It might have been a month before the phone rang. ‘You got twenty-four hours, get ready. You’ll get a call at seven tomorrow night.’
Next night another call came through telling me where to go. The fights were held all over the place. They could be in a factory or an underground car park – anywhere you could get a large group of people together. The punters would get the same message: ‘Caesar’s fighting tomorrow night. You’ll get a phone call telling you where.’ There might be eighty or a hundred people in the crowd, sometimes double that – mostly suits and socialites with a smattering of knockabouts. Some of them were very high-profile people, the sort that would raise eyebrows if they were caught out mixing it with the underworld. We even had members of parliament come along.
The organisers would bring in fighters from around Australia and even overseas. Well-known boxers and martial artists. I’d be in trackies and bare feet. You can do a lot more with your feet if you haven’t got shoes on. You can stick your toes in your opponent’s eye.
There were no weapons, but that was as far as the rules went. It was bare-knuckled, anything goes. Something like the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Wrong Bet, or the reality TV show The Ultimate Fighter, only ten times more hard-core. You could take a bloke’s eye out, hit him in the nuts, jam his nasal bone up into his brain, whatever it took to win the fight. There was no ref to make sure no one died.
The purse was usually around ten to fifteen grand, put up by the Little King and two associates of his. I never knew their names but I knew they were well-known straight businessmen. They’d all be there at the fights and made big money betting on the side. A lot of the bigwigs in the crowd were splashing out some serious cash on their bets, too.
There were always about thirty seats for the heavies and big shots encircling the ring – which was a rope circle on the floor. Everyone else stood. Sometimes you’d see blokes with a bottle of Scotch, but there was no bar. This was just a matter of getting in, having the one to three fights on the card, and getting out.
When I first started I was happy just winning the fifteen-grand purse, but then I saw all this money changing hands on the side and I realised that punting was where the real money was being made. I went to the Little King and asked him if I could bring one of my brothers to make bets on the side like I’d seen the organisers doing.
‘All right, you can tell one brother,’ he said. ‘But you gotta make sure that brother knows that he’s not to tell anyone else in your family what’s going on.’
So I had a word with Shadow and he promised he wouldn’t tell anyone. He came to the next fight with me and used some of the money I’d won on the earlier fights to bet with. We started making some real money that way. In the early days, I got five to one, because nobody knew anything about me. But after I beat this well-known martial artist from Malaysia the odds shortened. Then I beat a very well-known American former champion. He might have beaten me in a boxing ring, but this wasn’t boxing.
I liked the underground fighting because every bloke you went in against would be a top bluer, otherwise he wouldn’t have been there. And there was no referee or doctor on standby. You never knew whether you were going to win. Even so, I always went in thinking I would. That’s something my old man drummed into me. He’d tell me, ‘Always know that you gotta be careful. But never go into a fight thinking that you’re going to lose, or thinking that the bloke might be better than ya. Always go in thinking that you’re gunna beat the bloke easy.’
So I used to go into the fights thinking, Well, you’ll be done in thirty seconds. And sometimes that’s all it took. Other times it took a bit longer to drop the bloke, maybe two minutes. If you wanted to kill him, that took thirty seconds less.
Once the fight was over, everyone would collect their bets and disappear.
ONE NIGHT me and Snake got a phone call from this sheila Sue. She went out with Mousey, the sergeant-at-arms from the Vikings, and was a really nice sheila, real staunch. She said, ‘Can you do us a favour?’
‘What?’
‘Can you drive me out to Cronulla? There’s a bloke out there who has some nine-carat gold cigarette lighters for sale and I wanna buy one for each member of the Vikings for Christmas.’
I thought that was pretty good of her, so I said, ‘Yeah, we’ll drive you out.’
When we turned up at her place, she had a girlfriend with her.
‘Who’s this?’ Snake asked.
‘This is Joanne, Little Billy’s old lady.’
‘Who’s Little Billy?’ Snake asked.
