Enforcer (20 page)

N
OT LONG
after our return from the run, journalist Richard Sleeman wrote a story in the
Sun
newspaper with the headline
THE PRINCE IN CAESAR’S PALACE
. It was about how we’d all helped Knuckles get back on his feet.

In it he wrote:

when Phil McElwaine was hovering between life and death after a motorbike accident that fractured his skull, the sergeant-at-arms of his bike club thought hospital officials should be reminded of their patient’s importance.

    ‘I walked up to the doctors and told them they weren’t dealing with just anybody,’ Caesar, of the Bandidos bike gang, said yesterday. ‘Phillip was the gold medal-winning boxing champion. I told them to make sure they looked after him.’

    When Caesar wants something done, it generally stays done . . .

    Caesar suggested I follow up the Phil McElwaine story and to make sure I wrote it well. It’s difficult while your fingers tremble on the typewriter, but I’ll try . . .

T
HE CLUB
was on a high and everything was going great. The only one who didn’t seem to be revelling in the good vibes was Snoddy. Soon after we got back from the Christmas run, he came over to my place looking down. He told me he didn’t want to be president any more.

‘Why?’

‘Because I can’t party.’

As president, he felt that he had to stay sober because he was responsible for everyone. But that just wasn’t him. He loved hitting the pot and drinking like a fish. So he wasn’t having a good time. Snoddy was a really good member and he wasn’t a bad president. He had the respect of the blokes and he ran the meetings well. It was just that he didn’t like getting offside with blokes he considered to be brothers; he didn’t like telling them off if they needed telling off.

‘Ceese, I want you to be president,’ he said.

But I told him I didn’t want the job. ‘No, go back and give it another couple of weeks,’ I said. ‘If you’re still unhappy we’ll talk some more.’ We agreed on that and a couple of weeks later things obviously hadn’t got any better. He went and saw Shadow and said the same thing to him.

So at an officers’ meeting one night at my place, we sat down and I said to Snoddy, ‘Look, you go on being president. But if somebody needs pulling into line, I’ll do it.’ He usually gave that job to me anyway. ‘You can still go out, party on, do whatever you want, be president, run the meetings, but me and Shadow will look after the club.’

‘I can’t expect youse two to be there twenty-four hours a day,’ he said.

But Shadow and I had already worked out a plan where I’d rock up on club nights at five-thirty and stay till about one in the morning. Shadow would rock up to the club about ten pm and stay till nine or ten am on the Sunday. Shadow didn’t drink either. He liked the bong but when he was doing his job as vice-president he was sober as a judge. With our plan, there was always going to be a clear-headed officer there to look after the members. To me, that was the job of an officer. And I would’ve taken a bullet for any member. That’s how much I thought of them.

So that’s how it went from then. We all adapted easily into our new roles. I got to know Snoddy pretty well during this time, but I still never asked him about his background. There were stories about his mother’s death and things that happened to him as a kid. People used to hear these stories and ask him about it. He hated that. Suddenly they weren’t friends any more. I could see it upset him so I never asked.

I was the same as him in that regard. I didn’t like people pushing me for things. Some people had found out about the underground fighting and all I’d get was: ‘Who did you fight? How much did you make?’ I just kept my mouth shut.

The new order was great for Snoddy. It was like the old Snoddy came back. He was much more settled and full of life and that was good for the club. He loved playing his guitar and going to see bands. His favourite was a blues band called Ivory Coast.

He had good ideas for the club too. One of them was that he, Shadow and I should buy the Louisa Road house. It had been put on the market for about $350,000. This was an absolute waterfront with a view of the Harbour Bridge. We figured it would be worth a fortune in a few years (and it was).

It was a top old three-storey house built in the 1890s. The second storey was all glass at the front and we had the tables and chairs in there for the old ladies to sit in. There was a big pool room. We’d smashed out a wall and made a huge disco room with a bar. The bedrooms were upstairs, and downstairs you could go out onto the front lawn on the harbour where there was a grotto – a little cave in the rock face. We’d run some power leads onto the lawn and put the bands in there.

We’d have fridges and tables full of food. We had spits and hangis. There was a great view of the city lights at night. Harbour cruises used to come up and announce to the passengers that they were passing the notorious Bandidos clubhouse.

And there were always girls. Rua and Big Tony found that if they went over to Circular Quay around lunchtime they could pick up heaps of sheilas. It was only a couple of minutes on the ferry back to the Long Nose Point wharf right below our clubhouse. I’d rock up through the week and see these sheilas sunbaking on the lawn with Tony and Rua running round like kids in a lolly shop. Then the other blokes found out about the supply of girls and rocked up too. Everyone had a key to the clubhouse, so anyone could go in and take a sheila there. But they’d also go just to hang out. You could always get a feed. You could take a meal out of the freezer and cook it up on the big stove which had these great iron skillets. You’d put your money in a tin on top of the fridge, grab a drink from the bar, and go out and sit at one of the tables and watch the boats and the Harbour Bridge.

I’d walk in and grab an orange juice from the big dispensers like you’d see at a pub. And whenever I entered somebody would put ‘Bad to the Bone’ by George Thorogood on the jukebox, or maybe ‘Wild Thing’ by the Troggs. They were my songs and I’d always listen to them if I was pumping myself up for a fight.

As far as alcohol went, we had a deal going with the local bottle-o so we were selling beer for five cents more than what he paid for it. It was the cheapest beer in Sydney for members and their old ladies, although the outsiders who came over on a Friday night had to pay more.

On Saturday nights, club nights, all the old ladies were there, but on Friday night – boys’ night – all the strays would rock up. There’d be women everywhere. One night there was a sheila up there who wanted to take on a fair number of the blokes while she had her monthlies. She took them up to the room that Big Tony rented from the club. When Tony got back to his room there was blood on the walls and all over his sheets.

