It was the sort of fight that really got you pumped up. You were punching on with your brothers and you could feel your blood turning hot. There was that buzz you got when you were outnumbered and you were fighting together for your club. There were baseball bats, knives, chains, the whole lot, and then someone would yell out the club name. You’d hear it again and could feel your blood getting hotter. You’d start swinging harder and harder.
I’d dropped the three blokes and was helping Roach up when suddenly there were six or seven more blokes charging down the park towards me. As they got near I grabbed Roach by the belt and the shoulder and threw him at their legs like a bowling ball. They tumbled back and I started smashing into them with the padlock and chain. Then someone yelled that the coppers were coming, and in an instant the fight broke up. Members from each club returned to their own little campsites as the cops appeared and started giving everyone a hard time.
We decided we’d hit the road. But while I was rounding up the old ladies I ran into four detectives and they started quizzing me about the club: How many people were in the Comancheros? Who was the president? Who was the sergeant?
‘Get fucked.’
Apparently they didn’t like my answer because they handcuffed me, and with two Ds gripping my arms, the senior bloke in the safari suit started whacking me in the guts. ‘Come on, tell me what I want to know.’
‘Get fucked.’
He continued whacking away, until one of the Ds yelled out, ‘His club’s coming.’
I looked over my shoulder and there were six Comos coming down the park. The senior D gave me one final whack, right in the nuts, before they uncuffed me and went screaming out of the park.
Well, after that whack to the nuts, I saw stars, but I stayed on my feet and managed to walk back to my bike.
I was pretty crook for the next few days. I missed a club meeting. We had a run to Wisemans Ferry coming up the following weekend so Snoddy, who I’d become good mates with since our first meeting at the club party, rang and asked me how I was feeling.
‘I’m pissing blood.’
‘Just stay there and don’t worry about the run,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a word to Jock.’
Next thing I got a call from Jock. ‘Caesar, you stay at home, mate. Don’t worry about the run.’
The blokes left on the run on the Saturday morning, but come Saturday afternoon I felt weak about not being there. I was all strapped up so I thought, Fuck it. I got my bike out, kicked her over and headed to Wisemans Ferry, about seventy kilometres away.
Halfway there I felt this wet, warm sensation like I’d pissed my pants. I pulled over to find I was bleeding. I took off my shirt and stuffed it down the front of my jeans.
When I turned up at Wisemans Ferry the first one to see me was Shadow. I obviously looked like shit because straightaway he asked me what was wrong. I told him I was bleeding, so the rest of the club gathered round. They were walking into people’s backyards and grabbing towels off washing lines. I had towels stuck down the front of my jeans and on the seat of my bike. Shadow and Wack followed me home and put my bike away. I ended up in Western Suburbs Hospital where they told me I had a ruptured groin from where the copper had hit me. I spent the next week in bed.
OUTSIDE OF my brothers, the best bluers in the club were Davo and Sheepskin. Davo was a happy-go-lucky bloke with curly blond hair and a ginger beard who loved riding his bike. Me and him became good mates. Sheepskin had joined the club not long before me so we used to hang round together a fair bit and he’d invite me to his place for tea. I never asked Sheepskin where his nickname came from, but nearly the whole time I knew him he wore a sheepskin vest, so it might’ve come from that. One day when I was up at Sheepskin’s place he went to get something out of a cupboard, and when he opened the door the shelves were just lined with trophy after trophy from karate tournaments. He’d done a lot of martial arts but he was a good street fighter too. That might be why we got on so well together. In fact, all the Campbell brothers were close to Sheepskin. We were similar, too, in that if you pushed us, well, you’d bitten off more than you could chew. Sheepskin was one of these blokes that wouldn’t just give you a black eye or break your nose, he’d take out your eye or rip off your ear.
The only thing that me and Sheepskin really disagreed on was the issue of fighting between members. When I joined the Comos and got into my first meeting, I noticed that some of the tougher blokes were standing over the blokes that weren’t real good fighters. Basically saying, ‘If you don’t vote with me, I’ll getcha after the meeting and punch your head in.’
