After prison, nothing was the same for my brothers and me, and the Bandidos. Just like happened at the Comancheros, we made a lot of our club brothers feel inferior because of the way we always took it upon ourselves to be up front in the fights. If anything, the feeling got stronger in the Bandidos. A lot of our club brothers resented the fact that when blokes from other clubs wanted to talk to our club, they’d seek out the Campbells. Mainly me, but if I wasn’t around they’d want to talk to one of my brothers. The fact was, we knew a lot of blokes from over the years. This made a lot of other brothers unhappy or jealous.
A clique got together that didn’t want us in the club anymore. Especially after Father’s Day, when new blokes started joining. And prison can make a man lose his balls. Once they’ve been inside, a lot of blokes don’t want to go back. The Campbells were portrayed as loose cannons who might start another war. Not that we would intentionally. Me and my brothers back down from no one. And we avenge those who wrong us. But I’d given my word to Kid Rotten and Mum and Donna that I wouldn’t go after the Comos. Mum had already lost three sons to that war. One wasn’t killed by the Comos. I consider that the cops and the DPP murdered Wack by opposing his bail when they knew he was dying.
Anyway, facing these internal pressures, gradually my brothers left the club. Wheels retired, Bull retired, Snake had some argument with the new national vice president, Mick K, and made an agreement with him. I don’t know what that was about. My son Caspar had joined the club while I was inside and rose to become a sergeant-at-arms. We became the first Australian Bandido father and son to ride together and the first Bandido father and son sergeants, but he retired too. He’d wanted to be a Bandit since he was 14. He was born for it, but that just shows the pressures that were going on at that time in the mid-’90s.
One of the retired outlaws we’ve got down here in the Snowy Mountains is PJ. I’ve known him since 1970. He only retired in the early part of the 2000s. His club can be proud of him, but God he’s a pest. He’s forever asking questions about what happened between me and Mick K and I keep telling him, ‘Donna put it in the second book, Wrecking Crew.’ He says, ‘I know, I’ve read ’em both, but I can’t help thinking there’s more to the story between you and Mick K. Every time he was around our club at a party or whatever, he couldn’t help himself boasting about how he’d fooled ya.’
‘Yeah, him and five others. But while they wear the same patch as me, there’s nothing I can do about it.’
In short, Mick K knew I wasn’t in on his way of doing things. He told me that the Americans were going to close down the Bandidos in Australia if I didn’t leave the club. I was a fool to believe him. But I wasn’t going to retire and I wasn’t leaving the club. I said, ‘Let ’em come and try and take me colours.’
‘Nah, you’ve got to do it for the club,’ Mick K said, hitting me on my soft spot. I’d do anything for the club. My brothers had died for it, and I almost had too. We went back and forth and I got him to agree that we’d pretend I’d retired for 18 months until things had cooled down, but it was really just ‘special leave’. At the end of the 18 months, I’d come back and resume my membership as normal, with no time lost, so I’d get all my anniversary badges, all the T-shirts. I thought I was doing the right thing by my brothers and my club, but I was getting stabbed in the back.
He was meant to tell four other blokes about the deal, but he never did. He showed off a set of colours that he said was mine. (They were Lurch’s old colours.) He said I’d handed them in. Then, about a year later, he went and got himself wasted, shot in the basement of the Blackmarket nightclub in November 1997, and our secret deal died with him.
I wasn’t going to go rushing in there and jump up and down just after the guy, plus another member and a prospect, had been put in the ground. So I waited. I was waiting for someone to come and see me and hear my side of the story. And to this day I’ve been waiting for some of the young blokes who’ve read the books, especially Wrecking Crew, to come and ask my side of the story.
