So we headed over to the Summer Hill Hotel. There were about fifteen bikes out the front so we knew there was a fair few of them inside, against seven of us. We went into the old tiled pub and found the Assassins’ president at the long front bar. We told him what the go was. He went away and had a word with some of his blokes, then came back and said, ‘We’ll think about it.’
That wasn’t the answer we’d been looking for. I looked at Bull, he looked at Snake, and bang, it was on. I threw the first punch right at their president. We chased them round the pub. Chop latched onto their sergeant-at-arms with his teeth and had hold of him by the side of the face. Some of them were using chairs to try and hold us off, some had jumped over the bar. When you get into an all-in blue, you pick up the closest thing, whether it be a glass or a chair or a pool cue, and do whatever you have to do to win. If you’re a real outlaw biker, you’re not doing it for yourself, you’re doing it for your club and the blokes that are with you. In a really staunch club, the blokes are that tight, they’d rather cop a hit than let their brother standing alongside them cop it.
It lasted about eight or nine minutes. We knocked them all down and as each of them went down Schultz came along behind us and took their colours. And that was the end of the Assassins.
That sort of thing happened quite a lot – clubs closing down other clubs. Usually it would be an all-in brawl, but sometimes there wasn’t even a fight. In one incident at Granville, one club just walked into another club’s pub, fronted the president and told him to get his blokes to drop their colours. And they did. Just dropped their colours without a punch being thrown, from what I was told. They’d obviously sussed out the other club and decided they weren’t going to match up. But to me, if I had a bloke in my club hand over his colours instead of copping a kicking, he’d be gone. He’d be out of the club and I’d give him the kicking.
Another decent-sized club, Salem’s Witches, who had the area between Summer Hill and Dulwich Hill for a couple of years, one day just disappeared off the scene. They were there one minute and gone the next. No more Salem’s Witches. Same with the Phantom Lords. They were pretty well known, but same thing. One day they just disappeared.
WE WERE out one night in the southern suburbs looking to even up with some blokes who’d been into Bull. We couldn’t find them so were heading home to Ashfield when we stopped at a set of lights and Bull said, ‘Next pub we come to we’ll go in for a beer.’ So coming off Tom Ugly’s Bridge at Blakehurst, we turned into the Seabreeze Hotel.
As we pulled in I could see another lot of bikes belonging to a club called the Hangmen in the car park. Oh shit, I thought. My brothers didn’t go out looking for fights, but they wouldn’t back away from one if you paid them. And it didn’t take much to stir them up, especially if it involved another club. All you had to do was stare at Snake and it’d be on.
We went into the pub and the blokes ordered their beers. I got my lemon squash. I never got on the piss. One of the Hangmen came over and said, ‘We drink here.’
Shadow came round from the back and said, ‘Yeah, so what?’
‘Well,’ this Hangman said, ‘it’d be the right thing to ask us beforehand if you could have a drink in here.’
I could see what was coming. Next thing Shadow’s gone whack, and hit this bloke. Then Chop and Wack have gone flying through to another part of the pub, and there was a blue going on there. It was all over the place. Before I knew it Bull and Snake were walking out with colours hanging off their arms. They’d closed down the Hangmen.
Bull, Shadow and Snake all carried ockie straps on the backs of their bikes, so they strapped the colours on and when we got back to the clubhouse they went out to the backyard and burnt them.
Once a biker lost his colours he could either go to another club or become an independent rider. Sometimes if there was a bloke in the club that you were closing down who stood up to you and really gave it a go, you might even offer him a spot as a nominee in your club.
The other option for a biker who’d lost his club was to go to a social club or a Christian club. There were a lot of those around. They had the vests and a lot of their blokes looked like bikers with tattoos and long hair. Some of the Christian and social clubs wore colours. Some even acted like they were outlaw clubs until an actual outlaw club rocked up. Then all of a sudden they were a social club. It was an unwritten rule with outlaw clubs that you didn’t bash anyone in a social club, and ninety-nine per cent of outlaw clubs left the Christian clubs alone too. Unless of course they started putting shit on your colours or having a go at one of your members – then you’d bash them like anyone else.
