On a sunny spring day to celebrate families, Sydney lost its innocence forever.FATHER’S Day — 24 hours of picnics, presents, barbeques and beer — a time to say ‘thanks’ to dad for being there.
It is a time when families get together and enjoy each other’s company. And it shouldn’t have been any different on September 2, 1984. Australians were packing their hampers and planning their day, but two groups of former friends were arranging where they would meet to kill each other.
The scene for the showdown: The Viking Tavern at Milperra, Sydney, during a motorcycle swap meet.
And the combatants: the Bandidos and Comancheros bikie gangs. Months of simmering tensions between the two gangs, previously one entity, came to a head and by noon, six men and a 15-year-old girl lay dead on the street.
The post mortem of what is now known as the most cold, brutal clash of Australian motorcycle gangs revealed a horrifying picture.
Before late 1983, there were no Bandidos. The Comancheros were a powerful Sydney-based bikie gang with ever-increasing numbers. But several members of the Comancheros believed their president and “supreme commander”, William ‘Jock’ Ross, was admitting members too quickly, running a parliamentary operation and planning to take over other clubs.
Disgruntled Comancheros left and formed their own club — the Bandidos. On Father’s Day morning a group of Bandidos drove past the home of 24-year-old Comanchero Glen Eaves, informing him that they would be at the Viking Tavern’s bike swap meet “in force”.
Eaves went straight for the phone and soon a posse of Comancheros had arranged to gather for a showdown with the Bandidos at the meet.
The Bandidos arrived to find the Comancheros waiting. But the Bandidos were ready. As they jumped off their bikes and out of their cars, the Bandidos produced various deadly weapons and began to approach.
Exactly what happened next will perhaps always remain a mystery: no biker agreed to testify in court, even at the risk of lifelong jail sentences.
But by the evidence gathered by the police and carnage at the scene, there is no doubt that a full-scale war erupted.
Justice Adrian Roden, who presided over the Milperra Massacre case, concluded: “The battle then began. Bats, bars, guns and at least one knife were used. People screamed, people ran, people hid. Bandidos, Comancheros and bystanders were struck, limbs were broken, people were stabbed, people were shot.
“Minutes later seven lay dead — four Comancheros, two Bandidos and a 15-year-old girl.”
That girl, it was later revealed, was an associate of the Comancheros.
Suddenly Australian bikie gangs had gone under a massive image transformation. They were no longer just tough-looking fellows on Harley Davidsons with tattoos and bushy beards.
They were vicious cold-blooded killers. During the court case, where six men were eventually sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and twenty-one others convicted of manslaughter, Justice Roden, and most Australians, clearly did not understand what bikie gangs were about.
He noted that the defendants’ refusal to testify in court seemed to be a sign of some “odd concept of club loyalty”.
What he did not know that any biker who took the witness stand would probably not have lived through the first week of any prison sentence.
He, like the rest of the country, was only starting to understand the rules, codes and conduct that preside so strictly over groups which, on the surface, seem rag-tag and chaotic.
But soon after Australia awoke. The country learned that bikie gangs were organized criminals, loyal to the end to their gang “brothers” and extremely powerful.
Australia learned that bikers were here to stay.
