Within a year of Sir Henry Bolte's appointment as Victorian Premier in 1955, bribery allegations prompted newly appointed Chief Commissioner, Selwyn Porter (right) to order a clean-up of gaming-squad police.

The clean-up, headed by ex-military man Mick Miller, was so effective that it caused a shake-out in the control of the underworld, with criminal elements from the waterfront moving in to fill the void.

Employment on the waterfront was on a casual basis.

Workers would turn up when they wanted to see what jobs were available, a crook could give the appearance of  full-time employment.

Waterfront factions fought for control of the iron-fisted federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union and its organised criminal enterprises.

Criminals had joined in 1939 to avoid wartime manpower regulations.

From then on, the union had represented an uneasy alliance between men who did a dangerous and physically demanding job and criminals who used it as a front.

Similar to Italian crime gangs, the 'Dockies' followed an unwritten set of rules which included assistance to members, rejection of conventional justice and, of course, silence.

Armed robbery and the smuggling of illegal aliens was rife.

The distribution of drugs also proved a lucrative pursuit while there was a jackpot to be made from gambling, sly grog and prostitution rackets, and organised fraud.

In the 1950s, police said that of Victoria's most wanted criminals, at least 70 had links with the union.

There were two obvious reasons why the docks were the perfect hub for drug trafficking: they afforded an ideal entry point for the smuggle, and the waterside worker' extensive criminal contacts enabled the gear to be quickly spread to the dealers and the users.

Most of the drugs coming in were being imported by Chinese triads.

The union and some police became involved as each group sought their cut of the profits.

Police had been involved with the Chinese for many years pertaining to illegal gambling in China Town in Melbourne and similar Asian quarters throughout Australia.

The waterside crime war gripped Melbourne and Sydney from the late 1950s to the early 1980s.

Many fell during what was a wild Jimmy Cagney-style battle fought in the streets and in the pubs between factions of the union.

It was a conflict that claimed at least forty lives and the now oft-quoted motto "We catch and kill our own" was coined by the Dockies.

Police apparently refused to act on the violence involved with the union, the allegation being that police were being paid to give Painters and Dockers a free reign.

The allegations against police was given further credence when the then chief of the Victorian Homicide Squad, Kevin Carton, found the Victoria Police not competent to investigate the murders and prepared a report that called for a judicial inquiry.

His appeal was declined.

Freddie 'the frog' Harrison was known as a standover king.

He was a gunman who ran an inner-suburbs protection racket in the 50's and demanded money from sellers of sly grog and SP bookies.

He had, according to police, killed at least two men and wounded many others.

With his wide-brimmed hat, expensive overcoat and flash cars, he looked every inch the gangster.

He loved the image and was often seen at movie cinemas watching the latest crime flicks.

On February 1, 1958, Freddie, while on the booze, is said to have blown half a mate's hand off with a shotgun.

He had gone pig-shooting in New South Wales with John Eric "Jack" Twist and Harold Nugent, two fellow dockies.

According to Tom Prior in his book 'Untold Violence', things turned nasty and there was a falling out.

Inside a car, Harrison turned a shotgun on Nugent and told him he was 'too big for his boots'.

As Harrison fired, Nugent pushed the gun away with his hands, losing two fingers and a thumb in the process.

Harrison turned the shotgun on Twist and fired.

The gun jammed and Twist wrestled it away.

Harrison managed to drive off, leaving Twist with the bloodied Nugent.

Nugent later said he wounded himself in an accident while carrying his gun like a walking-stick - the wounds to the back of his hands, however, were puzzling.

Freddie was killed at 4.40pm on the grey afternoon of February 6, 1958.

Harrison was being assisted by docker Bobby Hayes as he uncoupled a trailer from his Ford Customline at 13 South Wharf on the Melbourne waterfront.

A gunman walked up to Harrison and said, 'This is yours Fred', and blasted half his head away with a 12-gauge shotgun. He fired less than a metre from Harrison's head.

This happened in front of dozens of work mates. At least 30 dockies had been standing nearby working on a ship, the River Murchison, moored at the wharf.

All claimed to have seen nothing including Hayes who was covered with Harrison's blood and brains.

Hayes later told an inquest into Harrison's death: "I stood up, turned right and walked away, I didn't look back."

When asked why he refrained from looking back, he said: "Because the explosion was on my left."

Homicide Squad boss Detective Inspector Charles Perry told the inquest: "At least a dozen witnesses have said they were in the toilet when Harrison was killed. "Your Honour, it is a two-man toilet."

