Chopper Unchopped (247 page)

I did more than ten years in ‘H’, the so-called blood house of the system. It wasn’t just my home, I owned the place.

I owned it, I controlled it, I ran it. By ruling that division we ran the jail. We were the most feared gang in the most feared division of the most feared jail in Australia, and I was the commanding general.

I ran a five-year gang war from within the walls of H Division. And we had the power and influence to reach out from behind those walls.’

‘IT was the place where we made our own rules. I used all my tactical and strategic expertise. My rule was total and without question. I put together a crew of nutters never before seen in any prison, and we waged a prison war, which went on for years.

It was the sort of violence that only ever existed in war. God, I loved it. It is the gang war, which is now part of Victorian jail legend.’

‘If you are a police informer or an offender against small children, you can buy yourself all the friends and supporters you want with a gram of heroin. Not like the old days when a child molester could look forward to having a mop inserted in his bottom and then be flogged to within an inch of his pathetic life.’

‘POLICE informers, crown witnesses, child killers and molesters openly running about the jails of the nation without a care in the world, and some of them swaggering about like gangsters … it’s enough to make you sick.’

‘IF you cannot kill the one you want then kill the one you are with’, as the tattoo on my back says, but those days are gone now. I just sit with my cup of tea and watch the passing parade and smile to myself. Mind you, it’s just possible that the occasional child molester could still have an accident. I’m a firm believer that there is a God, and that some of us have to do God’s work.

‘JAIL is full of blokes with plans to beat the system.’

‘MOST escape plots are hatched out of boredom. Prisoners want something to keep them interested. When you have people spending all their waking hours thinking about something, they end up finding an answer. That is why there is no such thing as an escape-proof jail. If the human mind is capable of designing and building it, the human mind is capable of beating it.’

‘I WAS never a big escaper, preferring to do my time and amuse myself with wars inside the prison walls. The only time I tried to escape, it was a disaster.’

‘ONCE I used to think I was immortal; now it’s suddenly hit me that I’m not. Bloody hell. It’s a shock when you approach 40 and find yourself sitting in a prison cell, realising you have spent nearly 20 of those 40 years behind bars. What a waste.’

‘I DO time easier than most because I’ve learned to go with the flow. I observe people and learn to find the best in them. Those who fight jail end up being destroyed by it.’

‘THE biggest thing I miss in jail – apart from sex, guns, and Irish whiskey – is gambling. Roulette in particular.’

‘BASICALLY, it works like this. If I want an extra bit of toast or butter or permission to get a pair of sunglasses sent in, or a gold cross and chain, or a pair of runners or a contact visit, I go to the Governor of the prison. But anything larger than a contact visit and I have to get down on my knees and call on divine intervention as the Governor is powerless to help. He has the power to punish, but his power to grant requests is limited.’

‘YOU need more than a legal degree to be a lawyer. You need to care, because you’re dealing with men and women in trouble. Guilty or innocent, these poor buggers are at their wits’ end. Some are on the edge of suicide or, at best, a nervous breakdown.

The remand yard of a prison is a cold and lonely place, and your lawyer for that period in your life is your only true friend, and my advice to any who seek it, is to pick your friends wisely.’

‘DON’T do what I have done; it is a mess and a one-way road to disaster. You cannot take on the world, drug bosses, police, gangsters and the courts. If one doesn’t get you, one of the others will.

Go straight, young man. It may sound boring, but in the long run, it is the way to go.’

‘IN Australia it is considered perfectly wonderful to talk at length about what you would like to do, and providing you never do it, no man will raise his voice against you. But if you get off your arse and get out there and actually do it, the critics will knock you.

Criminals are told to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and improve themselves. But the very, very few who have tried to do just that are widely condemned.

Criminals are told to mend their ways and improve themselves, but when we do, the rules get changed. The people who run the game not only have the umpires in their pocket, but they move the bloody goal posts halfway through the match. How can you win?’

‘ON the wall behind the three Supreme Court judges is the Tasmanian coat of arms. There is a large wooden lion on the right-hand side and a unicorn on the left. Both are rising up on their hind legs, guarding some sort of smaller coat of arms in the shape of a shield, under this are the Latin words DIEU ET MON DROIT. I don’t know what it means, but if some of the numb-nuts sitting in the back of the court are any indication, it should read, “Thalidomide: yum, yum, we love it”.’

‘AHH, it’s a great life. What a bloody disaster.’

‘APPARENTLY the crusaders down here have been taking my name in vain and suggesting I would be first cab off the rank. I have heard reports they intend to take the money I made out of my books and declare that it was made from crime. Well, good luck to them. It they saw my legal bills over this latest fiasco they would realize that I would have to write the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
to even break even.’

‘I’D rather have a lawyer shake your hand with the slight odour of Canadian Club Whiskey about his person than reeking of Chanel No 5. I have met my fair share of (how can I say this politely?) screaming queens in the legal profession.’

‘ONLY mugs and poor sports blame their bloody lawyers.’

‘IF God loves a sinner, he must really love me.’

‘I KNOW there are people who would be as delighted as a pack of poofters in a Vaseline factory if I shut up and stayed in jail. But I will not be silenced. I remain the greatest living writer with no ears in the world.

Such is life.

You’d have to be Linda Lovelace to swallow all that.’

