Fight number forty-four, my last, also turned out to be my toughest. I rode up to the designated venue, the dilapidated Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo, in my jeans and leather jacket only to see my opponent arrive in a limo. It turned out he was a German merchant seaman called Wolfgang Gertz who’d fought in America, undefeated, making big dollars.
I changed into my black tracksuit pants and T-shirt. Unusually, I was wearing joggers because we were fighting on an old wooden floor where you’d pick up splinters real easy.
We stood looking at each other while a bloke stood between us holding a hanky in the air. All the suits, socialites and knockabouts crowded in around the edge of the rope circle. The hanky hit the ground and we were into it.
Gertz hit me with some beauties. I hadn’t been hit like that before. Just for a second I thought, Ooh, I might have met the bloke to beat me here. But then I thought, No you haven’t. And I started getting back into him. I smashed his nose from one side of his face to the other, then he got me a corker in the eye, cracked my ribs. It was an epic fight, lasting maybe seven minutes. I could have gone on, but I could see that he was fucked. He was covered in blood, his eyebrow was hanging down. I finished him off by breaking his arm and hitting him in the throat.
My top lip was split wide open, I had a lump the size of a goose egg on the side of my head, one eye was swollen shut and my ribs felt like they’d been hit with a sledgehammer.
Shadow was helping clean me up when he noticed that all of Gertz’s mates had taken off, leaving him there on his own bleeding all over the wharf.
‘Let’s help him over to the pub,’ Shadow said.
We picked him up and took him across to the Rock’n’Roll. Blood was dripping off me into my schooner of lemon squash. Whatever Gertz was drinking had turned red. We took him up to the hospital, after which me and Wolfy became really good mates.
I’d had forty-four fights, won them all and made a lot of money for both me and my employer. The underground fight scene exists to this day, but for me, it was over. As for my extracurricular activities after that, well, let’s just say my boss kept me in the holiday business. People who upset him were taken for long trips.
And there was always another street blue right around the corner.
MUM PHONED up one night to say Chop was in St Vincent’s Hospital at Darlinghurst. I went screaming into town on the bike, pulled up at Mum’s house up the Cross and asked her what had happened. She said she didn’t know, but that two of my sisters were at the hospital now. I rode straight there and found the casualty department.
There was Chop, the side of his face swollen like an overgrown tomato.
‘What happened?’
‘I was up the Manzil Room and one of the bouncers there – you know that big Maori they call Grizzly? – he king-hit me while I was sitting at the bar.’
‘Righto,’ I said, ‘leave it to me. D’ya know how long you’re gunna be in here for?’
One of the doctors came over and said it’d be two or three days. ‘We have to fix up his cheekbone.’
I went home and filled Donna in on what had happened. ‘We’re going back up the Cross tomorrow night,’ I said.
So the next night me and Donna went up to the Manzil Room. I waited outside while she went in and checked out the club. This Grizzly was pretty well known round the Cross. ‘Yeah,’ she reported back, ‘he’s in there.’
I waited for him. Eventually he came out and started walking down the adjacent lane. I walked up behind him and let him have it right in the back of the head, the same way he’d king-hit Chop. He went down and I put the boot in, and I mean I really stomped him. Then I pulled out the buck knife, and while he was lying there, blood pissing out his ears, I took the little finger off his right hand.
As I was walking back to the bike a few of his mates came out of the club. ‘You’re fucked.’
‘You wanna try it right now, cunts? Let’s go.’
‘No, no. We don’t want no trouble. We know who you are.’
‘Yeah, well when your cocksucking mate comes round tell him that was from Chop. And not to forget it.’
I went back to where Donna was standing with the bike, holding her purse. On nights like this she always had a friend of mine in it, covering my back. Donna was better than having half a dozen blokes with you. You knew you could trust her and she’d never take off, never put you in it. It was like having your wife and your best friend all rolled into one.
