PAST
1
LP was standing out on the beach verandah. From the surrounding houses in this tight-nit community, voices yelled, “Happy New Year; happy New Year.”
Family, friends and mates were all there for the count-down. With only an hour to go, his thoughts wandered back to when this had all started.
Past - present - future
Captured in numbers
Enclosed in time
The thunder we feel and hear
In the distance at eight
Happens at ten to eight
At ten past eight, lightning and rain
Will be upon us.
Past, present and future are one.
George turned his head and looked back while driving his Kombi. “What’s happening back there?”
“LP’s in one of his psychotic moods; he’s practising his fortune-telling skills again,” Bear replied. “You know what he’s like when that happens. He starts predicting the future, and, most times, he’s right.”
“Snap him out of it! I don’t want to hear that,” said George, who was suffering from a hangover from the night before. He may have turned eighteen but it didn’t make him hold his liquor any better. He was still green in the face and grumpy as hell.
Bear tried to get LP’s attention. “Focus; there’s a storm approaching. We’re at Red’s place now. Open your eyes.” Bear gave him a good shake on the shoulders.
LP opened his eyes. “Oh, we’re here already.”
George turned into Red’s hangout down the long tree-lined driveway. In the distance was an old homestead, run down and converted into four small flats. The Queenslander house, built in the 1850s, had a ten-foot-wide verandah out the front that wound around to the back, where two tall chimney stacks made of red bricks reached forty feet above the rusted tin roof. The once white painted timber boards were now a flaking yellowish brown. Trees surrounded the large house, and nearby was a creek lined with weeping willows.
“How long are we staying at Red’s party?” asked Cassa.
“We’ve got a surf contest to win at Bells Beach in four days, so we can’t stay long. Don’t get pissed. We’ll get Red and get on our way.”
Red had been living at the house with his flatmate, Willy, but it was his last night there. He had been evicted for complaining about the living conditions, which were no better than a squat in a third-world country.
Willie was friends with the Bad Meadows Motorcycle Club, and they were already there. The guys in the Kombi knew that Willie was mates with a few bikies, but they didn’t expect to see so many. There were almost two hundred of them, their Harleys and a few Triumphs parked throughout the long driveway.
George parked the vehicle, being careful not to knock over any of the bikes. He did well, considering his pounding headache from the night before.
As the guys jumped out of the Kombi, there was a report on the radio: “…And now for the weather. Strong winds from the south-east and more heavy rain is expected to reach Brisbane later tonight.”
Showers over the past few days had been a welcome change from the high temperature and humidity. It was the year of 1973.
“I’m bloody hot and thirsty. Let me out; I can’t breathe. It’s like an oven in here.”
“That’s the last time I’m riding in the back, or I’m likely to kill someone,” Bear complained.
Bear was almost six foot tall, with muscular broad shoulders, sun-bleached, shoulder-length hair, and dark brown eyes. He hadn’t had a shave for a couple of days, and looked like the type of guy you wouldn’t want to mess with.
George closed the driver’s door behind him, went around to the side door and opened it. Bear was first out, followed by Cassa, Brownie, and LP. Mason had sat in the front passenger seat with the window down, so he hadn’t become as agitated from the heat and humidity as the others.
Mason grabbed a carton of beer from the Kombi floor, and they started to walk up the muddy pathway at the side of the old Queenslander.
Several bikies turned to see who was entering their turf.
One of the bikies, Porky, yelled, “Who’s these surfie bums?”
Luckily, Red was standing nearby, and was quick to reply, “I invited them; they’re my mates.”
Red’s intervention calmed Porky down temporarily.
As the guys entered the backyard, they saw a raging fire with flames almost as high as the trees. It looked like a sight from Guy Fawkes Night. They all felt a little on edge seeing so many bikies around the fire getting pissed, all arguing and talking loudly.
Bear shouted over to Red in the crowd, “How long has this been going on?”