When I saw that going on, I put up a rule that no member could fight another member for any reason whatsoever. Hands went up everywhere. The rule got passed. And all of a sudden you saw blokes that hardly said a word at meetings standing up and giving their opinion on things. It worked really well. But Sheepskin didn’t like it. He didn’t want to stand over people in meetings, but if someone rubbed him up the wrong way he wanted the right to offer that bloke outside. The problem was, Sheepskin was that good a fighter, if he really wanted to punch on with someone, the other bloke would end up in hospital.
So we had to come up with a new way to settle arguments. Even in a tight club, there’s going to be blokes that don’t get on, or disagree over something. So I stood up at the meeting and said, ‘Look, you don’t have to respect the bloke, but respect the colours. While he’s wearing the same colours as you, you just don’t fight. Whoever wants to be in the club the most will call it quits and end the argument.’
It worked. All the time I was with the club there wasn’t one member who ever dropped his colours and walked away because of an argument. You’d see members giving each other dirty looks, but then they’d sit back down. It might take three or four months but eventually they’d start talking to each other again.
To this day I’ve never laid a hand on a person who wears the same colours as me. But the day I get rid of my colours, well, there’ll be a few blokes in for a big shock.
WITHIN MONTHS of being patched, I got a phone call from Jock asking me to be his sergeant-at-arms. I didn’t want to accept at first. We already had a sergeant-at-arms, Roger, who was a decent bloke, and I was just happy to be a member. I’d made some good friends in Sheepskin, Snoddy and Davo, and was enjoying hanging round with them.
‘Nah, thanks anyway,’ I told him.
But Jock wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I think the main reason that he wanted me as sergeant was because he knew I could fight, and that I didn’t care what I did to win. Maybe it was another way to get me and my brothers in tight. Plus he knew I didn’t drink or take drugs. His big argument was that the sergeant-at-arms at the time, Roger, liked to hit the bong and have a few drinks. ‘You know that at the end of the night, Roger is wasted. He doesn’t know what’s going on.’
He had a point. Come midnight or one o’clock, Roger would be out of it. But he was just doing what you were there to do, have a good time. And I hadn’t seen anyone get hurt while he was sergeant.
So I repeated my answer to Jock: ‘Nah, I’ll just stay a member.’
We went back and forth for four hours. Finally I said, ‘How ’bout if you keep Roger as sergeant and I’ll be his offsider?’
‘No, you can’t have a sergeant and an offsider,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll make Roger master sergeant, and you sergeant.’
‘All right,’ I agreed.
Roger was still considered the top sergeant, and when it was announced, he was the first one up to congratulate me. Turned out he actually was in favour of it, because it meant he could start his partying earlier, knowing that I’d stay sober.
Being sergeant of the club always meant, to me, that it was my job to look after the club and its members, to make sure that nothing ever happened to them, or to the club. I made it a point to let every member and nom know that if they ever had a problem, they could always ring me. Which a lot of them did.
I
’d also check out the nominees. I’d get a bloke’s name, his licence number, his home address. Where he went to school. I’d want to know who his mum and dad were, where they lived. If he had brothers and sisters, where they lived. I’d check it all out to make sure we weren’t getting a copper in the club.
Another part of my job as sergeant was to scope out any hotel we were planning to visit. During the week I’d check out the entrances and exits, see how many bouncers they had on and what the go was with the manager. Some pubs didn’t allow bike clubs, so I’d have a word with them and check it’d be okay if we rocked up on the Saturday night. I’d also figure out the different ways you could get to and from the hotel in case the cops turned up. Anything that would make it easier if there was a problem on the night.
Then, when we actually arrived at a pub, the first thing I did was suss everyone out. I’d look round and see who was doing what. The bloke who was just sitting there taking everything in, who didn’t seem worried that a bunch of bikers had just walked in, he was the bloke that I knew would cause us trouble if something started.
