As heads of the Mr Asia syndicate, Terry Clark and Bob Trimbole were the most dangerous men Downunder. SCOTT KARA talks to Kiwi actor Roy Billing about the ruthless crims brought to life in the second series of Underbelly
KEY POINTS:
Terry Clark and Bob Trimbole were an odd couple. But in the late 70s and early 80s these two unlikely partners in crime used their distinct talents to build up a multimillion-dollar drug ring and rule organised crime Downunder.
A charismatic and cunning Kiwi, Clark was a nasty
bit of work by all accounts, who needed Aussie Bob's contacts and access to his extensive distribution network, which he'd garnered from years of dealing marijuana. In return, Trimbole needed Clark's business nous, charm and ruthlessness.
Along with a rag-tag gang of traffickers, hired heavies, and corrupt cops, they masterminded the importation and distribution of hundreds of kilos of heroin into New Zealand and Australia which the media labelled the Mr Asia Syndicate.
It is this story - the rise and fall of Trimbole and Clark - that forms the basis for the second series of Underbelly, a prequel to the first series, which centred on the Melbourne gangland wars of the late-90s and early 2000s. Underbelly: The Mr Asia Story premieres on TV3 this Wednesday at 8.30pm.
New Zealand actor Roy Billing, who plays the food and gee-gees loving Trimbole, remembers the Mr Asia case well. He was living in Auckland and read journalist Pat Booth's series of articles in the Auckland Star exposing the drug ring and his subsequent book, The Mr Asia File.
Billing also recalls a story from 1976 about the first shipment of "buddha sticks" - a potent Thai variety of marijuana - that Clark (who would earn the nickname Mr Asia) and his associate Marty Johnstone (who wound up dead on Clark's orders, with his hands cut off and teeth missing, many years later) brought in on the yacht Brigadoon. The thing was, at the end of its fraught journey from New Zealand to Thailand and back again, it ran aground in the
Bay Of Islands.
"Everybody in Auckland, apart from the cops, knew there were these Thai buddha sticks coming in," says Billing. "And they got the shipment off before the cops got them."
The buddha sticks were just the beginning and it was also in 1976 that Trimbole and Clark met in Sydney. Before these two got together organised crime was about bank robberies, heists, protection rackets, prostitution, and gambling.
"Then suddenly," says Billing, "these guys set up, in business terms, something that was easier and far more profitable. Selling marijuana might be easy but when you've got a product like a shoe box of heroin, it becomes a highly prized product that you push through your distribution network and make huge amounts of money with none of the hassles of having to rob banks.
"That set up the environment the Melbourne gangs in the 90s could operate from. It was the beginning of the hard drug business in a big way. I read in Pat Booth's book that the cops could not really get their heads around the fact heroin was coming into New Zealand in such large quantities."
And Underbelly: The Mr Asia Story, which also stars rising New Zealand actress Anna Hutchison as Clark's lover and drug trafficker Alison Dine, documents the sex, drugs, and murder that went down between 1976 and 1987 in gritty detail.
"And it's driven by great scripts. That's the key," says Billing.
When it premiered in Australia in early February it was watched by 2.58 million viewers, making it the highest-rating scripted programme ever to screen there.
However, the good townspeople of Griffith - Trimbole owned an orchard there, but rather than apples or oranges it was marijuana he was growing - complained about inaccuracies in the show. One instance is when Trimbole threatens to kill New South Wales politician and anti-drugs campaigner Don Mackay at a rally in the town, which didn't actually happen. "It does say at the beginning of the series it is based on actual events," says Billing. "Trimbole
didn't actually do that at a public rally but he did go to the police whom he had paid off anyway."
Being able to call on a host of corrupt cops was one of Aussie Bob's key roles in the syndicate. Billing reckons neither Clark or Trimbole were dominant "and the way we play it they actually quite like each other, in an odd couple father and son type thing".
The pair's relationship was never really reported on fully. "Because those guys were very clever criminals. They flew beneath the radar, not like the Melbourne gangs of the first series who were out blazing at each other in the streets. These were clever crooks."
In the show Trimbole may not come across as ruthless as Clark, but he is dead set on doing anything to protect his business interests.
"He might be nice uncle Bob on the outside but there has to be a certain ruthlessness. And that's the thing about being a good crook, you get on well with everybody, present a good face to the community but underneath you are doing all these things."
Billing, who moved across the Tasman in 1989 and is now one of the busiest actors in Australia, rates Trimbole as the role of a lifetime - "Every actor in Australia would have wanted this."
He researched his character through newspapers, old TV footage, and by meeting friends and acquaintances of the Australian-born Italian, who died in Spain in 1987. Trimbole was never tried in court for his alleged part in the murder of Mackay and New Zealand drug traffickers Doug and Isabel Wilson.
The people who knew Trimbole, including some Italian extras on the Underbelly set, said he came across as a likeable chap.
"He was all around town, he was pretty well-known and that's part of the reason he was such a great corrupter of police and officials, because he was out there among it," says Billing.
Although, you sense Billing is careful not to lay too much affection on Aussie Bob.
"I've tried to play him as a sort of bloke who has got a bit of a life and is well-rounded. I think the secret to a villain is to make him quite normal but every now and then the audience will go, 'Oh my God he's just ordered someone to get killed'.
"The good crims don't run around like they are mafia gangsters, they are just out there in the community and are what appear to be normal people."
"But," he adds, "the way they make their money is by no means the way you and I would dream of doing it. They cross a line that none of us can cross over."
LOWDOWN
Who: Roy Billing, as Bob Trimbole (aka Aussie Bob)
What: Underbelly: The Mr Asia Story
Where & when: TV3, Wednesdays, 8.30pmKIWI