A LOCAL woman was left feeling sick to the stomach with the premiere of Channel Ten’s Bikie Wars: Brothers In Arms last night.
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The six part series chronicles the build-up to the 1984 Milperra Massacre.
The firearm battle between rival bikie gangs - the Comancheros and Bandidos - left seven people dead, including one teenage bystander.
That afternoon is a memory she really doesn’t want to relive.
The Comancheros gang had formed in 1968, before selected members broke away and formed their own club called the Bandidos in the 1980s.
The woman told The Young Witness things were never the same after the split, “the treachery and betrayal was even worse because it really was brothers against brothers”.
The woman, fearing repercussions, wishes to remain anonymous. She says she was at the Viking Tavern in the south western Sydney suburb that Fathers Day on September 2, 1984.
Eighteen at the time, she said she was enjoying “a beautiful day at a swap meet” when the Bandidos arrived.
She said she was sitting out the front of the Viking Tavern with the Comancheros when she heard someone yell “they’re here”.
“Within minutes there were bullets flying and bodies laying on the ground, I kept telling myself this isn’t really happening – it felt like it went on for ages,” she said.
“It was chaos - my first instinct was to run to the boys, I could see my fiance a couple of cars away so I ran to him but by the time I got there he was dead.
“I just remember bullets whistling past my head and then hours and hours of questions about who did what - none of us really knew,” she said.
She said, regardless, she was ‘pretty rocked’ by Channel Ten previews of the show, saying the characters were not portrayed as who they really were or are.
“I knew nothing of Channel Ten making the show on the Comancheros and it spun me out even more when I heard it was based on the book Brothers In Arms, which I feel was written from a Bandidos point of view,” she said.
She says she complained when the novel was released in 2005. Now she feels the series has been created on just one side of a story.
“In the preview they showed the character of William “Jock” Ross, leader and founder of the Comancheros, saying ‘this is war – at home when you least expect it’ and said it was a true story. I knew this man and he never sanctioned anything that would hurt women and children.”
“He organised blood runs, toy drives and fundraisers for those who were short on money - he has been portrayed as an ego-maniac tyrant and a man who has no morals.”
“That’s not how he is – none of them were. They were family men who had legitimate jobs during the week, and hung out and rode their bikes on the weekend,” she said.
Almost three decades later, the woman fears for the families of those involved.
“People like Sparrow (Ivan Romcek), Snake Eyes (Geoff Campbell) and Shadow (Gregory Campbell) can’t speak for themselves – they are gone. Others went into hiding because they couldn’t stand it anymore,” the woman said.
“Some of these men are grandfathers now trying to live normal lives – they were all good blokes who were led astray - haven’t they paid the price of their life? Some paid with their lives,” she said.
“I’ll just be happy that one other person knows this – that good men died that day and they were all good men.
“This is why I want to tell people that the man (Jock Ross) they see on TV is not the man he is and that they shouldn’t believe everything they see on TV,” she said.