I think everyone who’s lived long enough has had a time where they trusted someone because they believed them to be a brother or a really top mate and they got conned. That’s what happened to me. I lost my club. Aside from family, I lived for being a Bandido. I still am a Bandido, so it’s really hard when I see a pack of my brothers riding down the road and I can’t put my colours on to join them. I only ever wear the colours now on Shadow’s, Chop’s and Wack’s birthdays, and sometimes on Father’s Day I ride up to their graves at Rookwood. On their birthdays, I ride up to a spot in the mountains. I spend a couple of hours sitting up there thinking about them and about the world. Then I ride home and take the colours off and put ’em away till the next time, and if that offends anyone, well that’s too bad.
I never handed my colours in. I never retired. I never left the club. I don’t mean any disrespect to the club or the new members, but the original members should know what me and my brothers did for the club. I know a few tried to tell them the truth about my situation, like Lance Wellington and Rua. But they got shot down in flames.
It’s just too bad that things happen like this and people are just too scared to stand up and tell the brothers in the club what Mick K was really like. For him, money came first, money came second, money came third, girls came fourth – and the club was just a way of getting both.
And it would be remiss of me if I didn’t mention Dukes McElwaine. Probably out of all the original members, he tried hardest to tell everyone that I’d been stabbed in the back and that he had come down and seen me and saw that I still had my colours. He said that trying to tell the club members was like talking to a brick wall. He said Mick K had his little crew spread that much money around that people just weren’t interested in listening. Dukes was a real brother.
I said, ‘Thanks, Dukes. It’s nice to know that there’s at least a few brothers out there where loyalty and honour count.’
‘Don’t worry, Caesar. It’ll come good. People will realise what you and your brothers did for the club.’
Sadly, Dukes had some personal problems later on and ended up not being around the club much and I didn’t hear a lot more from him. He had an accident and busted his arms up pretty bad and spent a bit of time in hospital. He just tended to keep to himself after that. I was really hurt that no one bothered telling me that he’d died when he did. I didn’t find out till about two months after his funeral. If I’d known, I’d have been there no matter what. Top man, top member of the Bandidos. It’s good to see that his son Luke has joined the club and followed in his dad’s footsteps. If he can be half as good as Dukes, he’ll be a really good member. I know what it’s like to lose your dad when you’re still young. I wish him all the best with his club and personal life.
I’m just waiting for someone at the club to step up at a meeting and say we should do the right thing by Caesar and give him his badges and his anniversary T-shirts and show him the respect he deserves.
It’s been claimed to me that I left the club when I handed over my colours. But everyone knew what my colours looked like. For a start, there were the bullet holes through the leather where I’d been shot at Milperra. Any Bandit is welcome to come down and have a chat and see them for himself. I’ll be buried in them. I hope my club pays me that little bit of respect in the end and gives me a club funeral, but if they don’t, well, they say karma’s a bitch.
There does seem to be a bit of a change coming in the club. Snake has made friends with three or four of the new breed and, after they’ve got to know him, they’ve turned around and told him things were completely different from what they’d been told. It’s good to see some of the newer members are starting to check out things and not listen so much to the stories they were told about the Campbells. We’re not the boogie men we’ve been portrayed as. What the young Bandidos don’t realise is that there are a lot of Campbells who are proudly retired from the club, and I’d like to think that if the club was ever at war again, or if we were needed in any way, that we’d come and do what we can.
I don’t hold any grudge against the club. I do hold grudges against four or five blokes who are in my club, and I will to the day I die. But I brought in the rule that one Bandido does not fight another Bandido and I’ll stick to it till that day too. If I had actually left the club, there would be five blokes out there who would never have ridden again, because they wouldn’t have any kneecaps. But that could only happen if I wasn’t a Bandido . . . and I am, so they’ve got no worries. I’ll always back up the patch.
So when PJ brings it up, I do get a bit worked up and he’ll end up going, ‘Calm down, big feller. I didn’t mean to get you upset. I just wanted to know for sure.’
‘Yeah, but PJ, I get sick of these questions. It’s not just you and blokes from other clubs. It’s everyone here in the mountains. If I go to Sydney, it’s me own relatives, my sons and my sisters. You wouldn’t believe how much I get asked about it. And I can’t go right into it because a lot of it is still club business and you know the rules about club business.’