Chapter 11

The Sport of Kings and Kanes

Now your archetypal good bloke in 1950s Australia loved nothing more than a beer and a bet. Sure as an emu never took a backward step, you could measure the worth of like-minded blokes by their ability to get a beer and a bet when and where they liked.

Government prohibitions on public drinking hours had, as I’ve mentioned, created a minefield of sly grog outlets around inner Melbourne. The inner suburbs of West Melbourne, Carlton, North Melbourne and Port Melbourne in particular were alive with illegal after-hours bars. They harboured a dark dual identity that was an open secret among many. While the nation’s first television newscasts of the late 1950s paid almost religious homage to the traditional six o’clock swill as some modern panacea to the evils of alcohol, a vibrant party culture serviced by discreet underground bars pumped lawlessly through­out long nights. The operators and almost obligatory police customer or two – often silent partners – were living large on the opportunities afforded to them by the law. Corrupt police and gangsters worked hand in hand for the common good. That being a bloke’s right to drink when he liked and the wads of cash they collected.

Other restrictions on where a man could back a horse had of course long before led to the SP bookie, an unauthorised off-track bookmaker who would take your bets at the local pub or an adjacent bluestone-cobbled laneway. They would give the punters the starting price, hence the term SP, and collected healthy commission fees to make their crust. They were commonplace in the late 1950s, as I reached drinking age. The bookies always had a lookout or what we called a ‘cockie’ posted for stray police. By stray, I mean to say that while the more established SPs always had police protection, you could never be sure a foot patrol would not wander off the designated route, or notice some unusual pedestrian activity from afar. The cockies were crackers too, I can tell you. They had eyes keener than a starved hawk’s for a hint of blue cloth, lest they should have to suffer multiple blows from the hardened fists of the bookie’s standover men at a later date.

The image of the gutsy resourceful Aussie digger may have been born at Gallipoli, but it was galvanised into our national psyche during the Second World War. Beers and bets – any contest, anywhere – among the Aussie forces, were not only sanctioned but encouraged as worthy distractions. While officially scorned, they were seen by many of us as the essence of our identity. The young bucks of my generation who had any guts at all would always possess that have-a-go attitude and always be on the lookout for both. All the others were straight fucks, the wealthy protestant middle class from Melbourne’s elite leafy suburbs of the east. Most of them knew nothing of the glorious thrill of a win on the punt, and as far as we were concerned, they could go to buggery. Come to think of it, things are pretty much the same today in terms of Melbourne demographics. People reared in the warm bosoms of Burwood, Toorak and Hawthorn are still largely insulated from the hardships and trials known to those of the inner north and west of the city.

So while most outside our butchering, beer-swilling and hard-betting milieu would find it hard to identify with blokes like myself and Lewis, our roles were well accepted among our own. We each had racehorse connections as far back as our memories stretched, almost from the time we dropped our last nappies. Once you have inhaled it up close, that pungent, sweaty equine scent never really leaves your nostrils. As a kid it was infused with all the drama of the track when our family would have a special Saturday out at Flemington Racecourse. Remember that I had also been running bets for my mother, frantically pedalling my bicycle to laneways beside pubs and other places from our home in West Melbourne, from the age of about 10. So while she was happy to bundle me off to be an altar boy at St Mary’s, she was certainly a far cry from a flag-waving activist for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. And of course, my father and uncle sharpened the butchers’ blades of many a colourful slaughterman in Newmarket, such as Lewis and Tuppence in their early days.

With my father’s engineering business adjacent to the legendary Pastoral Hotel, Newmarket, I was witness to many a wild fight between butchers, smithies, stable hands, dockers and various tradesmen. The place where I was also to meet Lewis Moran, who was about four years my junior, would explode into absolute mayhem at times, with drunken brawlers spewing out across Racecourse Rd as the hotel heavies evicted them with little ceremony. As I grew older it was inevitable that I should also join the fray myself on one or two occasions. Like a rite of passage you might say.