Constable Reginald George Wilkinson noticed a boy scurrying off near the docks with something hidden in his cardigan.

He apprehended and searched the teenager, and found he had been carrying a cardboard ammunition carton containing 12-gauge shotgun cartridges.

There were 22 of them, and a further two shells in the boy's pocket.

The box had originally contained 25 shells.

The shells contained number 4 shot, the same type used to kill Harrison 150 metres away.

The boy, Charlie Wootton, told police he had found the box. 

Charles Joseph Wootton, born in Sydney in 1941, was Harold Nugent's step-son.

In later-life, Wooton would become part of a violent union waterside faction.

He later became a very successful businessman but was often linked to illegal casinos and other gambling establishments. 

Jack Twist, later suspected of being involved with drugs, was interrogated by police after Harrison's murder but no charges were laid.

He died in mid-1988 of cancer after moving to Hastings, on Victoria's south eastern coast.

Harrison's murder went unsolved.

After the 1970 death of union secretary Jimmy Donnergan of a liver complaint, a violent power struggle began which, on the surface, was over the control of union affairs.

In reality, it was a battle over who would control a large slice of the Melbourne underworld.

Billy 'the Texan' Longley was one of the most feared men on the docks during the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Known as "The Texan" because he wore a Stetson and carried a Colt .45, Longley lived in a heavily fortified home in Port Melbourne.

Longley was a presidential candidate and the leader of a union faction at war with that of popular union secretary Patrick Francis Shannon's (right).

In 1971 Longley, a painters and dockers executive, held a membership ticket opposing his enemy. He wanted to the union presidency while Shannon wanted to be re-elected secretary.

The Shannon faction had the blue tickets while the Longley faction had the white, stamped with the words: Members - We have selected a change in the top leadership of our union.

In December 1970, painter and docker Robert John Crotty suffered a fractured skull during an altercation outside a South Melbourne pub.

He was one of Longley's closest friends.

Police were told Crotty, who had been beaten with a housebrick, 'fell over and hurt himself'."

He suffered multiple fractures of his skull and spent the last seven years of his life as a virtual vegetable before dying in 1978.

Alfred "The Ferret" Nelson was an illiterate union welfare officer.

The good friend of Pat Shannon vanished without trace in December 1971.

Another suggestion was that he had been "buried" with his car.

Police received information he had been abducted from his home in Langridge Street, Collingwood, as he was having his shower.

Six weeks after his disappearance, Nelson's car, a two-door automatic Valliant Charger sedan, was fished from 10m of water near off No 21, South Wharf but his body was never found.

Five men were said to have been involved in Nelson's kidnapping but no one was ever charged.

A Sun newspaper article said:

"No one on  the waterfront has suggested the easy going Nelson had anything to do with (Crotty's) maiming. But he was, it was said, a friend of the group blamed for it and, as one underworld identity put it, he was 'easy pickings'.

He was shot dead with a 12-gauge and a .410-gauge shotgun and his body dumped in an open excavation ditch in Clifton Hill.

This was said to be in revenge for the murder of Nelson who has disappeared only days before.

Nearly ten years earlier, he had been acquitted of the shooting murder of criminal Osmond James "Hoppy" Kelly.

His head was mutilated by shotgun blasts.

Legend has it that Costello asked for a last cigarette but was told that there was not time.

He then lifted his hand in a futile attempt to protect his face.

Police heard claims that he had been dragged, bare-footed, from his home in East Preston.

Although many believed Costello's death was a reprisal for Nelson's disappearance, others formed the view that a gang of criminals wanted the money he was reputed to have gained from a $587,000 armed robbery in Sydney.

Senior Sergeant J. A. Sadler would later tell an inquest into Costello's death:

"He had a long criminal history of violence and dishonesty dating back to 1943. He was a painter and docker by occupation. Inquiries were hampered by the refusal of many of his associates to assist police. At the time of his death, elections were being held on the waterfront and several painters and dockers were shot and several severely assaulted in what appeared to be shows of strength by the two factions attempting to gain control of the union."

At the time, the Sun's Tom Prior wrote:

"Melbourne is in the middle of its worst underworld gang feud in many years. One man has been murdered and one is missing, believed murdered. Another is crippled and probably unconscious for life, and at least two have serious head injuries. Several men are hiding - and three are said to have been nominated to be 'shot on sight'."

According to Frank Costigan, QC, the man employed to run a royal commission into the criminal activities of the union, Terry Gordon, the union secretary, was an effective controller of the organisation.