I wasn’t into any of that. Donna was all the woman I needed. In February 1984, she gave birth to our second child, Lacey. Daniel was three and a half by then and I’d spend most of my time at home with Donna and the kids. I wasn’t the type to change nappies or wash them – that’s women’s work – but sometimes I’d feed them a bottle. I saw my role more as teaching them the other stuff about life, like what my dad taught me. How to handle yourself.

My routine involved going to the club every day to make sure everything was all right. I’d usually rock up to find Rua and Chop mulling up at the bar with the bong sitting there. I preferred them bonging on rather than hitting the spirits. I used to hate it if they’d been drinking spirits before we went to a pub because I knew there were going to be blues. Spirits made all the blokes nasty. Some more than others. And I had about eight in the club who got real nasty on spirits – my brother Snake being one of them. Lard and Sparksy too.

One night we were over at the Bayview Tavern in Gladesville watching a band, and Sparksy wanted a particular song played. The bloke said, ‘I’ve already played it. I’ll play it again in an hour or two.’ Next thing I knew, Sparksy was up on stage and had the microphone cord wrapped around the lead singer’s neck, strangling the bloke.

Not again.

So I got up on stage, dragged Sparksy off. ‘That’s it, you’re back to the clubhouse.’

I grabbed two prospects and told them: ‘Now you take him back to the clubhouse and you stay there with him.’

‘But he’s a member. We can’t tell him what to do.’

‘I’m your sergeant. You do what I tell ya.’

So they escorted him back to the clubhouse. When I eventually got back there, Sparksy came up all apologetic about carrying on at the pub. I said, ‘Sparksy, mate, you’re just gunna have to calm down. Drink beer or something.’

So whenever I saw those guys on the bong before we went out, I thought, Beauty. Haven’t gotta watch them tonight.

But there was always something to watch out for. One night around this time we got into a fight with a huge group of Islanders at the Croydon Hotel. We kicked the shit out of them but afterwards I couldn’t find Chop and Wack. I went outside and there they were, holding this Islander by the ankles over a brick wall. Below them, down in the cutting on the other side of the wall, was the railway station.

‘What are youse doin’?’ I wanted to know.

‘Waitin’ for a train,’ they said.

‘Will ya pull ’im up?’ I said, like I was rousing on two naughty kids.

They pulled him up and thumped him.

I got all the blokes together and had a word with the manager. I said, ‘Work out what your damages are and we’ll pay half.’ I got the blokes outside and as usual mine was the last bike to start. I was just about to give the signal to leave when half a house brick hurtled past Donna’s head.

That’s something you don’t do: go near my woman. So I was off the bike and back into the pub punching on again. Everyone was off their bikes right behind me. All the blokes that were lying on the floor were getting stomped. Then we heard sirens so we all went back to the bikes.

Coincidentally, Big Tony was sitting in a holding cell at the Campsie police station at this point. He’d been off elsewhere and got picked up on a warrant. He heard the police radio going off. ‘All police to the Croydon Hotel! All police to the Croydon Hotel! Bandidos rioting!’

He said he was in there cracking up at all the coppers running around looking for batons and shields. He said to one bloke as he was running out the door, ‘You’re gunna get ya head kicked in tonight.’

We’d all got back to our bikes and were riding down Croydon Road when suddenly there was just cop car after cop car streaming down. There were thirty-four of us there, I think, and I was out in front. Snoddy pulled up alongside me: ‘Whadda we doin’?’

‘We’re goin’ back to the clubhouse,’ I said over the rumble. ‘If it’s gunna be a punch-on, it’s gunna be back where we can put the ol’ ladies and that.’ So we gunned it. Thirty-four bikes that weren’t going to stop for anything. Through red lights. Cars were parting. The sheilas were terrified. It was the most mighty roar of engines. We thundered back the ten kilometres to the clubhouse, put all the bikes away, sent the old ladies inside and lined ourselves up in the cul-de-sac, me standing out the front, waiting for the coppers.

They pulled up and a big D got out of the car second from the front. He looked a real smartarse and I thought, Ah, there’s gunna be trouble tonight. But then a crown sergeant got out who I recognised from Five Dock.

I turned to the blokes. ‘Just cool it and let me talk to this bloke.’

I walked up and told him how we were at the Croydon, that there were three young blokes there about eighteen years old, and they had a girl with them who was about seventeen. All these Islanders had tried raping the young sheila and we’d stepped in to save her. That’s when the brawl broke out, I said.

The sergeant looked at me. ‘And that’s what happened, is it?’

‘Oh shit yeah. She’d have been raped, prob’ly killed, if it wasn’t for us.’

‘So, all this trouble was because you were defending a young girl?’

‘That’s right. The boyfriend prob’ly would’ve been stomped to death too. Actually, you should be giving us an award.’

The detective butted in. ‘I reckon that’s a lot of bullshit.’

No shit, Sherlock.

Next minute, there was another siren and lights, and this paddy wagon was coming down the footpath towards us. The local sergeant and one of his blokes got out. ‘I’ve heard over the radio what’s going on. I’m just here to say that these blokes have never caused any problems in the Balmain area. I’d like to speak up for them.’

‘You’d actually stand up for these guys?’ the detective asked.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘All right.’

The big sergeant from Five Dock turned to me. ‘Can I have a word with you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Caesar, that was the biggest pack of bullshit I’ve ever heard in me life.’

‘Well, now, did you want to get into a fight tonight?’

‘No.’

‘Well neither did I.’

I’d given them an out and they’d taken it.

Getting all the cop cars out of Louisa Road was another story. It was such a narrow street, lined with all the BMWs and Mercedes of the doctors and lawyers and famous writers who lived there, they practically had a demolition derby trying to leave.