I can still recall one such brawl in about 1959 or 1960, when the demonic high-pitched cackle of one bloody faced, but clearly delighted, Irishman pierced all other ambient noise. This little dancing leprechaun came into my focus, about three metres to my left, as he squealed with glee at having just decked a bloke twice his size. It was hilarious. He had just taken a huge leap and was midair with both feet off the ground as the knuckles of a fist almost the size of his head crunched his nose bone level to his cheek with one almighty blow. Dropped like a sack of shit, blood gushed from the leprechaun’s nose like water from a fire hose. Poor bastard didn’t flinch a muscle for at least fifteen seconds. We thought he was dead. And there was no such thing as .05 laws in those days of course, so drinking and driving was as common as pissheads dropping quotes from the Dad and Dave radio show.

I digress here from bets to brawls and beer, though it’s an easy slide in subject known to many. That was a big part of my life back then. My father’s business operated from the building to the right of the Pastoral Hotel (see the picture section). My point here is that with the stables of Flemington Racecourse also only a short walk away, and the Pastoral a watering hole for the many race industry drinkers, Herbert Wrout senior also had a healthy sideline in making harness bits, buckles and stirrups. This in turn led to my first and last mount on a Melbourne Cup winner, because my father had made the bits and such for this horse.

This was no ordinary cup winner. It was the magic brown bolter called Comic Court, a crowd pleaser that could cut a swath through all challengers over almost any distance. Comic Court had cleared the rest of the field by three lengths to win the 1950 Melbourne Cup. It was the most famous of Australia’s post-Second World War era racehorses and is still rated by experts as right up there with the likes of previous cup legends such as Carbine and Phar Lap. When I was nine, my father saw to it that I got to be on the back of this great champion and it was fantastic. For those few moments in the saddle, I felt bigger than King Richard returned from the Crusades. I had a smile on my mug stretched from one ear to the other. Much later I learnt Bart Cummings, in recent times as well known in Melbourne as the historic King Richard himself, the legendary Melbourne Cup king, was also Comic Court’s strapper.

Bart of course had an early taste of success as the son of trainer Jim Cummings, while I had my moment of glory through Herbert senior. And I would wager more than a grey nurse ($100 for the stiffs) that Bart himself steadied the reins as I ruled the world on top of the all-conquering champion for a few minutes that day. I recall it was a few days after the 1950 cup, at the Chiquita Lodge stables at Flemington Racecourse. These stables have housed some of the nation’s greatest gallopers and a small army of colourful characters, such as the former champion jumps jockey Ron Hall and his son Greg, who won the 1992 Melbourne Cup on Subzero. Both were also lifelong friends of the known SP king, the late Jack Dow. It was most appropriate that Ron, a very close mate of my father and a man of some flair all his life, had cleared his last personal hurdle in 2009 on the same morning of the Australian Steeplechase and Hurdle. Ronnie had won the premier event twice in the 1940s. The press reported that his passing saw jockeys wear black armbands in his honour at the meet that day, more than six decades later.

In the true tradition of celebrated rogues, Ronnie Hall was rubbed out as a jockey in South Australia in the 1950s. But he later made good, doing very well as a trainer before he died. The racing world is rich with these characters, and they were all part and parcel of the Pastoral milieu. Just for the record, the nature of the connection between Herbert Wrout senior and Cummings senior was of course completely professional, honourable and without a hint of any sinister happenings. Far as I know, of course. Anything could happen back in those days. Even the headline win of my personal champion, Comic Court, came with a good deal of controversy. The stallion was far from favourite in the 1950 Melbourne Cup and was ditched by his regular jockey Jack Purtell for a downfielder called Alister, while Pat Glennon galloped home three lengths clear of the pack on Comic Court in the ride of his life. You can’t really read anything untoward into all that though, there’s always a nice twist to any good yarn on the winner of a Melbourne Cup.

The not quite so rosy-hued memories of the racecourse and the Pastoral Hotel in particular, however, includes those times from the early 1960s, when occasionally, a bloke whose company I had enjoyed at the bar would suddenly disappear for a few months, sometimes forever. If they did reappear, they would invariably be much quieter in demeanour than before. As I soon learnt, and later witnessed, the reason for these departures was debt. Simple as that, these blokes owed the local SP bookies at such a level they could only repay what was owed through their hide. It served as a deterrent to those who might have considered punting beyond their means. With these blokes disappearing and everything, I also soon learnt not to get too friendly with anyone outside those I knew full well were accepted as trustworthy.