A CLUB called the Undertakers had taken to riding around our area. At first they were just drinking at their own pub in Belfield, a couple of kilometres away from Ashfield. That didn’t worry us too much, but then they started coming in and drinking at the Croydon pub. We had a word with a few of their members, but instead of doing the right thing, they told us where to go. Which didn’t go down real well.
It became like the fox and the hound. They knew we were looking for them so they stopped going to pubs. They’d ride around the area, then dart back to their clubhouse. It took us about two months to track them down.
We rocked up at their clubhouse on a Thursday, their meeting night, kicked in the front door and beat up a few of them. They just threw their colours on the floor.
We’d developed a pretty fearsome reputation. We weren’t just a club, the bulk of us were brothers, which meant we had a stronger bond than most clubs. Any one of us would step in front of a bloke with a pool cue and take the hit that another brother was going to cop. When you’ve got a club that thinks that much of each other, you’re pretty hard to beat.
WE’D HEARD about a new club that was hanging round Parramatta called the Comancheros. We’d see them now and again when we were out on rides, parked on the side of the road or in a garage getting fuel.
A mate of mine, Roach, from the Phoenix used to drink with us up at the Ashfield Tavern, and one night he brought in a bloke from the Comancheros, John Boy. John Boy was wearing his colours, which wouldn’t normally go down real well in another club’s pub, but he was on his own and Roach told me he was a good bloke, so I let him stay.
Roach had hit the road by the time I left my lemon squash at the bar and went to have a leak. John Boy came in after me and told me about the blokes trying to steal my bike.
That’s the night I flattened the two blokes and John Boy helped me with the third. That was good of him, because we hardly knew each other. I remember the look on his face when I souvenired the trio of little fingers. I had about twenty-six fingers in the jar by then. I was grateful because he’d helped save my bike and so I’d made that promise: ‘If there’s ever anything I can do for ya, you got me word I’ll do it.’
Little did I know what that promise to John Boy would set in train, and would one day end up costing me.
TOWARDS THE end of the seventies we started hanging round a pub called the James Craig Tavern, attached to the new shopping centre that had been built at Birkenhead Point. We used to park our bikes on level two of the parking station, right outside the double doors that led into the nightclub part of the tavern, so we could keep an eye on them while we were inside. The staff would always save us two or three tables right in front of the doors. We’d come with our old ladies and listen to bands like Ol’ 55 and Sherbet. I was friends with one of the waitresses, Victoria, and she’d bring us big trays of leftovers from the buffet, cold roast beef or pork and baked potatoes.
We were up there one night and one of the bouncers came up to Bull, who was our sergeant-at-arms. ‘There’s another bike club downstairs causing some trouble.’
‘Who?’ Bull asked.
‘The Comanchees.’
The Comanchees? Bull looked at me but I’d never heard of them, so we headed downstairs. It turned out to be the Comancheros. One of their blokes was jumping up and down on a pool table.
; Bull told him to get off.
‘What are ya gunna do if I don’t?’
‘I’ll put ya through the fuckin’ window,’ Bull said.
He got off.
John Boy was there, and came in from outside. ‘G’day Caesar.’
‘Ah, John Boy, what are youse doing here?’
‘We thought we’d pop in for a drink.’
‘Well you know the rules,’ I said. ‘You should’ve asked.’
‘Yeah, fuck off,’ said Bull.
‘Calm down,’ I said. By this stage Shadow and Schultz and some of our other blokes had wandered in and I didn’t want to see a blue.
‘Yeah, fair enough,’ said John Boy. So he got his blokes and left.
Despite the rough introduction, we began hanging round with John Boy and got to know some of the other Comancheros. One night John Boy brought some of them up to the Croydon Hotel. That night the place was full of footballers, blokes from Wests and Canterbury, and John Boy got into a blue with one of the locals. I ended up facing off against Canterbury second-rower Greg Cook. He was mouthing off about what he was going to do to me.
‘Well, come on and do it,’ I said.
