Enforcer (19 page)

‘Well, look,’ I said, ‘let’s have a bit of a breather and then in two nights’ time we’ll have a meeting and decide.’

E
VERYONE TURNED
up two nights later. It was a bit of a shambles at first. You had Snoddy and Shadow and others wanting to join the Angels, which I would’ve happily done because of Guitar and another good mate of mine there, Matchy. But there were other blokes in the club who hated the Angels. Some wanted to join the Rebels, but Kid Rotten said, ‘If we join the Rebels I’m leaving.’ Others wanted to go to the Nomads, and some to the Gypsy Jokers. I would’ve gone to any of them so long as the whole club had agreed; above all, I wanted to keep everybody together. But there was no club that somebody didn’t hate. I could see it was going to be a long night.

We talked about just going independent but we knew that if we did that, all the blokes would drift apart because you need that set of colours to fight for and respect to hold you together.

Two hours in, we’d reached a stalemate. Me and Shadow went to the bar to get a drink and Shadow turned to me. ‘What about we start a whole new club? We could reactivate the Gladiators.’

‘Nah, I’m not gunna go through that again,’ I said. And besides, there was another club up in Newcastle called the Gladiators and I didn’t want to create any hassles with them.

‘Well, what about the blokes Snoddy met in America? The Bandidos?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘now that might be a goer.’

We went back into the club room and called Snoddy over. Shadow said to him, ‘Whaddya think about putting to the blokes that we start a chapter of the Bandidos out here?’

Snoddy was rapt. ‘Fuck!’ he said. ‘I shoulda thought of that. They’re like the old outlaw bike clubs.’

Straightaway Snoddy was up in front of everyone. ‘Shadow’s come up with a great idea. What about we all become Bandidos?’ For the next half an hour everyone was talking about it, after which Snoddy called for a show of hands. ‘All those in favour of becoming Bandidos.’

Every single hand went up.

Snoddy got straight on the phone to Ha Ha Chuck, president of the Albuquerque chapter in New Mexico. He explained what was happening and Ha Ha said he’d have to check with Ronnie Hodge, the national president of the Bandido Nation.

Five or six nights later, on a Sunday night, Shadow, Snoddy and me were waiting at the clubhouse for the call from Ha Ha. The phone rang and Snoddy picked it up. They spoke for a while then he held the phone away from his face. ‘We’ve got the go.’

‘You beauty,’ Shadow said.

Snoddy turned to me. ‘Well, whaddya think, big fella? Do we do it?’

‘Well, we wanna keep all the blokes together. It’s what we agreed on. Let’s do it.’

‘You got yourselves a chapter in Australia,’ he told Ha Ha.

They spoke for a while about how it would work. Then Shadow and I spoke to our new brother and gave him our respects.

After we hung up, Shadow, Snoddy and I went to the bar. I got a lemon squash, Shadow poured an OJ and Snoddy fixed himself a spirit. We toasted our new club.

Next day we called up Junior and got him to come round. Snoddy had a photo he’d taken of a painting on Ha Ha Chuck’s wall. He said it was an exact replica of the colours: a Mexican bandit wearing a sombrero, with a sword in one hand and a raised revolver in the other.

He handed the photo to Junior, our resident artist. ‘Can you draw up a set of colours from that photo?’

Junior scanned the picture. ‘Yeah.’

‘Then I want ya to take it to an embroidery place and get some colours made up.’

I think it took him about five days to get the first set of colours back from the embroiderer’s. They only made the one set and Junior brought it round to me: ‘Is this what ya want?’

‘Yeah, that’s it. That looks fantastic, Junior.’ Junior went to grab the colours to take them back to the embroidery place.

‘No, leave ’em there,’ I said.

‘But I need ’em to get the rest made up.’

‘No you don’t.’ I knew from having colours made up in the past that they didn’t need that set; they had them on a template. ‘I’m keeping this set.’

I got the old lady to sew the colours onto a new vest that I’d had made up, and the first thing I did was ring Shadow to see if Snoddy was at his place.

‘He’s always here,’ Shadow said.