You see, the Pastoral was more than just the former home of bush trail-hardened drovers and returned Gallipoli heroes. It was also the host venue for one of the biggest SP operations in Melbourne for a decade or more. In the 1960s and 70s the book at the Pastoral Hotel was run by the infamous Les Kane, Leslie Herbert Kane, in fact, who, as I’ve mentioned, was to later be Jason Moran’s father-in-law. Les was the one who levelled the face of the little leprechaun I mentioned earlier. As a fiery tempered fist man, Les was widely and rightly regarded as psychotic as he reacted with very little provocation. On occasions, with no reason whatsoever, some poor bastard who had drifted too close to our circle would cop a solid clip across the earhole, or worse. And of course, Les was a member of, and well connected in, the Painters and Dockers Union, just as I was through my uncles, and Lewis. So, if you owed Les money and didn’t pay, you were in the shit. A world of misery.

Then there was the brother of Les, the equally if not more notorious Brian Kane. Considerably more calm, Brian also collected debts over many years before being shot dead in November 1982. He collected for SPs and stood over anyone he knew to be cash rich owing to illegal activity, such as the casinos on the first floor of some restaurants in Carlton. In the late 1970s and early 1980s there were blokes of European descent flying out of first-floor windows all over Lygon St. Many of these events went unreported of course, for obvious reasons. These were some of Brian’s best clients before he fell from favour on a permanent basis among some known to have long and bitter memories. He had also been very close to Graham ‘the Munster’ Kinniburgh, and the Morans.

Despite his connections, Brian Kane had been on many a hard criminal’s hit list from the moment they learnt it was he who had shot dead fellow docker Raymond ‘Chuck’ Bennett, at the old Melbourne Magistrates Court in November 1979. It did not matter that Bennett had himself already successfully ordered Les Kane to be killed the previous year, in October 1978, after Les had badgered him for money. You see, Bennett was far more than just the crew leader and mastermind of the Great Bookie Robbery at the Victoria Club on 21 April 1976. Those close to Bennett, one of Australia’s last great armed robbery specialists, had an extraordinary level of respect for his intellect, fairness and loyalty, which was returned in kind. The success of the Great Bookie Robbery itself had merely helped to cement already strong bonds. Armed with sub-machine guns, Bennett’s well-rehearsed crew relieved stunned bookmakers of their proceeds on their settling day at the central Melbourne club. Still officially unsolved, the heist saw robbers escape with what was reported to be $1.4 million, but it has long since rumoured to be worth up to $12 million in takings. Some have suggested $15 million. Whatever the amount, it was extracted from the bookies with military precision and with such skill and authority that not a shot was fired. It remains the stuff of legends.

Bennett was also a leader of the Kangaroo Gang, which toured many of the more ritzy jewellers and fashion boutiques across the United Kingdom and Europe so that they might relieve them of their overpriced trinkets and garments. His career highlights have been well canvassed by various media. But what you will not have learnt elsewhere is the fact I’m about to land on your noggins right now. You see, Chuck Bennett was the one known to a very select and important few to have snubbed more than the Kanes, but also the very senior corrupt police who demanded a cut of the take through the Kanes. That was the way it went. If our boys had a big score, certain police expected a sling so they would turn a blind eye or bugger up the investigation in some way. These police were long familiar with the comforts afforded them by a cut of the criminal action, even before the days of spiking any suspicions reported about mother Moran’s backyard abortion clinic in North Melbourne. So these cops, the same ones who had copped a regular sling from the Morans and others over many years, thought something had to be done about this upstart Bennett.

To some among my peers, the execution of Bennett, with glaringly obvious police assistance, was akin to the crucifixion of a criminal Christ. Some, like the Morans, saw it coming; others would never accept what remains a very public police sanctioned murder. A natural leader with charisma and a good sense of humour, Bennett had the genuine affection of his crew, some of whom would acknowledge him as the General. His supporters were many and their anger boiled over with the police complicity in his assassination being all but brushed aside, neatly aired and shoddily dismissed by a heavily compliant media of that era. While some in the popular media have seen fit to pooh-pooh any real police involvement, remember this belief comes from people very close to the Victoria Police. For decades up to at least the late 1970s, senior newspaper correspondents and senior police shared adjacent offices at the Russell St police headquarters, and many drinking sessions. They shared lives. A few senior police had the good fortune to have children employed by the media, much like high-profile politicians and AFL coaches do today. Regular features in the press waxed lyrical about the long clean careers of our white knight senior police, and many of them clearly deserved the praise. Or so it seemed.