‘He’s a member of the Executioners.’
‘Yeah, all right.’ So we drove Sue and Joanne out to Cronulla.
When we returned, Joanne’s old man, Little Billy, was waiting. With a name like Little Billy, we’d expected him to be some gigantic bloke, but he actually turned out to be a little fella. He grabbed Joanne and started carrying on at us. ‘Whaddya doing takin’ me old lady out?’
Without missing a beat Snake’s just gone, whack. Knocked him flat on his back, teeth scattering. ‘Now you crawl over here and kiss my foot,’ Snake said.
Little Billy crawled over and kissed Snake’s foot. Snake turned to Joanne. ‘Well, we’ll be seein’ ya.’
‘All right. See ya.’
I rang Sue the following week, after Christmas, to see how the cigarette lighters had gone down.
‘Oh, not as well as I thought,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
‘Mousey didn’t like it.’ I could hear in her voice that something was wrong.
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘I’m coming over.’ I hopped on the bike and rode over to her place. There she was with this big black eye and a swollen lip that was just going down.
‘How come you got them?’ I asked.
‘Mousey got the shits that I let you and Snake drive me out to Cronulla.’
‘Didn’t you explain you were getting Christmas presents for all the blokes in his club?’
‘Yeah, but you know how he feels about you.’ He always thought there was something going on between me and Sue, which there wasn’t.
I waited for Mousey to get home from work and when he walked in the door I said, ‘Did you bash her because she went out to Cronulla with me?’
‘Oh no, Ceese, no, no. It was just an argument.’
‘Well this is just an argument.’ Whack. I kicked the shit out of him. I made him crawl over to Sue and said, ‘Unless she asks me to stop, I’m gunna keep kickin’ the shit outta you.’ He was begging her to get me to stop stomping on him. She looked down at him and a big smile came across her face. ‘All right, Mousey. Caesar, don’t hurt him any more.’
I leant over and grabbed him by the hair. ‘You ever lay a hand on her again and I’ll be back to finish you off. You’ll be going for a ride you won’t like.’ He knew exactly what I meant because I used to do other work – you know, taking people on holidays that they didn’t find their way back from.
***
SHADOW WAS driving a mate home through Summer Hill one night when his mate said, ‘Shadow, pull over. I wanna take a leak.’
So Shadow pulled over and the mate hopped out.
In fact, his mate didn’t need to take a leak, he’d actually seen this bloke walking down the street with a case of beer. He grabbed the beer, pushed the bloke over and jumped back in Shadow’s car.
Shadow drove off but the bloke got the licence plate number. When the cops turned up at Shadow’s place they charged him with assault and robbery. The coppers said to him, ‘We know there was another bloke with you. Give us his name and we’ll go easy on you.’
‘Get fucked. I dunno what you’re talking about.’
So he did some time in Goulburn and Emu Plains.
A few days before Shadow was due out, we got on the phone to Sue and tracked down her girlfriend Joanne who we’d driven to Cronulla. We went and picked her up, along with two other sheilas, little Anne and Julie, who had the biggest tits you’ve ever seen, and took them
back to Mum’s. We wanted to give Shadow a warm welcome-home gift.
Mum said, ‘I know what youse boys are up to. One of these girls is for Shadow, isn’t she?’
‘They might all be for Shadow, Mum.’
We hid them in a bedroom awaiting Shadow’s return.
Shadow walked in the door and first thing he did was go up to Mum and give her a big cuddle and a kiss on each cheek. Then he sat down on the lounge with her to have a catch-up, his arm around Mum. Everyone in our family thinks the world of our mum. All us brothers would die for her. She’s a remarkable woman.
Mum and Shadow spent half an hour or so together, but Mum knew we had these three sheilas in the house, so we finally brought them out and said to Shadow, ‘Take your pick – or take all of ’em.’
He walked along the line, spotted Joanne and took her off into the bedroom. After that it was on. They were always together. She became his old lady and they went on to have a couple of kids together.
