with his mates. Two of them were unconscious, but one wasn’t. He voiced his objection fairly loudly.
I wrapped the fingers in my hanky and shoved them in my vest pocket. John Boy just looked at me.
‘When cunts upset me I collect the odd finger or two,’ I explained.
John Boy got on his bike and I got on mine. It had been good of him to help me out. He was from a different club, he didn’t have to get involved.
‘If there’s ever anything I can do for ya,’ I said to him, ‘you got me word I’ll do it.’
‘Righto,’ he nodded. ‘I’ll see ya round.’
I headed home. Walked in the door and threw the hanky at my old lady, Donna.
‘Not more fingers,’ she said. They went in the jar with the other twenty-odd.
At the time it seemed an unexceptional night. But seven years later, mourning the loss of two of my brothers, wanted for murder and banged up with a body full of bullets, I would look back on that night as where it all began. Now it’s so obvious I can almost hear the gears crunching. My promise to John Boy, keeping my word; the revs as I switc
hed clubs, and then the split. The acceleration as the crazy leader with a Napoleon complex and a wandering cock took us on his full-bore hell ride, wind in my hair, sun on my back, until we were rumbling into a pub car park in Milperra towards a shoot-out that would kill seven people. The Milperra Massacre, the newspapers called it.
I never call it that. I call it the ambush.
I always keep my word, but making that promise to John Boy was the biggest mistake I ever made.
CHAPTER 1
My grandfather, Joseph ‘Joey’ Campbell, was the light heavyweight boxing champion of the New South Wales police force. He once fought Les Darcy in an exhibition match in Newcastle to raise money to buy horses for the police, but apparently it turned into more than an exhibition match because both Darcy and my grandfather fancied the same woman, Margaret O’Brien. The ten-round bout was declared a draw, but my grandfather considered that he won the biggest prize, because he ended up with Margaret, my grandmother.
Joey was stationed at Barringun, north of Bourke on the New South Wales–Queensland border, and my grandmother used to tell me stories of waking up of a morning to camels in the vegetable patch. My grandfather would be gone for weeks at a time visiting the outlying properties and small settlements, accompanied by his old greyhound, Jack.
Joey only left the force because he got a boil on the back of his neck from the starched collars they used to wear in those days. The boil ended up going through his system and became a big carbuncle in his groin. They had to fly him from Barringun to Bourke hospital, but when they arrived they were told there’d been a fire and there was no anaesthetic available. The doctors reckoned that Joey had gone septic and if they didn’t cut this carbuncle out he’d die. Granny said they brought in all the available men to hold him down and Joey, pumped full of sleeping tablets but no pain relief, just held on to the side of the bed while they cut this thing out. Unfortunately they cut a tendon too, so he ended up with his right leg shorter than his left. He was only three months short of retirement, but because he couldn’t do those three months, the coppers never gave him the pension.
Joey was tough but my dad, George Campbell, was the toughest bloke I’ve ever known. He was six foot two inches and sixteen stone, and always into blues. He began his working life as a steelworker, and went on to have a trucking business; at one stage he owned three semitrailers. The funny thing, though, was that he was also a semi-pro tennis player in the Newcastle league. So Friday nights he’d be down the pub punching on, then come Saturday afternoon he’d be out running round in his little white shorts. That used to crack me up.
He spent a lot of time at the pub but he didn’t really drink. He’d go there to meet his mates and play pool. His only indulgence was one shot glass of Johnnie Walker and a big cigar at night. That was it.
Dad was right into the Scottish ancestry of our family.
He traced our lineage to the Campbells of Cawdor and the Campbells of Argyll. He collected books and clippings about it all. He had this one book about the night the Campbells attacked the McDonalds. The Campbells apparently waited until the McDonalds had this shindig and were all drunk, then went and slit all the dogs’ throats to silence their barking. The Campbells slipped into the castle and wiped out every McDonald there. The ensuing feud lasted for centuries. The first Campbell to be made a knight was called Colin Campbell, and that’s why, when I was born, Dad named me Colin.
I was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, at the Mater Hospital on 18 July 1946. I don’t know if I still hold the record but when I was born I was twenty-seven inches long and weighed nine pounds thirteen ounces. Mum said that was a big baby.
My mum, Phyllis, was a housewife, and one of the quietest, gentlest women you could meet. But she was probably one of the toughest women you’d ever want to meet too. She had to put up with my dad, and she had to put up with fourteen kids. There was me, then Wheels, and then another boy, Steven, but he only lived for two days. Mum said he was what they called a blue baby; his lungs didn’t work. Then she had Bull, and the girls, then Shadow, Snake, Wack and Christopher.
My old man was gone a fair bit, on the road, but we were all pretty good for Mum because we knew what would happen when Dad got home if we’d been playing up. He used to have the razor strop – the leather strap you’d sharpen the old cutthroat razors on – and if you did something wrong it was into the bathroom, bend over the bath, and whack, whack, whack across the arse. He was real hard on me in the beginning. If he was in a bad mood, or something was broken or disappeared and no one owned up to it, being the eldest, I’d cop it. I’d know who did it and I’d be sitting there waiting for them to own up, but three-quarters of the time they never did. So I’d wait and even up with them later. If it was one of the girls I might let it go, but if it was one of my brothers I usually gave them a clip under the ear.