Through the late 1980s and early 1990s – a string of police killings of hardcore criminals aside – very little emerged to tarnish the growing reputation of the Victoria Police as Australia’s finest. Until the undeniable crusade of corruption at the Drug Squad that imploded during the 1990s, any average member of the public could well be forgiven for thinking the Victoria Police was squeaky clean. Many did, and a whole generation of pre-cyber Victorians who have found no need for technology continue to question any real endemic corruption in their state’s force. Fortunately, many more embraced the explosion of internet information posted on Victoria Police corruption, which ended the myths created and sustained by media interests owned by the very few. Sadly, however, the absolute ‘you can report this as fact’ influence of police over some major media outlets continues and is all too abundantly clear. Some journalists simply take what they can, where they can, I suppose, though not to accredit a source is simply sloppy. You can’t expect too much vigilance, free thought or accuracy from those locked into a steady stream of bullshit.

Now, my observation of disturbing police control over some media is far more than the random musing of a shot-up retired gangster. It is also the opinion of my co-author Brett Quine, who was himself a police rounds reporter for The Sun and Herald Sun in the late 1980s and early 90s. Even as we wrote this book, both of Melbourne’s daily newspapers incorrectly stated the death of one the more celebrated of Chuck Bennett’s crew, Dennis ‘Greedy’ Smith, to be Sunday, 29 August 2010. This was a full day ahead of his actual death on Monday, 30 August 2010. The newspapers had robbed Greedy of his last day of life. Even when the error was made abundantly clear through a family death notice, neither newspaper bothered to correct their false reality. History is altered once more. The misinformation is archived not only by the publishers but the State Library of Victoria, and readily accessed as fact by anyone in the future. Of course, an error of 24 hours may seem trivial, but a lot can happen in that time. For instance, any alleged crimes committed upon the recently departed could not in fact have taken place if the victim had already passed away. Simple errors and misinformation can easily devolve into highly odorous disinformation once the truth is obvious and still not publicly corrected. Information containment and disinformation can hide all manner of evils. And the public should question the agendas of those involved.

Smith himself was a mountain of a man, a very hard fist man and former meatworker who had gained infamy as an alleged member of the Great Bookie Robbery. He was thought by police to have driven a laundry van in the robbery, and if true – obviously taking a liking to clean living – was also said by police to have laundered much of the robbery proceeds, up to $15 million, through a venture known as the Aussie Bar in the Philippines. This was a bar Greedy opened with his old Melbourne friend, Kerry Ashford, who last I heard was earning an honest quid as a building site labourer here in Melbourne. The bar offered good old Aussie beers of course, alongside a chance to be entertained by young girls and perhaps even find love – for a fee.

According to police, the Aussie Bar also acted as an offshore haven for major criminals from Sydney and Melbourne. One of those alleged to have been assisted by the Aussie Bar included Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox, an armed robber and killer who made a sensational escape from an exercise yard using only a tiny saw at Sydney’s Long Bay jail in 1977. He used all manner of disguises and the backing of various associates to dodge police for more than a decade before his eventual arrest at Doncaster Shoppingtown, Melbourne, in July 1988. Cox crashed his getaway car while under fire from the armed robbery squad, and was last reported to be living a quiet life in Queensland after his release from jail in 2004. He has been questioned as recently as early 2011, by Victoria Police who went north to interview him, about the shooting of Brian Kane at the Quarry Hotel.

Greedy, in his later life, was also another colourful drinking associate of my co-author Brett over several years, around the same time I came to know him. And as his name is on the cover, it’s only reasonable to explain our association. Brett was a good friend of the celebrated Legal Aid Victoria law clerk, Stephen Drazetic, whom he had come to know well both as a drinker and fierce defender of some of the nation’s most damned criminals. When they met in the early 1990s, Brett was a newspaper reporter who soon realised Drazetic had the drop on just about anything that happened in the judicial system. Certainly, Steve, as we called him, had helped organise legal representation for both Lewis and I on more than one occasion and in the end I believe was complicit in my betrayal by Lewis.