***
THE COMANCHEROS had grown to over thirty-five members, which in those days made it a big club. Combined with our physical strength, it meant we also had a big reputation. Which only made us more of a target for idiots. You went for a quiet drink and ran into a bunch of dopes who always seemed to think that if they could get over the top of a few outlaw bikers it made them super tough.
This Saturday night we’d gone for a ride with our old ladies over to the Bridge Hotel on Victoria Road, Rozelle. We’d been there for a couple of hours and there was some bloke there with a handful of his mates spouting off that he was the local heavy. I could see what was coming, but before I could get round the other side of the bar to get rid of him a fight broke out. Naturally all the locals joined in, and some of them were pretty heavy-looking. Our bloke, Roger, was right in the middle of it, and one thing I’ll give Roger is he’ll always have a go.
One Comanchero in, all Comancheros in. So the whole club was charging round trying to get to these idiots. Some climbed the bar and dived onto these six or seven blokes. We didn’t even hear the pop. Someone just turned round and said, ‘That bloke’s got a gun.’ And there was this bloke standing there with a gun. One of our blokes grabbed it off him, and we finished kicking the shit out of them. When we were done we got out the front, and I made sure there was no one left inside. Got everyone on their bikes and we left.
We made it as far as Great North Road, heading back towards Five Dock, when I heard someone yelling, ‘Pull over! Pull over!’ I pulled the pack over and Roger hopped off his bike. He put his hand inside his deck and said, ‘I’m bleeding.’ Donna, who was a nurse, had a look at it, then me and Sheepskin had a squiz. There was a small hole in his chest on the right-hand side. He’d been shot.
We went back to our place and got Roger on the bed. Sheepskin decided that he was going to play surgeon. He got out some of Donna’s nursing gear and was setting up, with Roger yelling out, ‘I wanna doctor!’ We decided to give the woman a go instead, but when she’d had a proper look she said, ‘No, it’s too far in. It’ll only cause more damage.’ So we took Roger up to Western Suburbs Hospital and they took him in to be operated on.
The next morning when I got up there to visit him, Roger said, ‘Have a look at this,’ and lifted up his gown to show me this dirty great wound, a massive curve of stitches that went all the way from his hip, around his back, and up to his chest. It looked like he’d been bitten by a white pointer, and all from one little .22 slug.
AS MUCH as we enjoyed our growing size and reputation, the downside of a big club was that we were starting to lose some of the tightness. Once a club gets big, there are some blokes you hardly even know, and the club fractures into different alliances. This was what started to happen to us, aided in no small part by Jock, who had a habit of encouraging division among members. We still operated as a whole, because we all respected the colours that joined us, but you could see the different groups that were forming. Jock had Snowy and Foghorn and a few other allies, while I was tight with my brothers, the McElwaines, and blokes like Davo, Roach and Snoddy.
My brothers and I all wore a Campbell ring, a silver shield with a boar’s head in the middle, with Campbell written across the top and the wearer’s name engraved along the bottom. In 1981, we decided to start a tradition of giving rings to some of our ‘brothers’ outside the family, to make them honorary Campbells. We had a vote on it and decided the first person to receive a Campbell ring would be Roach.
It was a bit of a funny choice, I su
ppose, because he wasn’t the best fighter going round (even though he thought he was). But he was real staunch. He would never leave you. And to me, that’s the toughest sort of bloke.
Snoddy was next up for a Campbell ring. Snoddy had become like family, especially to me and Shadow. He was always round our place. He didn’t have his own family. There were stories around about him being an orphan and worse, but I’d seen him close down when other people asked him about it, so I just never asked. I figured if Snoddy wanted to tell me his life story he would.
I wanted to give a Campbell ring to another of our members, Animal, who was tough and staunch and a good bloke, but Jock had gotten into Chop’s ear, trying to create divisions the way he did. So Chop vetoed that ring.
Some time later we gave rings to Dukes, Gloves and Knuckles McElwaine. I would have liked to have given Sheepskin one too, but even though we were very good friends, he remained in Jock’s camp, so I just couldn’t do it. As for Jock, it always pissed him off that he never got a Campbell ring.