SHADOW MIGHT have had things sorted, but things were a lot more complicated for me where women were concerned.
I was sitting in my booth at the Illinois Hotel at Five Dock – the last booth on the left as you walked into the lounge. My back to the corner. Anywhere I went – the pub, someone else’s clubhouse, even my own clubhouse – I always sat with my back into the corner so no one could walk up behind me.
This sheila come up to me and said, ‘Nice bike out there.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Would you like to take me for a ride?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘If you take me for a ride we can go back to me flat and I’ll give you a fuck.’
‘No thanks.’
‘Well you’re gunna regret this.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I know Caesar from the Gladiators. He’s a really good friend of mine, and I’m gunna get him to punch your head in.’
I was taken aback for a moment. ‘Really?’
‘Yep.’
‘Just how well do you know Caesar from the Gladiators?’ I asked her.
‘Real well. We used to go out together.’
‘Well if you know him that well, you should know who I am.’
She looked at me with a blank look and, in the pause, the old barmaid Gladys came trotting over. ‘Caesar, there’s a phone call for you.’
This sheila looked at me, went bright red, and whooshka, was out the door. Old Gladys chuckled, ‘I thought you mighta needed a hand.’
Bikers get a lot of women chasing them. When you pull up at a pub, you’ve got women. When the pub closes, you have sheilas lining up outside. The blokes get on their bikes, point to one of the sheilas, then point to the back of the bike. The sheila trots over and hops on.
Of course I was married, but there was nothing between me and Irene; I really only went home to see the kids. And as it turned out, Irene didn’t respect the marriage at all. Around this time I found out she’d been playing up on me with three different men.
I told Irene that as far as I was concerned the marriage was over, and that if I ever caught her cheating on me again I’d give her a real good hiding. For a while I took out this real stunner, Cheree, but I stayed with Irene. I figured that while the kids were young it was my place to be there for them, and I was.
Well Irene was one of these sheilas that just wouldn’t listen. She thought more of going out with these blokes than she did of her kids and me, and before long there was a fourth bloke.
I ended up in court when the bloke turned up in hospital and had to have his spleen removed. He reckoned I’d attacked him and the coppers had a couple of witnesses to say that I did. Fortunately the witnesses changed their minds, and then for some reason when the arresting officer took the stand he came up with a new angle: ‘On the same day of the alleged assault, the victim was up on the roof of his house cleaning gutters and fell off his roof.’
So they called the doctor back up and the judge quizzed him. ‘You’ve said that the only way this spleen could have been injured was by being kicked in the stomach. Would falling off a roof have caused the same damage?’
The doctor looked at me, then turned to the judge and said, ‘Yes, your honour, falling off a roof could definitely cause the spleen to rupture.’
The judge found the charge proven but recorded no conviction. It was the only time I’d ever been to court, and I kept my record clean.
Outside the court the copper came up to me and told me that one of his best mates in the force had the same thing happen to him; his missus had played up with a couple of blokes behind his back. He said, ‘I thought you deserved a fair shake.’ So there are some decent coppers out there. We shook hands and I returned to the unhappiness of the marital home.
AT THE beginning of May 1978, I was at the Croydon pub, nursing an orange juice and enjoying the spectacle of two good sorts playing pool. One of the sheilas lost the game with all seven balls still on the table, which according to house rules meant she had to flash her tits. So she got up on the table and took her top off. She had big tits, too. But it was the other sheila who’d really caught my eye. As soon as I saw the slender blonde bending over the table, everything stood up. I went as stiff as a board. I knew then that I’d be with her one day. If I hadn’t been married I’d have been straight over and asking her out. As it was I had to settle with buying her a drink and talking into the night. Her name was Donna and she was a gorgeous twenty-two-year-old nurse who worked at Camperdown Children’s Hospital.