However, long before that, around early 1994, Steve introduced both Lewis and I to Brett at the Laurel Hotel, Ascot Vale. Knowing that Lewis in particular was none too fond of any journalists who were not punters, especially those not severely indebted to him, Steve cautiously approached us at the bar. He explained how Brett, a relative square, was a journalist but simply there to drink as a local and not after a story, unless we wanted to give him one. Lewis was about seven sixers down, standing at the bar and quite mellow, so he begrudgingly agreed to an introduction. It was soon established that Brett would move down the bar should any delicate business need discussion, at his own suggestion, and that no story related to our crew would be written unless we had prior knowledge and given our approval. And from then on, we all got along just fine.

On a few occasions Lewis would intentionally let slip a few words out of turn in Brett’s company, just to see whether his false leads were pursued. I did the same, for as you would expect, trust was not something easily given in our circle. Certain police would soon report back to Lewis if these supposed incidents, run-of-the-mill stuff such as car bombings and race fixing, were being queried. But of course while Brett may appear a little dimwitted to some, he does have a bit of intelligence, and survived the loyalty tests. After a few years, Brett also came to be known as Quiney. He was once offered work with the Morans, in the late 1990s while unemployed. But knowing full well he could not question the conditions of employment before he accepted, Brett had politely declined.

As Steve himself had told Lewis, he had also previously introduced Quiney to Greedy, as part of giving the reporter some education on the more colourful characters in the neighbourhood. This was a rare feat for any reporter, but with the ever upbeat Steve doing the introductions and Brett a northern suburbs-reared local familiar with subject boundaries, he became an accepted part of our wider drinking circle. The two also lived a few blocks apart in Ascot Vale and Flemington and often caught up for a beer at the nearby Laurel or Polo Club Hotel, just a block away, where Greedy held court.

Of course, these pubs were just two of a few too many Brett visited, in part, as he says, owing to his strong work ethic in pursuit of real crime stories. And so it came to pass that in May 1998 after an alleged threat to cyber-kill an edition of the Herald Sun, of which Brett has no recollection but does not dispute, he was asked to resign from the paper. Apparently Brett had made this inglorious gesture while at work and with complete disregard for discretion, so he accepted the invitation as a fair cop. He was paid an extra few thousand to leave on the quiet. As the now media outlaw would later say, one of the highlights of his effective dismissal included the comment that his personnel file would make Harold Robbins blush. But while Quiney had shown great potential for more sinister acts and closer bonds to the criminal world, he lacked the motivation to properly apply himself. After declining a job offer with the Morans he returned to suburban newspapers and writing for Victoria University publications. He is now the part owner of a shopfront bar in West Melbourne, the Jawa Bar, and has not touched alcohol since his ninth heart seizure in October 2009.

Steve Drazetic was also known for some wild behaviour, though not while at work, and also as a strong fundraiser for the Australian Labor Party before he died from bone cancer in October 2008. A report in The Age noted how his funeral had halted affairs of state to allow the attendance of friends such as federal finance minister Lindsay Tanner and Victorian Attorney General Rob Hulls. There were also many leading lawyers, senior police, judges and a few colourful characters among the hundreds, which as the headline said, had come to ‘pay their respects to a legal legend’. Now, as I have already suggested, I was not too fond of him at the time of his death. But it would no doubt be helpful to the reader to know how we were all acquainted. It also helps explain to some of my friends how I can speak with some familiarity about Greedy, both through Brett’s input, and through my own friendship.

As the imposing Smith was a former Bennett crew member, and I with the Morans closely tied to the Kanes, tensions between the two gangs had been a little strained to say the least since Brian Kane shot Bennett in 1979. Particularly after a much later incident when Smith clobbered both Lewis and Tuppence Moran in a fine display of superior fist power. They did not have a prayer, dreaming harder than Alvin Purple at a nudists’ camp, but more on that later. So, despite some differences, let’s say, our two crews had occasional cause to discuss issues of the day and we coexisted in relative peace with our drinking holes only an Ascot Vale block apart. Steve had played a significant role in keeping our communication channels open and no doubt prevented some further splattering of blood, so each camp was indebted to him for that.