One of the youngest blokes in the club, Junior, was another fella who had my respect. He was one of the best members you could have. As a nominee he was always the first up, collecting the firewood on a run or standing his bike watch, and it was the same when he became a member. He would do anything for you. He was a good mechanic and if someone’s bike broke down Junior would work on it. He was also one of the best cartoonists and painters you’ve seen, and was always doing caricatures of the other fellas.
He was a big strong bloke but one thing about Junior was that he could not fight. He was just like Roach, staunch as, but dead set couldn’t throw a punch to save himself. So he asked me to teach him.
He started coming to the gym with me to train. I put the gloves on him and tried to teach him to box. He couldn’t box. I tried to teach him kickboxing. He couldn’t kick. I tried to teach him Muay Thai, judo. He was hopeless. But I’d been in fights where there’d been six, seven, sometimes nine blokes, and the only person with me was Junior. At the end of the fight, I’d have decked most of the blokes, some would have run off, but Junior would still be standing there with his black eyes and a split lip. He was little more than a punching bag but he would never leave me. And I value that more than any flashy fighter.
We certainly had plenty of good men but then there were the others.
***
KRAUT FIRST rocked up to the club in his Holden Commodore with customised numberplates that read SS. The plates went with the Nazi swastika armbands and replica ring he wore, and the SS dagger he carried. He was all in black, his pants tucked into his heavy black boots like the Gestapo, with a matching cap. As I watched him walking towards the clubhouse, old war movies were flashing through my brain. I thought, Oh, you gotta be kidding.
Sheepskin introduced him around and when Kraut put out his hand to me, I just looked at him and walked off. Sheepskin wasn’t surprised because I don’t make friends real easy. I used to meet heaps of people and they’d get insulted. I wasn’t really trying to insult them but I can tell if I’m going to like someone just from watching them walk towards me. As soon as I saw Kraut, I thought, I’m gunna hate this bloke.
At first it was the posing, but then I was listening to him talk and when something came up about bikes he said he didn’t own a bike; he’d never even ridden one. I thought, Well what are you doing here then? Sheepskin saw me staring and came over: ‘You’ll get used to him.’
‘I don’t wanna get used to him.’
Apparently Kraut had been an explosives expert in the army, so Jock was straight up and arm around him. It was a done deal: Kraut bought himself a Triumph and before he could even ride it he became a nominee.
With around forty members by this stage, Jock was in his element. He’d even started referring to the club as his ‘army’. Then one night I received a phone call from him and he hit me with his latest idea. He wanted to form a group within the club called the Centurions, and he wanted me to head it up. The Centurions, he said, were to be his own personal bodyguards.
‘Who else is gunna be in the Centurions?’ I asked.
‘Just you and your brothers.’
He said that he’d picked us as the six best fighters in the club – me, Bull, Wack, Snake, Chop and Shadow – and that we would only be answerable to him.
It only took me a minute to decide. I didn’t like the idea. It would only cause trouble. I’d already seen the way Jock encouraged arguments between members – like he’d tried to do with me and Tonka at Molong – and I could see what would happen if we formed an elite group within the Comancheros. Jock would be geeing the rest of the blokes up about us, then he’d be telling us what the other members were up to. So I knocked him back.
But Jock wasn’t going to be put off the idea of a personal bodyguard. After I turned him down, Jock approached Sheepskin with the same idea. Only this time it wasn’t to be called the Centurions, it was to be called the Strike Force. And unlike me, Sheepskin said yes.
So Sheepskin was to be sergeant of the Strike Force, while I remained sergeant of the Comancheros. Jock spelt out that this meant Sheepskin could only tell the Strike Force what to do, and not anyone else in the club, while I could tell the rest of the club what to do, but not the Strike Force. It all seemed a bit stupid to me. If I thought the Strike Force was getting out of line or prancing round the club like their shit didn’t stink, I was going to tell them to pull their heads in. Fortunately, Sheepskin and I remained good mates so I knew I wouldn’t get any grief from him.
