All three McElwaines were very handy with their fists but Knuckles was one of the best boxers Australia has ever had. He won gold in the middleweight division at the 1978 Edmonton Commonwealth Games and was the Australian middleweight champion for much of the late seventies. My brothers formed a very tight bond with the McElwaine brothers, and the physical combination of the two families provided the Comancheros with an unassailable power among outlaw clubs. It was around this time that people started calling us Campbells ‘the Wrecking Crew’.
OUTSIDE THE club, life was still rocking along. Me and Donna were sweet, and in August 1980 she gave birth to our first child, a son we called Daniel. While Donna took care of all the home side of things, I continued working as a collector for the Little King and another bloke up the Cross. I was also still involved in the underground fighting scene, so every few weeks I’d be called up for a fight. It wasn’t for the money; I was making enough off the collecting to live. I just liked the fighting.
My training regime was almost a full-time job in itself. I was at the gym six afternoons a week. It was the same routine every day: come in, do the weights, then work on the punching bags (heavy bag and speed bag). Then I’d work on the board – a springboard about four inches thick and wrapped with cord, which you’d punch into. It had some give in it so you didn’t break your hand, but it was designed to toughen up your knuckles a lot more than hitting the heavy bag with gloves. I needed that since I was bare-knuckle fighting. The kyite was good for that too. Punching into the baskets of grain really toughened up the hands. My knuckles were always puffed up. Even now in the sunlight you can see all the scarring. They look real weird. I broke quite a few knuckles.
I’d finish off my gym session with some more bag work and a lot of squats, then go home and have a big drink of protein powder with bananas and strawberries mixed in. Donna was cooking me pretty good meals and we’d have tea together. I’d sit back and watch TV for half an hour, wait for the meal to settle, then go out and run for an hour. I’d do the same thing early of a morning: go for a run down the highway then come home and have a shower.
At that stage I was bench pressing 460 pounds. I had a fifty-four-inch chest, which would expand to fifty-seven inches, and twenty-inch arms. So I was pretty solid, and I had the power to go with it. With all the running I had the breath to go on, too. I had over thirty fights under my belt by then and still hadn’t lost a bout. The best odds I could get now were six to four on.
Life was good. I was on top of the fighting game, I had my woman, a new baby, and the Comancheros. And the absolute icing on the cake was when we were out riding in a big pack. Ten or fifteen blokes, your brothers around you, and, like the old saying goes, you had the wind in your face and the sun on your back. I’d be all in black. Black jeans, shirt, vest. Black bandana and sunnies. You’d be cruising along and all the straights in the cars would be hanging out the window, drooling. You could see that they’d love to have been on the bike. Sheilas would be driving with their boyfriends and up would come the tops, tits against the windows. We’d have sheilas hanging out the windows: ‘Take us for a ride and we’ll give you a fuck.’ Even when I had Donna on the back.
When we’d slow down to drive through a shopping strip I’d look behind me. Here’d be every bloke and every old lady checking themselves out in the shop windows. It was the only time you could see yourself in a big pack. In those days you didn’t have to wear helmets and the sheilas’d be fluffing their hair. They used to love the posing . . . All right, we all did.
In late 1980 we headed out in a big pack on the national run to Molong, north of Orange in centralwestern New South Wales. Jock decided to make it a pub crawl all the way, so we went down the Bells Line of Road and stopped at the pub at Kurrajong. My brothers and I, plus a few other blokes, decided that we’d head straight to Molong instead to set up camp.
We hit Lithgow and pulled into a servo to get some petrol. As usual, Shadow and Sparksy were trying to crack onto the female attendant. We all filled up and Shadow ended up with the sheila’s phone number. Then we continued up the road to Molong, found a track that wound down to the river and picked out the best spot to set up camp. I had to suss out the hotel so I went back into town to have a look around. I found the local copper and told him what the go was; that there’d be no trouble if they left us alone and that I’d look after our blokes. Then I headed back to the campsite and settled in around the fire.