Greedy of course was known to many as a cautious but often jovial, no-bullshit character. Stories of his generosity toward underprivileged children in the Flemington area would often be told with sincere affection and enduring gratitude by his mates at the now closed Polo Club Hotel. The stories were almost of Disneyland proportion. And that is not to say they were unbelievable, just simply on an epic scale, such as a whole junior football team outfitted with boots and jumpers they had never dreamed they could own. Greedy had also helped to harbour many criminals on the run through his bar in the Philippines, including Mad Dog Cox. And often as he stood at his usual bar spot at the Polo, younger criminals in trouble would saunter to his side to seek advice and he would help as best he could, even in front of undercover police. Certainly, I cannot recall any stories remotely similar being said of Lewis Moran. There was no giving or charity where Lewis was concerned, just conniving, thieving and profiteering – just about the worst kind of crook a criminal could hope to meet.

Needless to say, Smith – who had snubbed the media almost all of his life – was far more admirable and widely respected than Lewis could ever dream to achieve. But there was no popularity contest between the two, that was just the way things were, and they each barely spoke the other’s name. Yet they certainly knew each other well enough. Greedy would have enjoyed a gut-rolling good laugh in knowing his death had established another shining example of media incompetence. Not only that, it firmly established a continued police manipulation over media that had characterised all coverage from at least the days of the Bookie Robbery through to the murder of Bennett and beyond. This was something Smith himself had observed, as an involuntary participant in literally thousands of media reports, and frequently pointed out errors to Quiney at the Polo.

Allowing a few media interviews as his health worsened, Smith openly stated that he did not like Brian or Les Kane one bit. In a newspaper report soon after his death, it was said he had asked the question he would often ask Quiney: ‘What about the Chuck Bennett murder? Why don’t they find out who did that?’ The answer of course, was that corrupt police had played a big role in assisting Brian Kane’s murder of Bennett, but neither the justice system nor media seemed to have any real interest in that. They still don’t.

At this point Quiney would have it said that he had come to regard Smith as a mate owing to their many sessions at the Polo. And while some media observers may decry such a sentiment, Quiney would prefer the company of an honest gangster to a corrupt cop any day. In fact, I have had to insist the nosey bastard not name some names, owing to my will to live more than a few days beyond publication. Quiney would also like to state that he has enormous respect for the vast majority of police and press reporters but very little for the big noters, especially those who usurp the works of lesser known journalists and present it as their own.

Brett did also abuse police back in the early 1990s when busted for drink driving – but, by way of mitigation and by no means an excuse – Quiney says he was totally pissed. More seriously though, there was no deep-seated hatred for police; he was simply trying to impress upon his passenger, the niece of Christopher Flannery, that while he had been a crime and police rounds reporter he was not at all a lackey of the authorities. It seemed to work a little as Brett and Flannery’s niece, Sally, were married a short time later and their marriage lasted around a year before it came to an end.

But to get back to the main story – it intrigues me that police interest in the deaths of the Kanes is still quite intense despite the passing of about three decades since their deaths. Les of course had been executed at his Wantirna home in 1978, while Brian Kane was gunned down at the Quarry Hotel, Brunswick, in 1982. The police let it be known Smith was close to two men believed to have burst into the Sydney Rd hotel. In October 2009, police doubled the reward offer on information leading to the arrest of Brian Kane’s killer, taking it to $100,000. Of course, they know who was there and who did what, but it seemed they just needed that one extra person to step forward as a witness. Another knot or two was obviously needed to tighten the conviction noose around the Duke, Australia’s most feared among his own, a low-profile kind of bloke, and his much more publicity prone mate, Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox, for the killing of Brian Kane. Perhaps police had hoped Smith might be tempted to talk with the offer of more money. Not a chance. And to the few reporters he spoke to, he always maintained that he had been in Manila at the time of the shooting.

As soon stated to the press by docker Billy ‘the Texan’ Longley – who served 13 years for ordering the 1973 murder of his arch rival, Painters and Dockers Union secretary, Pat Shannon – anybody who dared dob in Kane’s killer would be in danger of violent retribution. ‘You can’t spend reward money if you are dead,’ he reportedly told the Herald Sun after police posted the $100,000 reward.

The police also said they believed Smith had demolished the getaway car at a North Melbourne wrecker’s yard that he owned. I have no knowledge of that. What I do know is that among a very select few, Greedy Smith was strongly rumoured to be the getaway driver for the Kane execution. But that was only because Greedy was on friendly terms with those rumour mongers and knew full well that they knew better than to speak out of turn.