Mum was the opposite to the old man. She never raised a hand to one of us. She was only five foot two but she had this strong will about her. If my dad really went off the deep end and was going to clobber me she’d step in front and say, ‘No, you’re not going to touch him.’ And my old man would turn round and walk off, swearing under his breath.
From the time I was about three years old my grandfather taught me to box. I even had the honour as a young fella of sparring with the legendary Dave Sands, who was a mate of my dad’s and used to train at Henneberry’s gym in Newcastle. He was middleweight champion of Australia and, along with Les Darcy, probably the best boxer ever to come out of this country, yet when I’d go in there with my dad he’d spend an hour with me giving me tips on how to box. He used to float around like Sugar Ray Robinson. He had this natural ability where everything seemed to come easy to him. Fred Henneberry – himself a former Australian middleweight champion – and Dave were always trying to talk my old man into becoming a pro fighter. He never did, but he knew all these blokes that were around the boxing – Dave and Kid Griffo, and the famous wrestler Strangler Lewis – and I was lucky enough to learn a lot off them.
The first time I backed up my old man in a fight I was twelve years old. A car ran us off the road, four blokes got out, and Dad was into them. One of them had him in a choke hold and I was thinking, Oh shit, what can I do? There was a big screwdriver on the floor of the car so I grabbed it and stabbed this bloke in the arse. Put it in about an inch. He let go of my old man and was chasing me around the car, trying to pull this screwdriver out. From then on the old man would take me with him if he was going to get into a fight and he might be outnumbered. He had these two vicious bull terriers and it was my job to hold the dogs. Dad would go into the pub and offer a bloke out the front. The bloke would come out with his mates and I’d be standing there with these dogs foaming at the mouth. My old man would say to the bloke, ‘Righto, it’s me and you or I turn the dogs loose.’ If Dad was winning, I held them. If someone started to get over the top of him I turned them loose. That evened up the fight.
He never went into a pub wanting to get into a fight but he had a real fiery temper. If someone said something about him or gave him a dirty look – it only had to be the smallest thing – that was it. He was a real proud bloke and if he thought he’d been insulted, he wanted to even up. But he got into most of his fights because he’d always stick up for his mates. He used to say to me, ‘Don’t do what I do. You’ll always be in blues. I know half me mates are cockheads, but if I’m with them, I’ve got to help ’em out.’ Blokes used to take advantage of that. They knew my old man would back them up.
Along with the boxing, I was the captain of the rugby league team all through primary school, and I owned a couple of horses. I spent a fair bit of time hanging around Tracey’s riding school up at Merewether. A lot of sheilas hung around Tracey’s with their own horses and that’s where I met a chick called Diane. She was nineteen and I was thirteen, but at thirteen I was five foot eleven. We were out at a place called the Blue Lagoon and she put it on me. I thought all my Christmases had come at once. It was all over in abou
t sixty seconds, but from then on I found that having a horse helped you get the sheilas. It was the same with bikes.
My first encounter with a Harley was when my mate Trevor and I found an old WLA in the back of his dad’s plumbing warehouse. The WLA was a military model Harley-Davidson produced around World War II. We tinkered with it until we got it going, then we’d ride around in paddocks and stormwater channels at the back of Trevor’s place. We kept it hidden in Trevor’s shed. If Dad had found out about it he’d have killed me. His best mate had been killed on a WLA so he hated bikes.
There was a motorcycle club in Newcastle called the Spot Boys and we used to see fifteen of these blokes coming down the main street of Hamilton, an inner-city suburb, on their Triumphs and Beezers. It was just a mad feeling seeing them riding together. I liked the way people all looked at them whenever they rode by. They had the leather jackets with their patch painted on the back, the flying scarves and leather chaps. Slicked-back rock’n’roll hair. Just like Marlon Brando in The Wild One. I thought, Oh shit, don’t that look good.
They used to go to the pub across from the fun parlour where we’d hang out, and I got to know one of the blokes, Four Fingers Jack. I was telling him about the old WLA and he said, ‘So where is it?’ I told him it was at Trevor’s, and he put me on the back of his Triumph to ride over there. Well that was it. Once I was on the back of his Triumph I knew: this was what I wanted to be.
At the time, though, I was still at the Marist Brothers’ high school in Hamilton, vice-captain of the football team, focused on my horses and the boxing. I took one of my mares, an ex-riding school horse called Apache, to the Royal Newcastle Show. She was that quiet you could slide down her back, crawl under her legs and lie beneath her. She was a top horse and won first prize in the quietest horse category. Later at the show, we came across a boxing tent with a little thick-set bloke in a bowler hat, spruiking out the front, banging a drum. My old man wanted me to have a go, but I was only fourteen so I wasn’t keen. Dad wasn’t going to take no for an answer, though, and there was a young fighter in the troupe who only looked about twenty, so I decided I might have a chance against him.
Enforcer Page 1