About one o’clock the next morning we heard the familiar rumble of the pack coming down the road. We heard them turn off to come down the track, then heard Jock yelling out to Foghorn and Snowy to head out across the paddock so they’d be the first ones down to the river. (It was the first time I’d seen Snowy on a bike since I’d been in the club.)
Next thing we heard was a lot of screaming and the metallic crunch of bikes pranging. We all went running up the paddock to find everyone off their bikes and crowded around a big hole into which Jock, Snowy and Foghorn had disappeared. The grass was so long they hadn’t seen the hole and had ridden straight into it. Once we realised they were all right everyone cracked up. We spent the next hour pulling their bikes out.
Later that night there was a bunch of us sitting round the campfire telling yarns when one of the old ladies, Jackie, fell asleep next to me. She was resting her head on my leg so Jock went off and found her old man, Tonka, who was over in one of the tents having a bong, and brought him back to the campfire. ‘Hey, man,’ Jock said to Tonka, ‘are you gunna let Caesar get away with that?’
‘With what?’ Tonka asked.
‘Look at your old lady, she’s laying all over him.’
‘Wake up to yourself, Jock,’ I said. ‘She’s asleep. She’s just using my leg as a pillow.’
Tonka wasn’t fazed. He turned round to Jock and said, ‘Hey, I’d trust Caesar with Jackie anytime. I don’t know what you’re carrying on about.’
It was only a small incident in an otherwise great run, but it was a side of Jock I was starting to see more of, and it was a side I didn’t like.
CHAPTER 5
I used to get called out at all hours to help members with their problems. I might get a call at three o’clock in the morning when a bloke had been kicked out of the house because his old lady had found a phone number in his vest. Knuckles was a serial offender. He got caught with numbers by his old lady, Wendy, about five times. He always kept them in his boot. The same boot. I rigged up a story that he was keeping the numbers for me and that it was my sheila on the side; that Knuckles was doing me the favour. She sort of went along with it for a while, but then she called me over one night at the clubhouse and said, ‘Nah, there’s no way you’re cheatin’ on Donna. I know he’s playin’ up.’
I knew it could be a bit hard on some of the sheilas who were new to the biker lifestyle. They might be a nurse or a secretary and get picked up by a Como, never having had anything to do with clubs. They’d join up and wouldn’t know what they were getting themselves into. Some of the older members, when they got a new girlfriend, would bring them round to our place and ask Donna to explain how an old lady should act around the club. It was a big show of respect for Donna and she appreciated it. She’d make the new girlfriend a cuppa and spend some time going through the club rules for old ladies.
‘The main thing to understand, right,’ she’d tell them, ‘is that the club belongs to the men. We are being invited along but it’s not our club. We’re only guests. Even though we might be married to ’em or whatever. You gotta get that into your head. Once you understand that, it’ll go a long way to you understanding how the club runs.
‘Now when you get to the club, the first thing you gotta do is work out who the proper old ladies are. Because sometimes the men leave their proper old ladies at home and bring in, you know, the odd stray here and there. They might have them tucked away for a couple of months at a time, or it might be just for that night. But you’ve got to learn to remember which is which and, most important, neve
r to say anything. You can’t open your mouth and tell his old lady. That’s the hard part on ya.’
As sergeant it was my job to discipline the sheilas as well as the blokes. So if an old lady did something she shouldn’t – like telling another member’s old lady that she saw such and such down the street with this little blonde – I had to deal with her. If she was new to the club I’d give her a bit of leeway, and maybe just sit her down with Donna for a talking-to. But if she should’ve known better, I might suspend her for anything from two weeks to six months.
When an old lady got suspended it meant she couldn’t come to the clubhouse or any club do. She could still ride with her old man, and if her old man was going to the pub and two members wanted to go with said member, she could go. But if it was ten or fifteen members going to the pub, she wasn’t allowed to attend. And she was definitely excluded from club nights and club barbecues.
