Since the early days of settlement, criminals from similar cultural and ethnic groups have forged strong gangs.
The bushrangers were mostly spawned from under-privileged communities in rural areas. Among the struggling selectors, the gold fossickers, the descendants of convicts and the Irish poor, resentments often simmered about the privileged land and voting rights that pastoralists enjoyed. The underprivileged section of the community longed for a Robin Hood prototype; a champion of the poor and needy who would humble their rich and powerful rulers.
Romantics and malcontents in the Australian bush environment, rejected the shackles of the class ridden English society that pastoralists and urban aristocracy staunchly supported. Consequently, bushranger gangs headed by persuasive leaders such as Ned Kelly, Frank Gardiner and Ben Hall, provided hope that the dominance of the established order would one day be overturned by their new heroes.
Robert Trimbole
Joe Byrne, Ned Kelly’s trusted second in command, enjoyed his growing status in rural communities. The reckless young dare devil, opium smoker and womaniser, was also a poet and song composer. Byrne’s ballads and verse sometimes presented the Kelly group as visionary freedom fighters, and his lyrics were enjoyed by many of the gang’s biased supporters.
Decades later, after World War II ended, many Italians immigrated to Australia. Several became industrious market gardeners or sugar and tobacco growers, and close knit family groups farmed the land around areas such as the tropical north of Queensland, the Goulburn and Ovens Valley regions of Victoria, and the NSW Riverina area. Their commendable work ethic was often rewarded with a comfortable lifestyle. The criminal elements in Italian rural communities did not work as hard, but prospered more. This group formed gangs that cultivated, refined and distributed marijuana, a much more lucrative cash crop.
Robert ‘Aussie Bob’ Trimbole was a beneficiary of a drug syndicate that cultivated this illegal plant, around the Riverina town of Griffith. Before the 1970s, he was bankrupt, and his debts exceeded $10,000. After he became the Honoured Society’s bookkeeper and money launderer, Trimbole suddenly became so wealthy that he could purchase a restaurant, butcher shop, licensed grocery, clothing shop and several racehorses. It can also be claimed that Aussie Bob ‘owned’ several crooked police officers, horse trainers and jockeys, who served his survival and gambling interests well.
Robert ‘Aussie Bob’ Trimbole was a beneficiary of a drug syndicate that cultivated this illegal plant...
Giuseppe Arena
People who endangered the Griffith drug group’s opulent business interests, such as local business man Donald Mackay, were ruthlessly disposed of. Former gang associates suspected of betrayal also ended up as bullet riddled corpses. There were fatal casualties when a power struggle emerged within the Honoured Society. One such casualty was 50-year-old Giuseppe ‘Joe’ Arena, who was gunned down outside his Bayswater home after marijuana crime boss Liberio Benvenuto died.
Crime has been associated with many immigrant groups since Europeans first established the colony of New South Wales in 1788. In broad terms, Italian groups have mostly concentrated on cultivating marijuana, operating protection rackets and laundering money. Chinese, Lebanese and Vietnamese gangs have concentrated more on trafficking heroin, while Korean gangs have been especially prominent in prostitution rackets and money laundering. The criminal elements in these groups only represent a minority. Indeed, most members of immigrant communities became valued and successful law abiding citizens.
...Aussie Bob ‘owned’ several crooked police officers, horse trainers and jockeys...
Greed is often the only common factor that unites ethnic gangs, and different groups cooperate only if it is mutually convenient. A pyramid type structure of command headed by a ‘Mr Big’ of crime is quite rare.
Stanley Wong was the ‘Mr Big’ of Sydney crime before he was murdered by two illegal Asian immigrants in October 1985. In his heyday, Wong was dubbed ‘the mayor of Chinatown’ in Sydney, and at that time it was estimated that Chinese syndicates controlled 85% of the heroin trade in Australia.
One of the toughest and most ruthless leaders in Vietnamese gangs was Tri Minh Tran, who first attracted the attention of police when he was apprehended for carrying a firearm. Three years later he was involved in the murder of Nghia Ninh Hong. Tran died as he lived. He was murdered in his flat by members of the notorious 5T gang in August 1995.
...it was estimated that Chinese syndicates controlled 85% of the heroin trade in Australia.
Gangs seek to intimidate other members of their ethnic group, and are often protected by a ‘code of silence’ that operates very effectively in their communities. Chinese bank officials and customers gave little worthwhile evidence in the New Year holiday period of 1987–88, when items to the value of twenty million dollars were stolen from the Haymarket branch of the National Australia Bank (NAB) in Sydney.
In 1992, over 200 mostly Vietnamese people saw Duang Van Chu gunned down in Sydney...
Fear of reprisal is a powerful weapon for all criminal gangs. In 1992, over 200 mostly Vietnamese people saw Duang Van Chu gunned down in Sydney, but no witnesses provided evidence to police. Seventeen years earlier, gastro-enteritis must have been a huge problem in the Vietnamese community, as 279 patrons in a Vietnamese club all claimed that they were in one of the four toilets on the premises when several people were wounded in a gang ambush!