‘I’ll be over in about half an hour. I’ve got a surprise.’

I rocked up to Shadow’s place. Snoddy and Wack and a few others were there. When I turned round and showed them the colours they all wanted to know, ‘Where’s ours?’

‘You’ll have to wait a week or so.’

‘Well then how did you get a set?’

‘It’s not what you know, but who you know.’

‘Bloody Junior,’ said Shadow.

I just smiled. Snoddy wasn’t real happy because he wanted to be the first bloke in Australia to have the Bandit colours. Everyone in the club would’ve wanted to be first.

I took my vest off and put it on Shadow’s table. They all picked it up and had a good look. It’s normally not on to let anyone outside the club touch your colours. Like, you can’t go into a pub and hang them over a chair. But we were all brothers in this together and they’d be Bandits soon enough, so I let them. After they’d all had a good look I put my vest back on. ‘I’m off to the Cross to show off the colours.’

When I hit the Cross there were other clubs there as I’d guessed there would be. I sat there for about three hours, letting everyone have a good look at the first set of Bandido colours in Australia.

No one could ever know the feeling I had riding home that night knowing that a new club had just begun and I was wearing the first set of colours.

It was 22 November 1983. Because of the events of the following year, a lot of Bandidos to this day think the Australian chapter was formed in August 1983. But I’ll never forget the real date. It was one of the highlights of my life.

F
OR TEN
days I was the only Bandido in Australia. I was president, vice-president, sergeant-at-arms and member.

I went over to a place called S&S Cycles at Bexley, which was owned by the Angels. I knew that Guitar worked there most days. I walked in and he could see I had a new vest on.

‘All right, turn round,’ he said. So I spun round. ‘Oh no. Not the fuckin’ Bandidos.’

‘Yep.’

‘Fuck. You’re gunna make a lotta clubs unhappy.’

‘Well that’s their problem. Does it make a difference to us?’

‘Nuh, I got no problem with the Bandidos. As far as I know, me brothers in America haven’t got any problems with ’em either.’

We sat down and had a yak. I knew that once Guitar had seen them everyone in Sydney would know that the city chapter of the Comancheros were now Bandidos. We’d wiped our hands clean.

I
was offered the job of president of the Bandidos, but Snoddy told me he wanted the position. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s keep it the way it’s been. You as president, Shadow as vice-president and I’ll stay sergeant.’

The rest of the colours arrived back from the embroidery place and on the night of 2 December 1983 were handed out to the original members of the Bandidos Australia. First Snoddy and Shadow, then Roach, Bull, Tiny, Lout, Snake, Bongo Snake, Big Tony, Lard, Bushy, Bear, Wack, Chop, Porky, Davo, Kid Rotten, Gloves, Dukes, Knuckles, Charlie, Sparksy, Junior, Bernie, Lance, Zorba, Louie and Opey. There were twenty-nine of us, plus the five original prospects, Rua, Hooky, Sticks, Mouth and Bob. After everybody got their colours, we all went to the bar and toasted the club with an oath I’d made up: ‘Cut one Bandido and we all bleed.’

There were thirteen club rules, but basically they could be summarised by saying you respected your brother and you respected your colours. So you didn’t rip off your brother selling him a crap bike and you didn’t try to crack on to your brother’s old lady.

We swore to each other that the club would be run like a motorcycle club. We weren’t going to have people rocking up in cars and then putting their colours on in the clubhouse like the Comos used to do. And we weren’t going to be like a paramilitary organisation. We were there to ride bikes and have fun.

I used to be on my bike wearing my colours six or seven days a week. If I didn’t have Donna with me, I’d be over seeing someone like Guitar or Matchy from the Angels, or Sy from Lone Wolf, or Metho Tom from the Nomads. It was like being in the Gladiators again. I could talk to blokes from other clubs without recrimination.

To celebrate this new freedom, we threw a big party. I invited Guitar and others from the Angels, and told Sy from Lone Wolf to bring along eight or nine of his blokes that he knew didn’t drink too much or get wasted. I said the same to the Black Ulans. That way I knew there was a lot less chance of someone saying something wrong and starting a blue. The party went great.