I had to enforce those sorts of suspensions a few times. We had one member whose old lady turned up one day and got into a blue with him. She was a real feisty little piece, and they both had hold of each other by the hair and were whacking into each other. She ended up tripping her old man and when he fell on the floor she jumped on top of him and started punching the shit out of him. Then he rolled her over and was punching the shit out of her. They rolled out the front door, down the steps, onto the concrete path, and she was back on top, giving it to him. I thought, This is getting really embarrassing here, so I grabbed her round the waist and carried her off. I banned her for six weeks.
There was another incident where the McElwaines’ father, Big Bad Bob, was putting on a barbecue for the club one Sunday afternoon at the Terminus. It was a get-together for the blokes, no old ladies. Back in those days he still had the topless barmaids, so this one old lady got it into her head that there were going to be hookers and strippers at the barbecue. She started ringing round all the old ladies spreading the story. Well, blokes were getting home and getting trashed by their old ladies. I was getting phone calls all Sunday night.
I tracked it all back to this one sheila, Jenny, and banned her for six months. It didn’t go down well with her old man. He was going to leave the club over it.
‘Well if that’s all the club means to ya . . .’ I said to him. ‘Anyway, you know she was in the wrong.’
‘Yeah, but cantcha give her a bit of a break?’
‘No, that nearly broke up some blokes’ marriages.’
Egged on by Jock, the member didn’t speak to me much after that, but I tell you, if it had been Donna in the wrong, I’d have banned her for twelve months.
Despite all that, ninety-eight per cent of the old ladies liked the way the club was run and enjoyed the perks that came with it. Whenever we got a new nom to the club I’d explain to his old lady that if her old man was lucky enough to become a member, they would always be looked after. Any time they went out and there was a member of the club there, they would be protected. If anything happened to her bloke, if he got hurt or if they needed money, the club would look after them.
The best example of how a woman should be in an outlaw club was, of course, Donna. She would arrange to have girls’ nights on our meeting nights, so that the old ladies would have something to do while we were at the meeting. Most of the old ladies would go round to our place and Donna would put on some videos or music and have food and drinks for the girls.
I remember arriving home from a meeting one night and there were still quite a few old ladies there. I went into the bedroom to let Donna and them carry on, and I got a phone call from Shadow’s old lady, who’d left earlier. She was wondering where Shadow was, because he normally went straight home after a meeting.
‘Give it a couple of hours and if you haven’t heard nothing then ring me back,’ I told her.
Which she did. So I rang the clubhouse but Shadow wasn’t there and neither was Chop. Once I heard that, I had a good idea where they’d be. I headed off to Westmead where Shadow and Chop had a garden flat. I pulled up to find Shadow and this sheila standing outside the flat laughing their heads off.
‘What’s going on?’
‘You wouldn’t believe me,’ Shadow said.
‘Try me.’
‘Come in here.’
I went inside and there was Chop sitting on the lounge with an icepack down the front of his undies. Shadow told me that not long before I’d arrived, Chop had been in bed screwing this sheila. He wanted to go up her arse but she was too tight so he went into the bathroom and grabbed a jar of Vaseline. He took it into the bedroom, smeared it on his cock and around her arse, and rammed it in. Shadow said you could hear the sheila scream for a mile. Turned out it wasn’t Vaseline but Vicks VapoRub. The camphor in it burnt like buggery, literally. He said Chop was running round the bedroom, jumping up and down all over the place. Shadow had to grab the both of them and throw them in a cold shower. They were in there rubbing themselves, the sheila trying to get the Vicks out of her arse. I could hear her still in the shower. Shadow said it was one of the funniest things he’d ever seen.
I cracked up too. Chop was indignant. ‘D’ya think it’s funny? You oughta try it.’
‘I’m not that stupid.’
I told Shadow about his old lady ringing up wanting to know where he was.
‘She’s really pissing me off, Ceese. If it wasn’t for the kids I’d be outta there like a flash.’
‘So whaddya want me to tell her?’
‘What do you reckon?’