‘WITH the entire human race dancing on the edge of its own grave, who gives a rat’s about a few bottom bandits.’

‘I HAVE found in the past that lethal weapons tend to get opponents to see the logic of your argument.’

‘THE fact is, no man can spend his whole life trying to be a tough guy. Sooner or later you’ve got to try in some small way to behave in some sort of normal manner by talking to normal people – as opposed to cops, robbers and lawyers, who definitely aren’t normal.’

‘I WAS once attacked by a crazy Greek wielding a plastic rubbish bin and I was holding a sawn-off shotgun. People flip out when they think they are in a corner.’

‘YOU don’t get a reputation like mine for being a nice guy.’

‘WHEN it comes to violence, Chopper wrote the book.’

‘PERSONALLY I would rather shoot someone than go through the messy business of fighting them. But in jail it is anything from bare fists to razor blades, butcher’s knives to iron bars. To stand on top of the heap for twenty years simply means you are less frightened of death than the other fellow.

I don’t fight to win, I fight to kill, so even if I don’t kill, I win. No crim could survive the baggings I’ve got. The only reason I am still around is because I can fight like a death adder. But I know my limitations; I know that after twenty years I am not as strong or as big as I once was.’

‘I GO out of my way to avoid three things: manual labour, physical exercise and fisticuffs. While others engage in all manner of combat training, pumping iron, punching bags, kicking each other, huffing and puffing and sweating like pigs in an effort to build themselves in to fighting machines, I prefer to avoid all that hard work.’

‘I DO all my fighting with a gun in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. While the world is full of people who could bash me, the world is not full of people who could bash me and live to talk about it. That’s why God invented razor blades, butcher’s knives, iron bars, meat axes and guns that go bang – so blokes like me don’t get bashed ten times a day before breakfast.’

‘IN the end, the secret to everything is to think like a rattlesnake and smile like a used-car salesman. And for goodness sake, don’t get that piece of advice the wrong way around. Be polite, be friendly, be non-aggressive, see trouble and avoid it, but if trouble forces itself upon you, strike first and strike hard, just like a rattlesnake.’

‘YOU are not a coward because you feel fear. It is there to stop us tongue-kissing tiger snakes. It has its natural place, but it must never be allowed to cloud the mind. I have seen people crippled with fear for no logical reason. And the person who does not understand his own fear, cannot use fear against others.’

‘MY reputation in the criminal world has always been based on other people’s hatred, fear and paranoia. My image has been made by my enemies, whereas a host of big-name crooks have reputations that come from their friends, admirers and hangers-on.’

‘I FELL out with Dennis Allen the way I have fallen out with most people … I belted him.’

‘HE used to talk so much about all the violence, it went in one ear and out the other. Or so to speak … I don’t have any ears.’

‘THOSE who know me well will tell you I love a bit of a debate, although they might also say I like to finish the discussion with a baseball bat or a blowtorch. I have found in the past that lethal weapons tend to get opponents to see the logic of your argument.’

‘MAYBE it’s some sort of midlife crisis. Once I used to think I was immortal; now it’s suddenly hit me that I’m not. Bloody hell.

Even as a kid I was always a bit of a backyard philosopher. In those days I always believed that the cornerstone of all correct thinking was that good will conquer evil. But as you get older, you learn that evil built the world, and when the so-called great and good men of history wished to achieve great and good things, they did not hesitate to walk over the bodies of millions of people to achieve their ends.

So what is good and what is evil? It’s all a psychological blur. When a private individual kills a few people, he or she is a monster. But when a politician kills a few million he goes down in history as a man of great vision.’

‘I PERSONALLY wouldn’t have the bad manners to put anybody in a boot – alive that is. It’d be far too uncomfortable for that.’

‘THERE is not a gunman alive who frightens me, but I became terrified of people in shops, especially of fat ladies in lambswool slippers. They would scream out, “Look, that’s the bloke on the telly. He’s a murderer.” Call me sensitive, but I couldn’t cop that.’

‘I WOULD relieve any man of his heart and lungs with a double barrel shotgun if he tried to turn his hand against me or mine. In other words, hurt me or mine and I’ll cut your ears off, put a hole in your manners and I’ll rip your bloody nose off with a pair of multi-grips.’

‘NOT many people will believe this, particularly those that I have bashed, or had their feet warmed with the gas blowtorch, but I don’t feel hate. I just don’t know what it feels like. I mean, I can pretend to hate, but the most I can feel is to be a little cross with someone.’

‘MY attitude was that if you don’t carry your gun on you, you might as well not have a gun at all.’

‘I SWALLOWED my own top teeth years ago. They bloody nearly killed me going down and it was an uncomfortable experience getting them out the other end. Maybe that’s why some people reckon I talk out of my arse.’

‘IF people want to try and bash me that’s fine, as long as they don’t mind spending the rest of their lives in a wheelchair or being led around by a seeing-eye dog. If they really want to rock and roll, then it would be a coffin for them. The only thing I get bashed with these days is bullshit. Shoot me, but for goodness sake, don’t shit me, as the old saying goes.’

‘A BULLET is the one thing that brings a man back to his real self. A truly hard man will remain hard, even after being shot. He will look you in the eye and say, do your worst. I’ve met a few tough bastards, but believe me, they are rare.