Hideouts, players and controversies: Central Queensland’s bikie saga

From the rise and fall of Queensland’s bikies, we reveal some of the major bikie-related events from Central Queensland and where their clubhouses were. SEE THE PICTURES

Queensland’s bikie saga has raged on for decades and Central Queensland has had it’s fair share of notable events.

Here are where the clubhouses where located, along with where some of the most notorious bikie incidents took place, across Rockhampton, Gladstone, Emerald, the Isaac and surrounds.

The hideouts

One hide-out was in an industrial estate on Emerald’s northside. PHOTO: Google Maps

The biggest gang in Australia was the Rebels, who were the most prominent bikies in Rockhampton.

Gladstone was home to a slew of chapters including Black Uhlans, Rebels, Bandidos and Odin‘s Warriors.

A former Boyne Island hide-out. PHOTO: Google Maps

At least five former hide-out locations have been made public, including 6 Enterprise Street at Boyne Island, 5/17 Cotton View Road in Emerald, 35 Hanson Road in Gladstone Central, 2106 Round Hill Road, Round Hill and 36 East Lane in Rockhampton City.

A former clubhouse on Hanson Road, Gladstone Central. PHOTO: Google Maps

The East Lane hide-out belonged to the Rebels.

The Enterprise Street address was home to an Outlaws chapter.

Odin‘s Warriors had a local chapter at Round Hill.

It’s also understood there were chapters in Tannum Sands and Moura.

The Rockhampton Rebels clubhouse on East Lane. PHOTO: Google Maps

Police sensationally claimed that all bikie clubhouses from the Sunshine Coast to Mackay had been shut down in 2014.

About 80 addresses were raided including at Rockhampton, Gladstone, Emerald and Emu Park.

Following this, Acting Superintendent Bruce McNab said 11 people have been charged with 13 offences.

A former clubhouse on Round Hill Road. PHOTO: Google Maps

The players

James Thomas ‘Jimmy’ O‘Brien was convicted in 2008 for unlawfully trafficking methamphetamine and marijuana sativa, plus seven counts of unlawfully producing meth.

He was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment.

Court documents show O’Brien produced and distributed drugs in collusion with Mackay meth cook Michael Paul Falzon.

O’Brien’s ex-partner Debra Dangerfield was a Crown witness to the court case and she saw him producing drugs near Dalby and the Isaac Coast.

Ms Dangerfield saw O’Brien and Falzon producing meth in a property at Notch Point near Ilbilbie, the court heard.

At least five kilograms of substance was produced, which resembled brown sugar.

Six months earlier, she became suspicious of O’Brien being involved in criminal activity after seeing him handling large sums of cash.

They eventually packed up the Notch Point meth lab and hid the drugs in hollow pieces of timber which were attached to their vehicles and painted to blend in.

Ms Dangerfield regularly drove O’Brien from place to place because he didn’t have a licence.

The timber pieces with the drugs were delivered to Adelaide.

She recalled her son Corey, who was 15 when she first started dating O’Brien in 1997, worked for Falzon and flew to Brisbane with heaps of $50 notes in his jacket.

Corey told the court he saw numerous drug productions.

He said he flew from Mackay to Brisbane carrying between $40,000 to $60,000 about five times on Falzon’s instructions.

The court heard O’Brien was also producing meth at Ms Dangerfield’s Kaimkillenbun property outside of Dalby.

On all but one occasion he delivered the money to O’Brien but on the other occasion O’Brien told him to give it to another man.

Falzon told Corey that if he was found in possession of the cash, he should say that they’d struck opal at Coober Pedy and the money was to maintain vehicles there. But Falzon told him they found nothing of importance at Coober Pedy.

The court heard Corey profited from selling marijuana for O’Brien.

After the Dangerfields spoke to police, phone conversations between Falzon and O’Brien were intercepted.

Falzon was contacted on September 16, 2003 and told that O’Brien was arrested in a car with a large quantity of pseudoephedrine.

The man who owned the property the Notch Point meth lab was delivered to phoned O’Brien later and told him that Corey was the police’s source of information.

Falzon was interviewed by police in October 2003 and told police he and O’Brien invested in bulldozers and sold their opals to a Chinese buyer for $600,000. Falzon denied he was producing meth with O’Brien.

Falzon was found guilty by a jury of drug trafficking, one count of drug possession and three counts of drug production in the Supreme Court in Brisbane in May 2009.