Jock announced the other members of the Strike Force, who naturally included Foghorn and Snowy, as well as his new best friend Kraut, even though he was still a nom. Then there was Sparra, Tiger, Tonka and JJ. JJ was another bloke I didn’t have any time for. As a nominee he was the nicest bloke you could want to meet, but once he got his colours he was a different man. Shadow and I rocked up to his place one day about two weeks after he’d been patched. We could hear all this whimpering coming from out the back. The front door was open so we walked through. JJ had a couple of bull terrier cross cattle dogs, and his bitch had just had pups. When we got out to the backyard, we found this row of tiny pups, only three or four weeks old, nailed through their throats to the fence. JJ was just hammering in the last pup. Shadow lost it. He grabbed JJ and kicked the living shit out of him. ‘You can bring me up at the next meeting, but you’re the lowest cunt I’ve ever seen.’ I don’t think me and Shadow ever spoke a word to JJ again.
And that was the sort of bloke Jock wanted in his Strike Force.
As predicted, the formation of the Strike Force didn’t go down well. In fact, it was the start of a whole lot of trouble.
CHAPTER 7
We were at a club meeting one night when Jock announced that he was going to start drilling us for future fights. He said there was an old army manoeuvre where you had one lot of troops at the front line, and a back line that would come in to relieve them. I knew where he’d got it from. It was from back in the days of the old one-shot rifles. You’d have one line of blokes at the front and once they’d fired, the group standing behind them would step forward to fire while the first group reloaded. Jock had reinterpreted this to apply to brawling. He figured we’d have one lot of blokes in the front line who’d take the brunt of the fight, and then a second lot of blokes that would come in to give the first line a breather. He started taking us through regular drills so we could perfect the manoeuvre. He’d stand out the front and raise his hand: ‘Forward!’ And the front line, full of his best fighters, would step forward. Then he’d point backwards and bark: ‘Back!’ And the front line would part to allow the second line to step through.
It was pathetic. Anyone could see it was just never going to work. It might work if you were fighting in a park or a paddock and you could line everyone up, and if the opposition was willing to do the same thing and line their lot up. But in a pub situation? I’d been in that many pub brawls, fighting with my old man since I was twelve, and once a f
ight started you didn’t know where anyone was. People were all over the place. Jock just didn’t understand.
As it turned out he never even tried to put it into action. He couldn’t. Pub brawls had a life of their own. All that the drills achieved was to reinforce my suspicions about Jock and his military obsession. One Saturday night he walked into the clubhouse and declared, ‘El Supremo has arrived. From now on I shall be referred to as the Supreme Commander.’ Blokes just looked at each other.
The rest of us, outside the Strike Force, only wanted to ride our bikes, have fun and look after each other. But Jock managed to turn everything into a war game. Like one run we took out to Lithgow. We’d set up a bush camp with a big bonfire, the bikes all parked in tight around the fire. It was a dark night and Jock decided we’d play one of his games with members versus nominees. He put me in charge of the noms. Jock’s game had the members going out in the bush to hide, while the nominees defended the bikes. If one member could sneak in and touch a bike, Jock’s group won the war. But if we caught the members out before anyone got to a bike, then we won.
So the members all went out into the bush. I kept a few noms round the bikes, and sent the rest out just as far as the scrub, so that any member trying to sneak in couldn’t see them. One nominee, Pommy, who was considered by everyone to be hopeless, climbed a tree just outside the light from the fire to act as a lookout.
It wasn’t long before I heard Pommy’s voice: ‘You’re dead, Jock.’
The nominee considered the worst bloke in the club had taken the first prisoner, and it was El Supremo.
After that we got member after member coming in and we’d tag them. The game dragged on for ages until we heard a strange car coming down the dirt track towards the bonfire. I watched it approach, and as it was coming I could see the boot bouncing a little. So I grabbed a few of the noms. ‘When this car pulls up, rip open the boot.’
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