I also paid another visit to the local coppers and asked to see the station sergeant. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘you know we were Comancheros down at Louisa Road. Well we’re Bandidos now. It’s gunna be the same deal as when I first spoke to ya. You won’t get any trouble in Balmain from us.’ We shook hands again, and as I turned to leave I added, ‘And youse are all still welcome to come down to our club on a Saturday night for a feed.’

At our first official meeting as Bandidos it was agreed that our inaugural run would be the Christmas run, and it would be to Port Macquarie. We’d leave the day after Boxing Day and stay through to the new year.

At the meeting we also decided we were going to kick off the club in a good way by doing something for the street kids in Balmain. There were a lot of them about then. Every member donated money and the old ladies went out and bought T-shirts, tracksuits, jogging shoes and toys. We invited all these young kids, most of them around eleven or twelve, who’d just been left to their own devices by their parents. Davo’s dad – who we called Daddy Cool and was really close to the club – turned up as Santa on Davo’s trike. They got off and all the kids mobbed them as they handed out the presents. The kids were ripping them open, just rapt. Then we took them all down to the front yard – which was really the backyard but we called it the front yard because it was down on the water. We’d set up tables and run an extension cord down for the fridges. The old ladies fed all the kids. There must have been a hundred of them all digging in and having a great old time. Then we cleaned up and all the members went back to have dinner with their own families.

We knew this club was on the right track.

T
HE DAY
we left on the run to Port Macquarie was a rotten stinking day, pouring with rain and windy, but no one cared. We were out on the highway flying our new colours. We were all proud and riding high.

It took us a day longer than expected to get there, but it didn’t matter. Once we reached Port Macquarie we set up in the caravan park and decided to make the local RSL club our base; they had bands on most nights through the holidays, and they had a couple of restaurants, including a nice-looking buffet. Me and Kid Rotten went in and I grabbed the head bouncer, who took me to see the president of the club. I told him what we were there for and that if he let us in we’d treat the place like it was our own, there’d be no trouble. If there was, I explained, I’d make sure that the member or prospect responsible was soon on his way back to the caravan park. And I made the same deal with the head bouncer that I had with Dave out at the Vicar of Wakefield – that if they got into any shit we’d back them up. It worked really well. His bouncers got into trouble one night and we stepped in and helped. Saved a few of them from going to hospital. The president of the RSL club later wrote us a letter thanking us for the way we’d behaved.

I also arranged to get a conference room with a big table for our meetings. So on New Year’s Eve all the prospects were told to wait outside while the members gathered in the conference room to vote on whether we should patch up the new guys. Rua was the first prospect called in to be given his colours. As was the custom, he ended up being drowned in a sea of beer (and orange juice from me). Then we voted Hooky in and he came in and suffered the same fate. Then it was time to vote on Mouth.

I didn’t trust Mouth and nor did Lance. There was just something about him. He seemed sneaky to me. But for some reason Snoddy wanted him in. I think it came back to Snoddy having borrowed a fair amount of money off him. A prospect had to get one hundred per cent of the vote to get into the club so Snoddy had come to me earlier and asked me to vote for Mouth. I’d told Snoddy that I was never going to vote for the bloke. I thought it was even a waste of time keeping him in as a prospect.

Lance agreed, so Snoddy changed tack. ‘Look, Caesar, we’ve been together so long, will ya just do me a favour?’

‘What?’

‘I know youse aren’t gunna vote for him, but will youse abstain? That way you’re not voting for him but youse aren’t voting against him.’

Lance and I had a yak about it and Snoddy came back and pleaded with us some more. As a gesture of respect and love for Snoddy, we agreed to go along with it.

That’s how Mouth got into the club. It was a decision I would live to regret.

The other downer for the week was when I found Knuckles wandering the caravan park close to tears because he couldn’t find his caravan; his memory had never recovered after the accident. It was tragic to see such a fine athlete in that condition. Someone came up with the idea to write his caravan number on his arm and that seemed to help.