“It started at three o’clock,” Red replied, walking over to the group. “They’ve got a head start on us, so be careful. They’re all pretty drunk.”
George, despite being short and stocky, was often a bit of a smart ass. He struck up a conversation with Porky, who happened to be number two gang leader.
Porky was a tall, large-framed bikie. When he walked, all parts of his body moved and swayed in different directions. He could have done with a crash diet – it didn’t even look like his Harley could carry him. His ginger, long hair and gingery white beard that touched his chest made him look like someone who had stepped out of an old western hillbilly movie.
George looked up at him and asked, “Where did you get a name like Bad Meadows bikie club from?”
George’s question was like a red rag to a bull. The anger in Porky’s face could be seen by everyone. The guys all looked at each other and thought, this is not a good start to the night.
Porky paused for a couple of seconds, looked George in the eye, and said, “Well, mate, the short answer is that the name we wanted was already registered a couple months earlier. If you say Bad Meadows fast, it sounds like the name we wanted.”
George fired another question, “Well, what do you guys do for money?”
Again, Porky paused, gave the question some serious thought while downing a tally of beer, burped, then said, “Read the colours.”
He turned his back; his jacket read:
‘Bad Meadows
Building and Design
- AG Security’.
Porky added, “We’re in building design and AG security. That speaks for itself. Now do you understand what we do for money?”
Cassa and George both thought, whatever it means, it’s not legal!
“Well what do you think?” Porky asked.
They both said together, “Sounds like the type of business we should get involved in.”
Porky looked at Cassa and George fiercely. “There’s only room in this town for one gang in the business, so think again! Now, I’ve got some business to attend to, so don’t leave this fire till I get back, okay?”
“Yeah, sure, we’ll be here when you come back,” George replied.
Porky and his mate, Nutter, walked away from the fire to conduct a ‘deal’ in front of the house with some South African men. Their exchange was twenty-five pounds of pure hashish for twenty-five pounds of gold Krugerrands; coins, to be exact.
Conjay, the South African, handed Porky a bag containing the gold coins. Porky stretched out his right hand and grabbed the bag. In his other hand, he held the block of hashish. He balanced both and declared, “Correct weight; done deal!”
“Where do we put this coin for now?” Porky asked Nutter.
He paused and looked around.
“Stick it in the back of the engine compartment of that Kombi. We’ll get it later. If anything goes wrong, those surfie bums will wear it.”
Conjay walked back to his hearse with his offsider, opened the back hatch and pulled out a small coffin, placing the block of hashish inside.
“What’s the go with that coffin?” asked Nutter.
“Who would pull over a hearse, or open a child’s coffin in air transit? It’s the perfect cover to smuggle drugs, diamonds and gold,” replied Conjay.
Nutter’s cold black heart beat poison through his veins and mind. He had no reaction or feelings to seeing a child’s coffin, knowing that drugs played a part in young people’s loss of innocence and, worse, an early grave for some.
Conjay and his South African mate were both dressed in black trousers and white shirts, with dark sunglasses. With the deal done, they got into the hearse and drove out of the driveway, turning left onto the main road.
The guys realised they needed to get out of there. The bikies, full of booze and drugs, were descending into tribalism around the fire. It was starting to get ugly; the fire was dying and needed more fuel – the old Queenslander had plenty of timber.
The back stairs to the house entrance were falling apart from many years of neglect. As he and Porky walked back to the party, Nutter ordered his brain dead bikies to pull down the stairs and throw them on the fire.
Nutter was the gang leader. What he said happened; pain would be inflicted on anyone who questioned his orders. Several bikies turned to his command.
Others soon joined in, ripping off the old weatherboards and fuelling the fire higher and higher. Board by board, several crazed bikies ripped apart the old Queenslander.
As the fire grew larger, Nutter took off his jacket to reveal his black, hairy arms, covered in tats. On one arm was a dragon serpent and, on the other, the names of his fallen comrades who had upheld the Bad Meadows code of honour: death before disloyalty.