I knew Snoddy was out near my place visiting an old lady of his that he had on the side, so I said, ‘What if I ring Snoddy up and tell him that he took you with him to do some business? That way if your old lady checks with him in the morning he’ll know.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
So I rang Snoddy and told him the go.
‘No sweat, Caesar. Anything for you and Shadow.’
When I got home, Donna must have heard me putting the bike away. As usual she was up waiting for me and walked out topless to ask me if I wanted anything to eat.
‘A coupla toasted sandwiches would be good,’ I said.
I sat down and put on some music while she went out to the kitchen to make my snack, and it struck me how Donna still turned me on just by walking out without her top like she did that morning. With that thought, I was straight into the kitchen, toaster off, picked her up and carried her off into the bedroom.
CHAPTER 6
We were at the McElwaine’s pub in inner-city Pyrmont one night when a taxi came round the corner too fast and mounted the gutter, taking out one of our blokes, Sparksy. The impact broke Sparksy’s leg, so Snake and Sheepskin gave the taxi driver a good flogging.
The taxi driver got out of there quick smart and the cops turned up looking for the culprits. I rushed Sheepskin and Snake into the ladies’ toilets with two of our old ladies. I got the blokes to crouch on the bowls while the two old ladies dropped their pants so that if a cop put his head under the door it’d look like a sheila was on the loo. The cops went through the pub but couldn’t find the two blokes described to them.
The copper said to me, ‘Look, we can’t just let this go.’
I said to him, ‘The blokes who did it were two hang-rounds, Monk and Spider.’ Just rolled it off the top of my head. Because I always found if a copper had a few brains, he might know you were crapping on, but if you gave him a way out where he looked all right, you didn’t have to get into a blue. ‘One was riding a red Triumph and the other was riding a green Panhead. Soon as they attacked the taxi driver they hit the toe – even though the taxi driver was in the wrong. Ring St Vincent’s Hospital if you want. You’ll find out that one of my blokes is up there now with a broken leg.’
‘What were their names again?’ asked the copper.
‘Spider and Monk.’
‘And they’ve gone, have they?’
‘Yeah, but if I hear anything about ’em, what’s your name?’
He gave me his name and said, �
�I’m down at Central.’
‘Well I’ll give you a ring.’
‘Fair enough.’ He smirked and rounded up his blokes. I sent mine back into the pub.
Half an hour later about eighty taxis pulled up down the road at the Edinburgh Hotel, which you could see from the Terminus. All these drivers got out of their cabs and were milling around. Jock was saying, ‘Let’s go down and kill ’em.’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I’ll go down and talk to ’em.’
‘You’ll get killed.’
‘No I won’t.’
So I walked down the middle of the road towards them. And back in them days I had this strut about me, because I didn’t care about anyone. I had it in my head that if I was going to get beat up I was going to get beat up. My old man had always said that no matter how good you were there was always someone better out there, it just depended on how long it took you to run into them. But so far I hadn’t found the bloke.
So this night I was strutting towards the taxi drivers, but as I got closer they all started jumping in their cabs, banging into each other trying to get away. I wasn’t going to get beat up that night.
The funny thing about that was, the next Friday night, me, Shadow and Chop went into the Edinburgh Hotel to meet a couple of sheilas Chop knew. We were yakking on when one of the sheilas said, ‘I was here last Saturday night and there was all these cabs pulled up out the front and this huge bikie come walkin’ down the street. He kept comin’ and comin’. He was the biggest, meanest, ugliest-lookin’ thing you’ve ever seen.’
Chop turned around and slapped her. ‘That’s my brother you’re talkin’ about.’
I just thought it was funny. When I told Donna what the sheila said, she thought biggest and meanest sounded right, but not ugliest.
BY 1981 I was still considered one of the biggest and meanest in the underground fight scene, too, but after forty-three fights, and at thirty-five years of age, I was almost done. I was getting to the point where I was liking getting hit, and I was dropping my guard. I knew that it was time to stop before I ended up getting knocked on my arse.
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