But his mates came out and told him, ‘We’re not gunna back you against these blokes,’ so all of a sudden he was backing down the footpath. ‘I don’t want any trouble, mate.’
See, footy players will get in and throw a few punches, put the boot in here and there, but when you take on an outlaw club, you’re taking on blokes that have been stabbed, hit over the head with baseball bats and bricks, had glasses shoved in their face, had five or six blokes kick the shit out of them, and they’ve still got up to carry on. So to an outlaw biker, a fight against a bunch of footballers is nothing. The footy players soon learnt that, because they were standing there like Mr Goody-Goody with their fists up and all of a sudden there was a bunch of blokes standing in front of them with broken glasses and broken pool cues.
The footy players headed for the door, but unfortunately John Boy had been glassed in the hand by this big red-headed bloke. The blood was pissing out and we couldn’t stop the bleeding so me and two of the Comancheros got him up to emergency at Western Suburbs Hospital.
They stitched him up and gave him a few shots, but we could hear the sirens coming so we grabbed John Boy and got out of there.
AS I GOT to know John Boy and the Comancheros better, they started inviting me over to their pub on Victoria Road, Ermington. It’s not a small thing for one club to invite another club member to drink with them – especially as I would rock up in my Gladiator colours. Then, after three or four visits to their pub, I was even more surprised when John Boy invited me to a Comanchero club party. Apparently it was a first for them.
The Comos didn’t have a clubhouse, so the party was at a member’s house, on the corner of Liverpool Road and Frederick Street in Ashfield. John Boy filled me in on a few things beforehand. ‘When you meet the club, don’t go off the deep end if you get snubbed by one of our members, Snoddy. He’s a bit standoffish. That’s just Snoddy, but I know what you’re like, and I don’t want a punch-up going on soon as you walk in the door.’
As usual I rode in wearing my colours. There were a dozen or so Comos there, and, as it turned out, the first one over besides John Boy was Snoddy. He walked straight up and put out his hand: ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’ We shook hands and spent the next half-hour looking over each other’s bikes. Snoddy was a quiet bloke, but intense. I met a few of their nominees, too. My mate Roach was there, having left the Phoenix to join the Comos. Then John Boy came over and said, ‘Jock wants to talk to you.’ Jock was William ‘Jock’ Ross, the famously militaristic president of the Comancheros.
John Boy took me into the garage and introduced me to the thick-set bloke with a hard Glaswegian brogue and Coke-bottle glasses magnifying his ice-blue eyes. Jock told me about his life in the army and how he used to be a sergeant in the SAS. Hard-core stories of being dropped behind the lines in Malaya, and cutting off people’s heads. He told me he was a black belt in karate and that he had books on Napoleon, Hitler and Genghis Khan. His favourite was Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. He said he hadn’t wanted to leave the SAS but his captain gave him orders that he thought endangered his men. He belted the captain and got kicked out of the army. He also told me how tight the club was; there were only thirteen of them and they were real close.
We spent about an hour talking. I had to admit he had some staunch blokes in the club, some good bluers, and they did seem to be a close club. But I suspected Jock might be the type who could only talk a good fight.
THE GLADIATORS were going great guns, but building the club up was near impossible with my brothers enforcing the rule that any new nominees had to be able to fight. We’d got up to twelve members but I couldn’t see it going any further. We were at the Venus Room one night and we had this nominee called Turk. He was a bouncer from the Texas Tavern and he had a glass eye. This night he was giving Bull a bit of cheek, so Bull put it on him and went whack. Well Turk’s eye popped out, flew across the bar and rolled onto the floor. With the dim lighting, the eye lying on the floor looked real. Two sheilas were standing there and one of them fainted. Then Bull went and stepped on the eye and shattered it. The second sheila fainted. Cracked her head on the bar on the way down. People were disappearing, pouring out the door. They thought we were going to kill everyone in the place.
The bloke who ran the Venus Room said, ‘Can’t youse do things outside?’
‘Ahhh, give us a beer,’ Bull said. So he gave Bull a beer. Bull went back to drinking and then turned to Turk. ‘All right, hand in your nominee badge.’ Turk went up to the end of the bar, got a knife and cut the badge off his vest.