"For some of the public statements he has made, it appears he entertained and accepted a high level of violence in the conduct of union affairs", Costigan would later say in his royal commission report.

"For example, when Costello was brutally murdered in late 1971, Gordon, when asked whether that was unusual, said: "I know managing directors who got shot, wharfies who have got shot, people in all walks of life who have got shot. What is happening within the union is the union's own affair, and will be settled inside the union'."

During the elections, the union's South Melbourne office was under fire.

At least seven bullets were fired into the building.

Shortly after, a shotgun was also fired in to the gates at Bill Longley's home.

A week before the election, Longley went into hiding but his wife and child remained at the house.

At the Williamstown naval dockyards on the day of the election, December 10, 1971, there were at least two gunfights.

About 7.15am, 45 minutes before polling was to begin, a carload of men arrived at the Williamstown docks.

They forced their votes into the box and then stayed in their car, with a machinegun trained on other voters.

Another group arrived and a gun battle ensued, in which three men were reputedly shot and 50 shots were fired into their car.

Bill Longley survived a savage gun attack believed to have been carried out by some of Shannon's supporters.

Late on the day of the election, Longley drove to the Williamstown Naval Dockyards with close associate and infamous gunman, James Frederick Bazely who was standing on Longley's ticket.

He left Bazely's car parked just outside the main gates and walked towards the voting area.

Bazely then stood with a gun in his hand and a foot on the ballot box.

According to Longley, the returning officer told him that they had clearly won the election.

As Longley chatted with supporters among the hundred or so crowd, he suddenly noticed some new arrivals.

According to Longley's statement at a later Commission, the men turned up in five cars and began shooting.

The votes were being counted by retired union official Pat Cullen.

Longley told journalist Paul Anderson that "Cullen was counting the votes and when he finished, naturally I was interested."

"I'll never forget the words he said to me: 'Billy, you not only won, you shit it in. I'll see you back at the union rooms.' That's where he would have declared it (the ballot result). Myself and a few others got into a friend's car and we pulled out from the curb. We had only driven four car lengths when 'Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang'."

"I can recall the car windows were down and the bullets were going so close, you could hear them singing past. Believe me, it was close. It has been said that a machinegun was produced and the window of the car I was in was shot out from the inside and a hail of machinegun bullets hit one of their cars. It got hit by that many bullets it had to be taken away and cut up."

At the Costigan Royal Commission, Longley said Cullen "had received an offer too good to refuse,"

"Rumour has it that it (the offer) was a pistol to the head," Longley said.

Longley named Bob Dix (Pat Shannon's driver), Charlie Wooton and Corsetti (a long-time associate of Wooton), as being in the car.

He could not be sure who was shooting.

Wooton was among nine men associated with the dockers to be shot and wounded the following year.

In the 70's, Wooton allegedly made millions out of Bacarat schools using dockies as hard men who ensured the swift running of the schools and the prompt payment of debts.

Wooton was convicted of gaming offences in 1975 and 1979 and then twice in the late 1980's.

He was fined on each occasion.

During the election day offensive, the aggressors stole the ballot papers on the suspicion they had lost the vote.

Votes for the Longley team were reportedly taken out and replaced with votes for the Shannon team.

Many were destroyed.

Doug Sproule, a union vigilance officer, was a target of pre-election violence and, after the violent election day, his car was torched.

Sproule surmised: "It could have been spontaneous combustion." 

Although Longley fled the shooting unscathed, his house was bombed and shotgunned, the favour being later returned into the car and neighbours house of Charlie Wooten.

Laurence Richard Chamings was a union affiliate.

On the last day of 1971, he survived after being shot in his car in Fitzroy.

Chamings and another docker were blasted by a shotgun fired from another car in Gertrude Street.

Chamings was hit in the shoulder.

He was killed in a nearby pub in an incident which saw a young boy also die sixteen months later.

On January 24, 1972, the union's South Melbourne office was fire bombed.

Union papers including some of the ballot were destroyed by fire.

The following morning a bomb was thrown at the Longley house which had only been vacated by Longley's wife and daughter 15 minutes before.

The next day the election results were proclaimed at a meeting of the union.

The Shannon ticket was declared the winner.

Allegations of vote-rigging were raised immediately.

Joey Hamilton, a young painter and docker, was shot in mid-March 1972.

Hamilton was blasted in the groin after opening his sister's front door.

He would later be involved in a bombing, allegedly the work of corrupt police, before becoming a prison activist. (More)

A few days later a shotgun blast shattered the window of a St Kilda house.