It was like at the Vicar of Wakefield in Dural, in the semi-rural outskirts of Sydney. When we first started going there it was a pretty rough pub and I fronted the place like I normally did. I picked out this big Pommy bloke called Dave as the head bouncer and went over to have words with him.
‘We’ll be coming here,’ I told him, ‘but if your blokes stay away from my blokes, we’ll stay away from them. If there’s any trouble, come and see me first. Because if you bash any of our blokes we’ll have to bash yours.’
It was a big place and they used to get all the top bands up there. We went there for a few weekends and everything was sweet. Me and Dave got on real well. He didn’t drink either, so we’d be up there having a lemon squash or an orange juice. Turned out he was the heavyweight champion of the Pommy navy. One night he and his bouncers got into a fight with a bunch of blokes who’d come in. We went in and helped them out, sort of became extra bouncers for the night. We looked after each other.
One night we rocked up there and the American blues-rock band Canned Heat was playing. It was about twenty bucks to get in so I said to Dave, ‘Can you get us in for nothing?’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
While all the negotiating was going back and forth between Dave and the band’s manager, I said to my blokes, ‘Now when the manager comes back out to talk to me, you all just walk into the pub. Make sure you got your old ladies with ya.’
So I was talking to the band’s manager and all our blokes were going in behind him. Eventually we came to an agreement that we’d only pay ten dollars, but by that time all but one of our blokes was in.
I said to Dave, ‘Look, you got me word, there’ll be no problems tonight. I’ll keep an eye on everyone.’ So we were in listening to the band, and everyone was on the dance floor having a great time. I was watching out for Lard and Snake and Big Tony – the blokes most likely to cause trouble. But everyone was just enjoying themselves, and I thought to myself, Oh well, this is gunna go all right.
A lot of blokes in the club used to say to me, ‘How can you have a good time when we go to the pub and you don’t drink?’ This was my good time: watching the rest of the blokes having fun, watching the old ladies out on the dance floor, making sure everyone was okay.
But about half an hour later, Dave came up to me. ‘Can I’ve a word?’
‘Sure.’
He led me towards the men’s toilets.
‘Whaddya doin’?’ I asked him.
‘Just come and have a look in here.’
I went in, and there was this bloke lying up against the urinal. Blood everywhere, his face battered to a pulp. He’d had a really good flogging.
Oh fuck.
‘It must have been one of your blokes,’ Dave said, because the bloke lying there was a big fella.
So I went back out to where everyone was dancing and I was checking out the obvious suspects. Big Tony, Snake, Bull, Wack. But they all seemed pretty happy. Then I spotted Lard with this big grin on his face. Aha. I called him up.
‘Did you do the bloke in the toilet?’
‘Yeah, he pissed on me foot.’
‘Well you could have just belted him,’ I said. ‘You didn’t have to smash him.’
‘He pissed on me foot!’
‘Oh, all right, just try and keep yourself under control for the rest of the night.’
Dave called the ambulance, the cops rocked up and he fed them some story.
‘Thanks, Dave. You got me word there’ll be no more trouble tonight.’
Soon after Donna came over. ‘There’s a bloke over here pulling one of the old lady’s hair.’
‘Who?’
She pointed out a bloke who was about six foot and fourteen stone with shoulder length hair. I said to him, ‘Look, mate, can you see how many of us are in here?’
‘Yeah?’
I thought, Oh bewdy, one of these. Wanted to be a tough guy to the bikers.
I said, ‘Just leave the girls alone.’
‘All right, I don’t want any trouble.’
Ten minutes went by and Donna was back. ‘Ceese, he’s still doing it.’
I went back over and grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘Fuck off! This is your last warning. Touch one of the girls again and you’re gunna end up in hospital.’
But five minutes later Donna was back. This time I went straight over, and started dragging him outside when he turned round and – whack – hit me in the mouth. I thought, You cheeky prick. He took a second swipe, and I thought, You’re gunna cop a bit here, pal.