About a week later Irene met Donna, and went out of her way to make sure they became girlfriends. She invited Donna to the movies, made sure she came over for tea. Donna started spending more and more time with our family, until one day Irene suggested that she move in with us.
I was a bit taken aback. ‘We don’t have the room,’ I said.
‘Well she can sleep in with us,’ Irene said.
So Donna moved in and night after night the three of us would crawl into bed together. Nothing happened, but it was becoming more and more obvious that Irene was trying to push me and Donna together. Irene would sleep on the edge of the bed and more or less turn her back and nudge me towards Donna. Not that she needed to push too hard. It was taking all the strength I had to resist. Maybe Irene was trying to ease her own conscience. Or maybe she thought if I was interested in Donna I wouldn’t be watching her so closely and she could play up as much as she liked.
For a long while Donna and I just talked, and we really clicked. I’d never had that with anyone else before. Neither had she. She’d been living with her mum and dad and had only been with three men before. Very quickly she became my best friend, and a few months later, my lover. Once that happened, there was no going back. I knew I’d found the one I wanted to spend the rest of me life with. I could trust Donna, I’d take a bullet for her in a heartbeat. She was loyal, loving, passionate and, above all, truthful. And of course, she was mind-blowingly sexy. But even if we could never have sex again, that wouldn’t have changed our relationship. I’d love her just as much. Simply having Donna sitting in the same room gave me pleasure and comfort.
Once it became clear how serious things were between us I said to Donna, ‘You wanna think this right through, because being the old lady and wife of an outlaw biker isn’t an easy thing, and especially with me. There’s a lot of people out there who, for some unknown reason, figure that the way to prove themselves or get a reputation is to either beat me up or take me out. There’ll be good times, but there’ll be a lotta hard times.’
And the woman said, ‘Well I wanna be with you, and the one thing I want is to be your wife.’
I promised Donna that one day we’d get hitched.
Of course Irene was still in the picture, and with the three of us living under one roof, it amazed some people that I had two ‘wives’. They didn’t know that my marriage to Irene was dead, and that if Donna hadn’t come along and I’d stayed with Irene I probably would’ve ended up killing her. Or at least w
aited until the kids got a bit older and then left with whichever kids wanted to come with me. Now that things had changed it was time for Donna and I to move out on our own. We got a little place together, and each afternoon I’d go and visit the kids when they got home from school. Then I’d be home by seven for tea with Donna.
A LOT of people think that bikers don’t look after their old ladies, but nothing could be further from the truth. I reckon we look after our old ladies better than the normal straight bloke does.
Soon after Donna and I got together, I heard that the sergeant-at-arms of the Phoenix had said a few things about her that he shouldn’t have. The Phoenix was drinking in at the Bat and Ball on Cleveland Street, Redfern, so I went in there one night with Donna and fronted the head blokes. It turned out the sergeant wasn’t there but me and the other blokes had words. One of them said to me, ‘You know we could stomp ya.’
‘Okay, go ahead and try.’ There were about twenty of them counting their hangers-on, and I had a cracked arm at the time, but I still outnumbered them. After about ten minutes every one of those blokes wearing a Phoenix patch had apologised to Donna. They even told me where their sergeant was. Turns out he was in Canterbury Hospital with a busted leg.
Next day, I headed over to Canterbury Hospital and found the ward this bloke was in. As soon as I walked in he started up: ‘I know what you’re here for, but I didn’t say it. It’s just people trying to get me in trouble.’
By the time I left, his leg would’ve been a lot sorer, and it wasn’t the only thing that was broken. He would have had a lot of trouble breathing through his nose, too.
No one speaks disrespectfully of my old lady.
CHAPTER 3
An outlaw club called the Assassins had started up in Summer Hill, one suburb to the east of our territory, and before long they were prancing around in our terrain.
We had a meeting and decided that we’d front them at their pub and give them the chance to move out of our area. If they didn’t go along with it, we’d take their colours and close them down then and there.
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