At the next club meeting I said to Scultz, Lurch and my brothers, ‘This can’t go on. The club’s never gunna grow if we’re gunna make it that to get in everyone’s gotta be able to fight as well as youse can fight. Being a good fighter is a big help in a bike club, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. You’ve gotta have blokes who can work on a bike, you’ve gotta have a bloke who can wire a bike, a bloke who can spray-paint a bike.
‘I know what youse are getting at. Youse figure that if you can fight – and really fight – you’re gunna have blokes that won’t run away when the going gets tough. But to me, that’s the wrong way to think about it, cos I’ve seen blokes who’ve been really top bluers and as soon as they’ve copped a few good smacks in the mouth they’ve chucked it in. Yet you can have blokes who can’t fight real well but who’ll stay there to the end and cop a hiding no matter what. To me, they’re the tougher bloke.’
In a fight, our blokes were worth thirty or forty normal blokes, but I tried to get it into their heads that fighting was just a skill. ‘Put it this way, if you went up against a professional tennis player, you’d get your arse wiped. But that doesn’t mean that the tennis player is a better bloke than you, it just means that he can play tennis better. And you could turn round and kick the shit out of him.’
But they threw it back at me that we didn’t need more people. ‘If you got the quality you don’t need the numbers,’ they said.
‘But it’s not about numbers, it’s about the club continuing,’ I argued. ‘You mightn’t be in the club in twelve months’ time. If it keeps dropping down, who’s gunna take your place?’
The meeting ended but not the argument. We continued to debate the issue meeting after meeting.
WE WERE down at Bull’s place on the Hume Highway at Ashfield and we had a nominee by the name of Mad Dog. Bull, Shadow and Snake had known him for years before the club started, but when he came round I said, ‘There’s no way he’s ever gunna make it as a member.’ I’d seen him in blues and he’d go running round and hide behind Bull or Snake or myself. He was one of these blokes that joined clubs for the protection of the club, to have the numbers behind him.
‘Yeah, but he’s a good bloke,’ Snake argued.
‘All right, he can be a nominee, b
ut he’ll never make a member.’
This night, it was about eight-thirty and there was a bottle-o up at Enfield that used to shut at nine-thirty. ‘Mad Dog,’ Bull ordered, ‘go up and get us five cases of beer.’
‘How do you expect him to bring back five cases of beer on his bike?’ I asked Bull.
‘He’s a nom,’ said Bull. ‘He’ll find a way.’
So Mad Dog headed off. A bit over an hour later, we heard this dirty great screeching noise coming down the road. Here’s Mad Dog with a piece of rope running off the back of his bike dragging an upturned car bonnet behind him with the five cases of beer on it. He’d gone into a car yard near the bottle-o, undone the bonnet of one of the cars, loaded the beer then dragged it all the way down the Hume Highway. Only problem was he’d left a whopping great scratch mark on the road leading straight to Bull’s driveway.
We unloaded the beer, then Bull and Mad Dog reloaded the bonnet with bricks and half a sleeper to weigh it down. Mad Dog headed back up the street, through the main shopping centre of Ashfield, over to Summer Hill, and down to the railway line, extending the scratch mark through several suburbs to put any coppers off the scent. Satisfied he’d created enough confusion he retrieved his rope and zotted back to Bull’s.
A week later, we were down the Empire Hotel at Annandale and there was a fair-sized bloke in there with a real nice blonde. Mad Dog went up and was trying to crack onto the blonde. The bloke told him to piss off, but Mad Dog looked over at me and Lurch and said something to the bloke. The bloke looked at me and Lurch. You could see he wanted to smash Mad Dog but he wasn’t going to take us on. I said to Lurch, ‘Let’s go and stand round behind the partition where they can’t see us.’
So we moved behind the partition, but Mad Dog didn’t see us go, and he was still yak-yak-yakking on to this sheila. He turned and said something to the bloke, then looked over his shoulder only to see we’d gone. He hit the toe and was out of the pub.
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