This is a letter I got recently, it's a bloody good read:
In 77/78 there were no Mohawks /it was not part of our garb, we had real short coloured hair/the kids with blond tones, we would sit in the sun and colour their hair with texture pens [permanent oil].the hawk came in the second coming /1982/83...they called themselves ''hardcore''...we were pussies and they denounced ''THE PISTOLS and THE DAMNED ''for being soft. They took on the yank diatribe of ''hardcore''...death before dishonour, it's American army jargon [hence FIGARZI]. BLACK FLAG also adopted ''SEARCH AND DESTROY''...HARDCORE/SECOND COMMING...AMERICAN ARMY JARGON...camouflage daks and Mohawks.....
The hawk'' was NOT part of the BRISBANE punk scene,it came 5/6 years later............
Read the letter from BIAFRA you will see that BRISBANE was world famous, Everyone was watching this city, it had become known as the city under siege by a megalomaniac who called the press to his conference with a chook call...''here chook, chook, chook...here chook, chook chook''..THAT was running our state. They introduced a task force to wipe out the scourge that had infested the valley and lower parts of Kangaroo point...that was us. The force would clock on at 6 am and 6 pm this was a really bad time to be on the street. The city backwalls and ''WHISKY AGO GO /ZITS/PENOCIO'S'' was all run by the (name withheld) and they were tough mother fuckers not to be toyed with. They like us because we could hold our alcohol. They would give the cops ''a little extra ...you leave the boys alone hah??''
Later we would be old enough to drink in the bars and it would be them we would approach to play in their venues, they respected and had grown to love us.
They found it hilarious that we had been drinking for years and were now only 18. ( name withheld) ,would become the Brisbane punks greatest ally. The derelict building uphill from the valley mall across from that nightclub nearest the story bridge...THAT venue was called ZITS, check it out, it was amazing, its like a building with a mote around it [it is up for sale ...know it ???]The cops would come, and you could escape via 3 walls ...just jump over, it was like a scene from Madmax. (name withheld) would let us light fires in drums outside in the beer garden ,which has a 10 foot wall around it, all the punks had ladders against the wall, (name withheld) would shake his head and say 'lay that fucking thing over ''...The fuck'n cops were relentless, broken noses, ribs and fingers. I patched up so many CATH, I lost count. They knew we were underage, but they took us to the watch house anyway. We didn't mind cause the older dudes would be on duty cause they were the ''dogfaces''...the ones always mopping up and coming to the overdoses..we got to know them, they would give us bake beans on toast, a cup of tea and 2 dollar note.
We were feisty fucks
who decided to dig in and take the ''task force '' HEAD ON/there was about a hundred of us. We would go out in groups and stick together as witnesses,...JACK BOOTS JOH, stunned the world by pulling a post Nazi ruling on his secret police [THE TASK FORCE]..they wore no uniform, and they could arrest and imprison for 24 hours any group of 3 or more.
It was a bylaw from the TORRIES [we were directly influenced by ENGLAND not AMERICA like Howard has done........we were ENGLISH SONS/GRANDSONS....and SCOTS , a lot of them were SCOTS.
THEY HAD NO PROBLEM MAIMING YOU, NO FUCK'N PROBLEM WHAT SO EVER....SO WE WENT UNDERGROUND AND HARDER.
you would role up for court Monday morning and they would openly laugh in ya face...cops/prosecution corps ...AND when you got inside the friggen magistrate would treat you like a joke. We adopted the pommie practice of temporary piercings, a row of safety pins stuck just under the surface of the skin, normally a row going down, not sideways 'cause they got ''caught '' easy. A line down the neck or through the corner of the mouth connected by a chain to your earring. A few had nose rings but we didn't know how to do it properly, and mostly infection would force removal. We wanted to shock these fuckers and get right up their noses. ZZZ was great, coded messages would go out, we would find where to link up, cause we could only go in groups of 3.The boys from Salisbury, wrote this trippy little song with a siren as a solo, they were going to press it, and we were ready like a front of focused power and anger at our broken bones and pride.
The band was RAZAR and the song was TASKFORCE.
The first night in the chicken sheds at Spring hill, dickheaded V2 [an amphetamine SCOT, fuck'n delirious.] threw a bessa block through The go betweens drum kit, we hated them cunts, they really sucked. But V2 had gone too far, it had cut LINDYS wrist and she was really distressed, a fight broke out and poured on to the street, RAZAR never got to play, but The TASKFORCE were poised and waiting outside at about 10 o'clock.
It was total utter pandemonium,
Cops, everywhere. The tasky's had several sets of handcuffs they'd cuff and push to the ground...cuff and push to the ground. If you tried to stand they'd kick you in the face, women...everyone. They pulled us to the divvy's backwards by the handcuffs and threw us on top of each other the girls sometimes at the bottom, there was blood everywhere, one bloke had jumped from the second story and snapped his thigh bone he was screaming and this tasky said ''bite the pain ya fuck'n wimp''. girls were grouped together refusing to be man handled by the male cops. They sent in the sows...the meanest fattest old hard knocks with a short brown battern, we'd never seen these before, the first few chicks hit the pavement fuck'n wack. Split you like a melon, the boys doing our honour, tried to get out of the van it was a blood bath. In one van across from what is now ROMA STREET parkland, top of Heusler Terrace. The occupants was Ipswich lads and it was the Goodna chicks being flogged by this feminazi hardons, the old old ''dogfaces were there, they had their heads down in shame. We all heard it a shot was fired and a silence came over the crew .The Ipswich boys were furious and couldn't hear it, they were rocking the divvy van from left to right trying real hard to role it over ,it was teetering, almost there.