Police believed the offender got the wrong house and was looking for a neighbour, Charlie Wooten. 

James Bazely, an alleged hit man who had been a target of pre-election violence, was later wounded in two separate ambushes, the first of which occurring in May 1972, 

He caught machinegun fire at the gate of his North Carlton home after being beaten for the position of vigilance officer in that year's election.

Fourteen shots were fired.

Bazely, who had also been shot in the thigh, pulled a bullet from his shoulder on the way to hospital.

He told police he did not have a clue who shot him.

A police officer said at the time: "He has been marked for execution by the underworld hierarchy. He was lucky this time. Next time he might not escape with minor wounds."

But that he did.

He survived another attempted hit, in September the same year, when struck by bullets as he sat in his car in Carlton.

Bazely was shot in the head and hand.

Thomas Connellan was cut down when shot from behind on the grounds of Preston Girl's High School.

He survived.

When the Melbourne waterfront war was in full flight, Bill Longley, described as an " evil genius" disappeared from sight.

Despite being one of Melbourne underworld's most sought-after figures, Longley managed to elude both police and his many enemies for 16 months.

He wet into hiding in early 1973. A huge police hunt in 1973, '74 and '75 failed to find him.

"I was very fortunate in that I had an excellent network of very good friends who looked after me," he says.

"I remember a detective getting in the box during my trial and saying police had a squad of 21 men looking for me around the clock. 

While Longley ran free, the painters and dockers waged war.

Terry Gordon told a federal inquiry into the waterfront, 'we catch and kill our own'.

The State Secretary, Pat Shannon, echoed these sentiments by adding that 'no stray bullet or bomb has ever harmed a non-union member'.

This rhetoric was blown apart when 10 year old Nicholas "Nicko" Korvat was killed in April 1973.

The boy was shot in the gun battle at the Moonee Valley Hotel, Fitzroy, in which Laurence Chamings lost his life.

Nicko was sipping lemonade next to his dad Klarko annd brother Peter and sat frozen, not really understanding what was going on.

Chamings burst inside while under fire and was hit and killed and little Nicko caught a stray.

He had turned towards the gunman and been shot between the eyes.

His father was wounded in the shooting.

Police arrested Barry "The Bear" Kable and charged him with the shootings.

But Kable was acquitted.

In Sydney later, Kable was attacked by three men, bashed and left with a blood-clot on the brain.

Actor/songwriter Russell Crowe wrote a song about Kable (The legend of Barry Kable) who wound up living on the stretch of street around the Darlinghurst Post Office, surviving on cheap port and the kindness of people like Crowe's bandmate Dean Cochran, who drove a van for the Sydney City Mission for seven years.

"When he was intoxicated Barry was very hard to handle. But when he was lucid, he would start telling Dean these stories about his life and how he’d got to that point of being a man who sits and drinks a couple of bottles of port a day on a Sydney street," Crowe said in an interview.

"Barry had this incredible history of being involved with the Painter and Docker Union, he was a strong arm man, and he was, by all accounts, not a very nice chap, you know."

On October 17, 1973, Pat Shannon was gunned down in South Melbourne's Druid's Hotel (now the Water Rat).

At 9.55pm, Shannon was drinking when a man walked in carrying a .22 calibre rifle.

The gunman pumped three shots into him and died instantly.

Police arrested four men over the murder: Longley, Kevin James Taylor, Gary Leslie Harding and Alfred Leslie Cannott.

Harding made a three-page statement to police.

In court, the Crown alleged that Longley paid Taylor $6,000 for the hit and that Harding pointed Shannon out to Taylor in the hotel.

Harding's evidence was that he waited in the car and Taylor ran up, threw the gun into the back seat and said: "I shot him, I got him".

Longley, Taylor and Harding were convicted of Shannon's murder, Cannott was convicted of manslaughter.

Within 12 months Harding was dead, hacked to death in his Pentridge jail cell.

Longley maintains his innocence.

Victor Frederick Allard was a big man with a reputation as a standover man.

Allard was one of the first Painters and Dockers to step up to the world of drug trafficking.

He became a street heroin dealer and a well known figure with the prostitutes in St Kilda.

In 1977 he was shot in the stomach while drinking at a South Melbourne hotel but survived.

In his book, Chopper - From the Inside, Mark 'Chopper' Read says that Allard smashed him over the head with an iron bar.

The incident is said to have occurred at St Kilda's George Hotel.

Allard later agreed to break the underworld code of silence and become a secret police informer on a major drug ring.