I grabbed his long hair and wrapped it around my left hand while I started whacking up into his face with my right. Whooshka. Each whack lifted him off the ground. I had him up against this dividing wall. Bam, bam, bam. I could hear Donna yelling out to Bull and Snake, ‘Stop him! Stop him!’
‘Let him have his fun,’ Lard said.
‘He’ll kill him!’ screamed Donna.
Whack, whack. Everything was black. I was in the zone.
Suddenly the bloke fell to the floor. I looked down at him and thought, How’d that happen? I still had a strong grip on his hair.
‘Look at your hand,’ Donna said.
I looked down and there was the bloke’s hair, still wrapped around my hand. And still attached to the scalp. I looked back at the bloke slumped on the floor. Blood was pissing out the top of his head. His face was like jelly.
Dave came over. ‘Who’s done this?’ He looked at me. ‘Not you, Caesar?’
I suddenly felt sheepish. ‘I couldn’t help it. He was molesting the women, and it’s my job to look after ’em. I tried, I gave him three chances. I was even leading him out, and the prick hit me. I let that go, and he tried for a second one. I’m not letting that go.’
‘Fuck,’ said Dave. ‘What am I gunna do? Two in one night.’
The ambulance came and got this bloke on the stretcher. He was out cold. The cops rocked up again and I listened to Dave explain it to them. ‘There was a bunch of sharpies here, or punk rockers, whatever you call ’em,’ he was saying. ‘This bloke got into an argument with them and oh, these punk rockers give him a terrible hiding.’
‘All right, thanks, mate,’ the copper said, and hopped back in his car and drove off.
Dave came over to me. ‘Is that the end of it for tonight?’
‘I’ll get the blokes and we’ll go now,’ I told him. He’d been a real good bloke to us and I thought, I’m not gunna fuck up his job for him.
‘You’re welcome back any other night,’ he said, ‘but I really appreciate you leaving now.’
We were getting on the bikes when I heard a bloke screaming. What now? I looked over and Snoddy’s got a knife to this bloke on the ground, trying to scalp him. Chop, Lard and Lout pulled Snoddy off and I asked him what happened.
‘The bloke spat on me.’
‘Fair enough. Get on your bike, we’re going.’
As always, I waited until every member had his bike going and was ready to leave before I started mine.
We spent the rest of the night back at someone’s house going over the night’s events, and didn’t I cop an earful from the blokes. I was always the one telling them not to get into fights, and there I was doing it.
As for the bit of scalp and hair I’d ripped off the bloke’s head, Chop took it home and stuck it on the end of his bed. He had it there for months before the stink got too bad.
WITH THE club’s numbers increasing, I suggested to Jock that we should set up a clubhouse. It would be a lot better than just hanging out at a pub and then finding someone’s house to go back to.
Two of the blokes in the club, Mousey and Sparksy, were renting a two-bedroom fibro house in among the factories of George Street, Granville. I thought it would make a great clubhouse so I had a word with Mousey and Sparksy and they agreed to find another place to live. Then all the blokes got together and we started ripping out the insides of the house to make it bigger. We put in a bar and stuck up posters and photos of members. There was a backyard barbecue area.
At last we had our own clubhouse where we could invite prospective members, hold our meetings and throw parties. It was a step forward for the club and had the added benefit of attracting even more people to the Comancheros.
Three of those new members included the professional boxers, the McElwaine brothers. The first one to come to the club was Mark. When Snake first brought him round he was riding a Ducati and had on the leather pants, the brown leather jacket and the short hair. When he decided he wanted to join the club we told him he’d have to swap his Ducati for a Harley or, at worst, a Triumph. He got the Harley, became a nom for the club, and I nicknamed him Gloves.
We met his brothers Greg and Phil working in at their dad’s pub, the Terminus, in Pyrmont. After seeing how Gloves had adapted so well into the club, they decided they wanted to join too. So I nicknamed them Dukes and Knuckles and we welcomed them in as our new brothers.
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