For those who didn’t know who the “Sharpies” were, their T-shirts scrawled with Thomastown Sharps front and back left no doubt.

The Sharps ruled the Epping line, and the gang’s tendency for stirring up fights earned them a fearsome reputation around the area.

Nick Tolewski grew up in Thomastown, simultaneously fearing and admiring the Sharpies in the late 1970s. He had wanted to document their stories for more than a decade before Once Were Sharps ended up in print.

With the help of friend and writer Dean Crozier, the book became a reality and a local success story, selling the original print run of 200 copies in five days at the Thomastown newsagency and online.

Tolewski, a 42-year-old construction worker by day, says feedback on the book has been overwhelmingly positive.

About 850 copies have now been sold and a Facebook page has been set up to remember the Thomastown Sharps.

‘‘I’ve had someone come up and say ‘I got glasses especially to read the book’ and I’ve had others who said they’d never read a book in their life before this one,’’ he says.

Tolewski, who now lives in Epping, clearly recalls seeing the Sharpies around Andy’s Pinball Parlour and the Thomastown shops.

‘‘We used to go get metro guns and put fake tattoos all over our bodies as little kids to make us look tougher, at only 10 or 11 years old, because we used to want to be like the Sharpies.’’

While much younger than the gang was in its prime, Tolewski says he knew a lot of the members as a few lived around the corner from him and others shared his interest in breeding pigeons. He also earned the gang’s respect as a cage fighter, winning the Victorian light heavyweight title in the mid-’80s.

For the book, Tolewski interviewed a number of the Sharpies, now his friends, before starting his story about Bowie, the informal leader of the Thomastown Sharps, and other characters such as Snatch, Dingo, Tom, Bob and Marko.