The Bandidos started in Australia on 22 November 1983. That’s the day the first set of colours arrived back from the embroidery place as a test sample. I gave the embroiderers the go-ahead to make up the rest of the batch while I got Donna to sew that first set onto my cut. As soon as she’d finished, I put the colours on and went out for a ride. Anyone who’s read Enforcer will know the first stops were Snoddy’s and Shadow’s places. It was a great feeling to be the first bloke in Australia to fly the colours of the best club in the world. For ten days, I rode around Sydney making sure everybody who was anybody knew the Bandidos had arrived. It was among the proudest times of my life. I also had the first Bandido tattoo, the first Bandido T-shirt, the first belt, the first belt buckle, the first Bandido boot buckles. People might think I’m gloating, but I’m not. To me it was a really special honour. Even though it’s only a small bit of their history, I’m still super-proud to be part of the Bandido nation. And always will be. Every man who puts on that cut for the first time should be the proudest man in the world.
A couple of blokes have come out claiming they were wearing Bandit colours in August 1983, but they’re getting confused by the fact the Comos split into two chapters in August. I’ve got dated photos showing us all on the October run to Molong where we’re all still wearing Comanchero colours.
There were 29 members, five prospects and another two hang-rounds, Maverick and Sleazy, who became prospects in May 1984. (They’ve both gone around saying they were original members, but they weren’t.)
So now we were Bandidos. Our colours were so new that the red and gold glowed off our leather vests. Me and my brothers were still the front line, the battering ram, the wrecking crew for the club, so nothing changed there.
Getting back to the good times . . .
In December and January, 1983–84, we went for a run up to Port Macquarie and we took along the McElwaines’ dad, Big Bad Bob. He was only a little bloke but he had a big heart and was a top feller. We had a roarer of a time and when we got back he put on a big do for us at the pub he owned, the Terminus at Pyrmont, to show us his appreciation.
He employed topless barmaids at his hotel and he got them all doing a strip show for the members. There were a few hookers provided, too. It was a really good night. I had the prospects out watching the bikes. With no old ladies to look after, I didn’t have to wander around the pub checking up on everybody, so I just sat with my back into the corner as usual and watched me brothers party and I had a good look at some really nice tits. I must admit it, I’m a tit man. It’s one of the reasons I love my woman so much, she’s got it all.
Anyway, I did go for a look around at one point. Out the back of Big Bobby’s pub, he had a large aviary with Major Mitchell cockatoos and other interesting birds in it. I found Wack out there with one of the barmaids giving her a knee-trembler. The whole aviary was shaking. I went back to my corner and continued watching the brothers enjoy themselves. Sometimes the brothers used to wonder how I could be having a good time by just watching everyone else have a good time. I just did.
There’d often be one of the brothers trying to talk me into having a go at one of the strays or, like on this night, one of the topless barmaids doing a strip. With Donna, I never needed to do that. She was the only woman I ever wanted, the only woman I got excited over. I’m not just saying that because she’s working on this book with me – it’s a fact and she knows it. To this day, I still get a tingle in me balls when I see her getting changed.
She was the perfect outlaw’s old lady. When I said I was going out on club business, she never questioned me, never asked where I’d been when I got home, and sometimes I could be gone for days. If I had to get up and go out at 2 am and not be back till 6 am, she never queried it. If I was out most nights of the week . . . never a question. She looked after me.
And there was no better example than this night at the Terminus with all the topless barmaids. I was in there till about 3 am, when I left the club in the capable hands of Shadow. Snoddy had had a bit too much to drink. Shadow and I had the deal where he’d arrive a bit late and I’d leave a bit early and he’d take over as head of security.
The old lady put on the tomato, cheese and ham sandwich when she heard my bike pulling in. She got me a can of Coke while I put the bike in the garage. I came in through the back door. Brought in three of the dogs with me and they were all running around the house at 100 miles an hour.
‘Calm them dogs down, they’ll wake Daniel up,’ she said.
So I put the dogs out the back. Daniel and Lacey were both still sleeping, so I got into my toasted sandwich and I suppose being a tit man and seeing those tits all night and seeing my old woman walking around topless, we ended up on the couch before I’d finished half my sandwich and had a nooky. It was a great end to a good night.
*
IN MARCH 1984, there were about 30 of us at the Rock and Roll Hotel. We’d been there for a couple of hours when one of our prospects, Tramp, rushed in and said 60 or 70 blokes were coming down the street towards the pub. I went out the front and saw ’em all walking down together. I recognised a couple of them as wharfies. This was going to be good.
I had a word with the pub manager: ‘If you let these blokes in, it’s gunna be on. Your pub’s gunna get wrecked.’ He came out the front with me and, as the wharfies reached the first bike in our line of bikes, he told them the pub was off limits to them tonight.
‘But we drink here all the time,’ one of them said.
‘Well, we’re drinking here tonight,’ I said.
They made a few remarks about bikers and I looked over my shoulder and the whole club was coming out through the door. Well, this is it. It’s gunna be on here, I thought.
Bull walked up on one side of me and Snake on the other. Shadow was just next to him, with Wack, Chop, the McElwaines and Snoddy forming the rest of the front line.
Like I’ve said, I try to make peace in these situations. But there was one big bloke who had a bigger mouth. He was really giving the outlaw biker thing a run for its money, so I dropped him. Right hook under the ear.
It was on. Even though we were outnumbered more than two to one, the whole club just went forward as one and we drove them back and out onto the road. The McElwaines were getting into it. My brothers were dropping blokes all over the place. I saw Little Charlie whacking into a bloke with a pool cue. He brought him to his knees and gave it to him in the back of the head before moving on to another one. I have to give it to Little Charlie – he wasn’t the biggest or the strongest and he’d never learnt to fight, but he always backed you up. Same as Roach. Roach couldn’t fight, but he was always there beside you. Junior, too. They were the type of bloke that I always thought made up the core of a club.
I looked over and saw Kid Rotten doing a backwards swing kick, catching his bloke under the ear, dropping him cold. Then he did a sweep kick and took down another bloke. Kid surprised me. I knew he’d done martial arts and I’d seen him fight one-on-one. But when you’re badly outnumbered, everything is different. He came to the front line and got stuck right into it.
It wasn’t a bad blue that night. The wharfies stuck it out, too. They tried to look after their mates. I don’t mind giving credit where it’s due. But in the end, by the time we heard the familiar sirens coming down the hill towards us, they were all on the ground, except for a few who took to shanks’s pony.
Everyone went to their bikes and I made sure that the old ladies were all out of the pub with us. I went through the pub twice, checked the toilets, which I always did to make sure we never left anyone behind, made sure every bike had a rider and every bloke who had brought his old lady had her with him. And when we headed off, we headed off strong.
Whether there’d been trouble or not, I was always last to take off, checking that there were no stalled bikes, then I swung out around the pack and gunned it to the front, sitting alongside Snoddy, with Shadow on his other side.
We went riproaring up past the cathedral into the city, gunning out over the new Western Distributor and the old Glebe Island Bridge all the way back to the clubhouse. We put the bikes away and sent the old ladies inside. Barring a few members who went in to make sure the clubhouse was all right, every member was outside for the next 90 minutes watching and waiting to see if the coppers turned up. And if they did, they weren’t taking anyone from our club without a fight. On that night, I was very proud of all the brothers in the club. It was another reason to feel so honoured to be a Bandido. I knew we had a bunch of blokes we could count on.
And with tensions growing between us and the Comancheros, we were going to need every bit of guts we could muster to face off against our old clubmates, who we were hearing were out willy-nilly recruiting a huge number of blokes we didn’t know.