The tasky's opened both doors and dragged everyone out on to the street, the brown mallets wailing in on everyone. I will never forget the sound.
Of course it hit the press, all over the world the Courier mail being first on site, filming the lot.........wait for it....yeah ,the feminazi's take a straight line with batterns out all along the width of Huisler Terrace. and they start smashing the cameras and belting film crew.,that is why I still to this day have a darling approach to them, it drives people like (name withheld) insane, it's something that fused along time ago. A lot of the journalist are now high up in the ranks and its a clicky spot. But they were there. We were plastered across the press of the world and a lot of those people had exclusives and they went world wide, they built their careers on photo's and interviews from THAT night.
MANNI from today tonight being one of them, We were all carted off about 30 maybe 40 vehicles no file, just pandemonium u/turns, coppers abusing each other. The street was blocked, I could hear a woman crying it sounded like my flat mate, she had a little girl at home/I couldn't see her.
The lockup was in TURBOT St not Mackeston, the sight was surreal, multi-coloured haired kids and well dressed business people[media staff, in the middle of live to air']..camera crew, sort of middle-aged mans job, dress casual all being dragged backwards by the handcuffs through the car park of TURBOT street, where the fitness centre is now.
There was too many to process, people were starting to count and people were missing, bonds formed real quick. The older ones asking us if we were o.k.// a camera dude had broken teeth and was a popular bloke, the ranks were gathering around them, there were no mobiles but pagers, and they all used them. a well dressed man was holding a punk chicks head in his lap ,she was bleeding from her mouth, a short very loud dude had glass in his eye and he was cussing like the devil..he wants the editor here now ! ! !it took about 7/8 minutes which seamed like an eternity, but they came in cars and pulled straight up on the footpath camera's...lighting dudes filming from the top of their news vans. THESE CUNTS WERE SPRUNG...THIS WAS GOING WORLD WIDE.
The cops were freaking they tried to move cars to block angles, and held up sheets of white board, it was like a termites nest, pouring out of that building. Now cops had started to form behind the row of press people, they seemed stunned and misinformed, some still combing their hair...but they had guns.
A bullhorn sounded from somewhere and it was a clear well diction voice telling us to remain calm, please turn off extra news lighting ,they had an announcement. I was grabbed from behind by the cuffs and pulled into the building. I was told later that everybody left outside had their names taken and released. The cops at the rear, who were now including mounted troops parted and let them leave by heading up GEORGE St. Ambulances came and attended to about 8 people who couldn't walk .it was like a bomb, remember its only about 11 o'clock and late night clubbers from TRACS are pouring out into the street to witness this stream of injured moaning array of drifters.......all to the soundtrack of ''boogie fever'' blaring in the background.
About 3 days later it all came out. The press had been tipped off by a rouge cop, this was the protest error and they thought a bit of juicy coverage, they completely underestimated what was about to happen.
JACK BOOTS JOH, tried to put a gag on all press coverage, this made it worse, the whole world had already seen it.
They started to liken JOH'S Nazi behaviour to Germany and he was commonly referred to in the world press as ''the dictator''..all the Queensland mum and dads that had seen us as a scourge via the propaganda started to see us as aussie battlers remnant from their forefathers.
When the overzealous tasky's starting applying the no more than 3 people shit on the late night drinkers...it was the end, these were shift workers and railway/trucking/wharf workers, this is the salt of the city, they walk home together, have done for hundreds of years, the cops and JOH in particular had gone too far. In about august later that year, we all saw the ''illegal casino'' that didn't exist wink, wink, get furbished with a brand new roulette wheel, they lifted sheets of iron off (name withheld)'s roof ,stopped the traffic ,and lowered it by a huge crane at about 10 am on a Tuesday morning.......they had gone way too far. Shortly after this JOH'S health would fail rapidly, he became nicknamed ''The Fuhrer''. poor fuck'n Terry LEWIS took the rap cause the others hated him, Russ HINZE had an alcohol bill for 1979 for 65 thousand dollars...they threw him to the wolves too. But I know the real names and so do others.
The task force was disbanded and JOH would be hastily knighted by a corrupt governor general...ha ha ha ha SIR FUHRER ha ha ha hah. Many of those kids got their lives together and you would be amazed who they are, I was stuck in the music biz, and it was deep grained by now. The hiding from the cops during the day coincided nicely with the Chinese community of the valley's inport of top grade heroin, the cops were corrupt so were the politicians this meant it didn't have to be so secreted..the stuff was top grade/uncut/inexpensive/and the first hit was free and came with a clean needle. Everyone got rich and I stood and watched my friends die...one after another.
In 1980 Tim came and told me that this tasky went out with his ex's sister and had been stalking him, and said he would kill him. Tim had started carrying a little 38..in January they found Tim hanging from the Waterford railway bridge, he was a beautiful full of life pommie son with 3 brothers, he would give you the shirt off his back.........we know what happened mate, sorry we didn't listen.
I sit and wonder how much blood impregnates the streets of FORTITUDE VALLEY, how much of my blood, and the blood of those I love, so that the punk flag could be flown 6 years later under the guise of ''your pussies...we're hardcore''...my friends died for that Mohawk...