At a Richmond hotel  in mid-1978, one of Chuck Bennett's men, Victor Mikkelsen, refused a drink from fiery dockie, Les Kane.

A brawl resulted and Les had an ear almost bitten off.

On October 19, 1978, Kane, who allegedly made a nice quid out of threatening misery to others, was bundled into a distinctive pink Ford Futura.

His wife Judy was pushed away by three masked men with machine guns.

Kane was never seen again.

On February 9, 1979, Victor Allard was shot dead.

The dockie-turned-informer had been offered police protection but he told them he felt safer on the street where nobody would suspect he was a double agent.

Allard was blasted three times in the stomach as he walked along Fitzroy St, while in the company of Richmond heroin baron Dennis Allen.

He was in debt over drug deals at the time of his death.

Allen became the prime suspect but was never charged.

In November 1979, the BCI received information on a narcotics drop from Thailand arranged by Graham Allan Kinniburgh through the painters and dockers.  

A phone tap was immediately put on Kinniburgh's North Melbourne home.

Kinniburgh was a close associate of high-profile underworld figure Alphonse Gangitano.

Gangitano was from a respectable Italian family but not one that had connections with the Calabrian and Sicilian organised crime syndicates.

In his life as a criminal this lack of forced allegiances allowed him to move amongst the two main Italian groups as well as dealing with mainstream Australian criminals associated with the Painters and Dockers. 

Kinniburgh was shot dead in December 2003.

Many other unionists died violently through underworld feuds and power plays.

But Bill Longley continued to survive.

There was a price on his head but he also had strong men on his side.

Longley always maintained his innocence over the killing of Pat Shannon and was desperate for a new trial to clear his name.

He saw publicity as his only hope.

In 1980 he did the unthinkable and told the story of the union in the most public way by agreeing to be interviewed in a series of articles in The Bulletin.

He told of how the union serves as a front for organised crime and that millions of dollars were made through illegal activity and corruption.

"Don't let anyone kid you that there is no corruption on the Australian waterfront," he said. "It's rife.

Longley added that he could "name 20 or 30 people who have been knocked by the painters and dockers".

"They have either been killed for money or simply their mouths. This is not just in Melbourne, but in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth"

He said that "ghosting" had been occurring on the docks and that the organisers of the racket had at one time taken out a contract to murder someone and killed an innocent person instead.

Longley said that the man had got away with it.

Victorian police launched an investigation into Longley's claims but came back with a report that played down the statements.

Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser however was far more interested, Longley's claims disturbing him greatly.

He decided that only a royal commission could settle the question once and for all of what was happening in the union.

Francis (Frank) Xavier Costigan, QC, was picked to preside and opened his hearings at the Williamstown Court on October 1, 1980, with more than 200 union members protesting outside.

Allan David Williams was a former docker who supplied drugs to Dennis Allen.

Williams brother in law was mistakenly killed by a man acting for Allen who believed him to be Williams.

Williams was also a friend of big time speed dealer John William Higgs.

It was Williams who attempted to have policeman Mick Drury assassinated in the early 1980s so that he would not give evidence to sink Williams heroin empire.

He had sold heroin to Drury at the Old Melbourne Hotel.

When police swooped for the arrest, Williams was startled by the screeching tyres of an over anxious police officer.

A former footballer, Williams legged it, outrunning police.

Jason Moran
Notorious criminal Jason Moran was entrenched in the painters and dockers culture as a water-side worker.

The stand-over man and half brother of Mark Moran, gunned down in June 2000, was himself murdered in June 2003.

The Morans were feared in the Melbourne underworld and have faced many charges relating to high level amphetamine trafficking. 

They were also involved with the Flemington crew of armed robbers.

These included Frank Valastro, Graeme Jensen, Mark Militano and Walsh Street suspect Jedd Houghton.

Career criminal Raymond Denning once claimed that the Morans were directly involved with the armed robbery and shooting of a security guard in July 1988.

This robbery is said to have directly led to the Walsh Street police shootings.

Victor Peirce
Peirce, a member of the Pettingill crime family who was acquitted of the 1988 Walsh Street police shootings, worked on the docks for four years before he was shot dead on May 1, 2002.

Peirce (pictured with wife Wendy) was sitting in his car in Bay Street, Port Melbourne when another car pulled up along side and Peirce was shot three times.

The shooters car was a mid-80's Commodore, eerily similar to the one used to lure the two young policeman to Walsh Street in 1988.

The car was found burnt out the next morning.

Faruk Orman was later arrested and charged while police believe slain hitman Andrew Veniamin was also involved.