‘Never met a tougher bloke’
Peter Peirano first met Mervyn Schwarz, one of the victims of the Bogie shootings, 40 years ago and said emphatically there was no one tougher than his old friend.
“I’ve never met a tougher man than Merv,” he said, telling a story from 30 years ago to prove his point.
By Mr Peirano’s account, Mr Schwarz had travelled to a cattle property near Tambo and “came off a motorbike” in the “middle of nowhere”.
“He gashed himself severely and he sewed himself up,” Mr Peirano said.
“Not many people can do that.
“He must have had a first aid kit or something, but without any anaesthetic or nothing, he sewed himself up.
“I would have passed out.” Mr Peirano said Mr Schwarz confronted death at that moment.
“He would have bled out,” he said.
“If he didn’t sew himself up, he would have bled out.
“Absolutely, it was sew himself up or die.”
Mr Peirano, an insurance broker in Rockhampton, met the Schwarz family when they ran a petrol station in the Beef Capital many moons ago at the intersection of Richardson and Yaamba roads.“it was just an old country servo with hay and rural produce,” he said.
“All of the Schwarz’s were hard workers.”
“They were country people. “Rocky’s a country town like Mackay, everybody knows pretty well everybody.
“And they were a famous family, famous for hard work and dedication.”
A BP Service station now stands in the place of the old Schwarz family business.
Aside from the Bogie property purchased with his wife and her son about 12 months ago, real estate data shows Mr Schwarz owned and ran numerous properties across Queensland over the years, the first being a property called ‘Texas’ in the Jericho region, which he sold in 2001.