A Periodic Tale by Karl Kruszelnicki

Author:Karl Kruszelnicki [Kruszelnicki, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC Books
Published: 2024-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Bikie showdown

None of the people my mess drove out of the squat directly complained to me. But I came to find out that at least one of them was not happy with what I had done. Obviously, I had ruffled his feathers!

I was vaguely aware that, at the time, one of the ex-housemates was a very junior bikie (also known as a ‘nom’, short for nominee). Apparently, after he left, he had risen through the ranks!

A few years later, I was in regular employment at a hospital (but still squatting). One morning, I got up early for my usual run around Wentworth Park, something I loved. It turned out to be extremely lucky timing, because if I had woken a single minute later, it might have been too late to hear and see a gang of bikies rumbling around the corner.

Darghan Street wasn’t somewhere bikies just turned up for fun, and they’d certainly never appeared en masse like this before, to my knowledge. It was a dead-end street, and it wasn’t like they were collecting door-to-door for the Red Cross. As I cautiously stuck just the merest part of my head out the front door, I saw a long column of maybe twenty or thirty motorbikes still coming around the corner, straight for me! It was early, only about a quarter to six, and I had a fleeting thought that I had to be in scrubs by 7.20 am. But right now, that was the least of my problems!

Reflex panic kicked in. My mind went into overdrive. As soon as I saw those bikies, I knew they were coming for me, and why. I instantly figured that the former nom had by now gained some seniority in the gang and was coming back for revenge – along with plenty of his bikie mates. And I strongly suspected that apologies and the offer of a nice cup of tea and a bikkie wasn’t going to calm them down!

I shut the front door and ran as quickly as I could out the back, down the lane and towards the corner. I ran until I was behind the bikies and out of their sight, but I could still see them. I heard the loud shout of, ‘Hey, Karl, we’re coming for you. We’re going to kill you!’ Some of them had already kicked the flimsy front door open and were fanning through my little house.

By good fortune, there was a public payphone outside the shop on the corner. From my hiding place, there I could still see and hear the bikies shouting their true feelings about me to the entire street. With my heart pounding, I called triple zero and asked for the police, saying, ‘Come quick – there are bikies killing this guy at Darghan Street in the squats.’ I hung up. It was close enough to true – they definitely wanted to kill somebody, and that somebody was me!

With zero delay, I called triple zero again and asked for the ambulance.

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