That court heard Falzon was at the ‘top of the tree’ of the trafficking operation and O’Brien handled much of the drugs to supply them to the Rebels.

James O'Brien standing behind $3 million in ill-gotten gains dug up from a dam on Falzon's property. O'Brien kept the photo in his truck.

O’Brien was originally imprisoned at Woodford Correctional Centre, which was the Newman government’s prison exclusively for bikies.

His solicitor Doug Winning told the Morning Bulletin in 2013 that he was put in solitary confinement at Capricornia Correctional Centre.

He was reportedly moved back to Woodford in 2014.

O’Brien and Falzon produced over $28 million worth of speed.

Then-Chief Justice Tim Carmody found Falzon and O’Brien produced 200kg of meth, selling it for $88,184 a kilogram, the Supreme Court in Brisbane heard in 2015.

Justice Carmody ordered they forfeit $14,051,238.56 each to the State of Queensland as proceeds of crime.

The CCC later said it was the biggest proceeds of crime order in Queensland’s history.

O’Brien was eligible for parole in 2019.

As for Falzon, he was jailed for 10 years serving at least 80 per cent without parole.

Falzon tried to appeal his conviction but the Court of Appear rejected it on December 18, 2009 on the grounds that the jury verdicts weren’t shown to be unreasonable.

Agnes Water’s link to bikies

A Black Uhlans member was arrested in Agnes Water on September 28, 2018.

Nathanael Paul Nahow, 42, pleaded guilty on November 19, 2019 to six offences including demanding property with menace, three counts of common assault and threatening violence.

Crown prosecutor Jacqueline Ball told the Bundaberg District Court he assaulted three men in one week at his girlfriend’s home.

His first assault was of a man living at his girlfriend’s home after accusing him of stealing.

The court heard Nahow hit the man in the back of the head as he tried to leave through the door, and the victim fell to the ground.

He then pulled the man to his feet and hit him again after the victim swung at him and ran after the victim.

The second attack was of another person when the victim walked into the house.

Nahow approached him aggressively and told him to sit down and demanded he owed him $3000.

The victim turned to leave but Nahow assaulted him causing him to fall into a pole.

Nahow told one of his friends to sit down and take off his glasses before punching him on the left side of the face, in a separate attack.

After the victim told Nahow he didn’t have $20,000, Nahow held a foot-long machete to the man’s neck.

Nahow said it wasn’t his problem and said ‘you better come up with the f---ing money or I’ll put you in a hole out the back next to the dog.”

But Nahow offered the man a beer after he said he’d try.

A magistrates court was told Nahow was an alleged bikie in April 2019.

Defence barrister Callan Cassidy told the court Nahow was a fourth generation South Sea Islander and moved to Australia with his family when he was three years old.

Mr Cassidy said Nahow‘s girlfriend told him she thought the three men were involved with stealing her property.

He pleaded guilty on November 18, 2019 to six offences including demanding property with menace, three counts of common assault and threatening violence.

He was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment with immediate parole after already serving 418 days in jail.

Police intrusion on funeral

But it’s not just the bikies themselves that have been targeted by authorities over the years.

The late James Henzell was not a member of any outlaw motorcycle club before his death in 2016.

Mr Henzell was the brother-in-law of Black Uhlan Sergeant-at-Arms Chris Hawes.

His funeral had 300 attendees but garnered a significant police presence with up to 30 cops setting up roadblocks and drug testing attendees before and after the service, The Gladstone Observer reported on May 26, 2016.

“James, my brother in law and I had a discussion regarding funeral wishes a few weeks ago and he asked that my brothers and I wear our club colours and lead the possession doubling his sons,” Mr Hawes said in an open statement.

Mr Hawes said the wife of a police officer contacted him afterwards and apologised for the distress the police presence caused for the grieving family.

Queensland Police told The Observer two police officers from Taskforce Maxima had been brought up from Brisbane for the event and six people had been charged with drug driving, although no one was charged with contravening VLAD laws.

Mr Henzell’s dad David Henzell, who isn’t a member of an outlaw gang either or accused of any involvement in criminal activity, spoke out about the police presence at his son‘s funeral.

“To be honest I feel for the police that were ordered to go out there that day. I‘m sure there were some who didn’t enjoy what they were doing,” David said.

“Maybe my son‘s death has made a statement here …. What freedom do we have if we can’t bury our loved ones in peace?”