Meanwhile, the creek, only four yards away from the house, was rising quickly with the thunderstorm approaching Brisbane. Within minutes, the flood waters were only a couple of feet away from the Kombi.
Cassa yelled. “Check that out!” Cassa’s eyesight was pretty good, even though he was an albino with the whitest of white skin and shoulder length blonde hair.
He had spotted a van floating down the swollen creek, now looking like a raging river. The guys ran down the driveway. As they looked closely at the back window panel, they could see several people banging on the window, trying to get out.
“They’re trapped inside the van,” said Cassa.
The guys looked on helplessly as the van, now in the centre of the fast-flowing creek, hit the bridge and went under. Hands were still banging on the rear window, but they didn’t see the van resurface.
“What do we do about that?” Mason asked.
“No one could survive those flood waters,” said Bear. “I saw a red public phone in the hallway back at the house. Red, ring the cops and tell them what’s happened.”
Red ran back to the house, up the front stairs and down the hallway. He picked up the phone and dialled ‘000’. While he was explaining to the police that a panel van had struck the Enoggera Creek Bridge and disappeared under the flood waters, Porky noticed him and yelled, “Hey, who are you calling? It better not be the cops, asshole!”
Red dropped the phone, swung around, and grabbed Porky in a headlock. He pushed his head through the timber wall, then daked him. Let’s see how he explains that to his bikie mates, thought Red.
The guys headed back to the Kombi. It was dark, and hard to see, as they walked over the muddy ground. They heard George yell, “Mason, help me. I can’t walk. I’ve stepped in a rabbit hole and twisted my ankle.”
Mason turned to help George. He pulled George’s foot out of the hole, put his arm around his shoulder, and helped him back to the Kombi.
“I can’t drive,” said George. “I’ve twisted my ankle.”
“LP, you drive,” said Bear. “You know how to handle a Kombi. Hurry up! Let’s get out of here.”
George was still whining in the back of the van.
“George, shut up,” Bear said, turning to him. “Or we’ll leave you behind. There’s nothing more we can do here; let’s get some pizzas from Romeo’s, and we’ll be on our way to Bells Beach for the surf contest.”
“Where’s Brownie?” asked Mason.
“Stuff him; he’s always late. Have-A-Chat is probably still back with the bikies,” said Bear.
“We’ll have to go back for him, but let’s make it quick. We don’t want to be here when the cops arrive. They’ll be all over the place shortly.”
Mason ran back and spotted Brownie, beer in hand, talking crap with one of the bikies.
“Come on, let’s go, Brownie; the guys are waiting,” Mason whispered.
Brownie turned and started walking back to the Kombi with Mason, climbing in through the side door.
LP accelerated down the driveway as police arrived to attend to a noise complaint made by the neighbours.
They hadn’t yet been notified of Red’s call about the van floating down the creek and hitting the bridge. They were more interested in how many bikies they could arrest.
Back inside the house, Nutter found Porky still trying to get his head out of the wall. He helped his mate, then went to the front door to confront the coppers.
“What do you want?” asked Nutter. “Don’t you know we’re untouchables? Speak to your boss.”
“If you’re lucky, you’ll still be patrolling the city streets, and not sent so far west you’ll never be heard of again,” said Porky, backing up his mate.
“Get on your two-way radio,” Nutter ordered. “Who’s on duty? Who’s your superior?”
“Sergeant Jack Herbertsin,” the constable answered.
“Tell him who we are.”
The constable spoke on his radio. “Hey, Sarge, we’re out on a noise complaint, and there’s a mob of bikies here. They say they’re called Bad Meadows bikies. Do you know them?”
The response came back through the radio: “Yeah, let ’em go. Tell them I want fifty red ones in a brown paper bag by Monday.”
The constable passed on the message reluctantly. “You’re free to go.”
Once Nutter and Porky had dealt with the coppers, their main concern was to catch up with the surfies and the gold in their Kombi.
