Chopper Unchopped (248 page)
Authors: Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read
Just because a man has a few tattoos, a criminal record and a love of blood, doesn’t make him a hard man. There are some real weak men who hide their cowardice behind a gun and a tough image. And there are honest quiet men who, when pushed, have a touch of steel in their spines.
Most so-called tough guys will cry and panic and get this pathetic childlike look when death stares them in the face. They plead and beg and whimper like puppies. They beg and cry for you to spare them.
It is then that you see the real person behind the false face. I love it.’
*
‘IF anyone farts in my general direction, from a distance of 300 yards, they are in bother. Ha ha.’
*
‘I WAS leading the mentally ill, but in my own way I was the worst of them all. I had the smiling face of a young angel, and a heart so full of tears that there was no room for the blood to flow. I was emotionally and mentally twisted. As a young guy I was cruel, cold and totally without human mercy, feeling or compassion.
I didn’t feel hate. I was just emotionally numb. All I had was my own sense of right and wrong. I saw everything only in terms of battles and strategies. I lived to spill the blood of enemies, and there were plenty of them.
I am almost gentle and overflowing with human kindness when I look at myself now, compared with what I was.’
*
‘LET’S face it, I was as nutty as a fruitcake. Thank God, I’m all better now. Ha, ha, ha.’
*
‘WHY is it that every time I wave at a psychiatrist from a distance of 300 yards he tosses a handful of pills down my neck? … They have just given me my nightly “bomb me out pill” and the white clouds are rolling in.’
*
‘CHOPPER Read has left the stage and is just sitting in a chicken shed playing cards with Elvis. No guns allowed.’
*
‘HAVE seen so much pain and suffering in my life. I have had people die in my arms and die at my hand. I thought I could not sink any lower, but I was wrong. I have now been lowered into the abyss of hell. I have been banned from the only pub in town.’
*
‘THEN again, what would I know? I’m just a roaring drunk, a hopeless liar or a roaring liar and a hopeless drunk, or so some would have you believe.’
*
‘I SEE myself as the typical Aussie male. Sure I may be covered in tattoos, have no ears, have a criminal record you can’t jump over and torture drug dealers for profit and pleasure, but I personally see those as minor cosmetic differences. Underneath it all, I am just like the next bloke. I like a laugh, a drink, shooting scumbags and, most of all, when I am on the outside, I like a bet.’
*
‘IF people don’t like me, they can either kill me or cop it sweet, and until I am in my grave, they can stick it as far as I’m concerned. To hell with them all.
Their hatred is like sunshine to me. I thrive on it. There is something about me that seems to inflame hatred and passion in many people. I just don’t understand it myself. To me, I am just your everyday normal killer, but to others, I seem to be the devil in disguise.’
*
‘I AM like a magnet to the mentally ill.’
*
‘THE truth is that I will never make enough money to buy anything for anybody. I have a team of lawyers to support. After all, charity begins at home.’
*
‘I GET mail from some people who see me as some sort of Robin Hood, a crusader who has set himself up to clean the world of drug dealers … I don’t want people to get the wrong impression. I don’t take from the rich and give to the poor. I keep the money myself. My life will never be made into a Disney movie. It is business. It is not and has never been some sort of holy crusade. But it can be fun, and quite profitable too.’
*
‘I’VE been a crook for a long, long time, but in my own way, I have been an honest crook. I will stand up and say, “Yes, I did that, and I did this, but I didn’t do the other.” I expect to be believed. Bloody hell, I can’t be guilty of everything. Can I?’
*
‘WELL, a lot of people have described me as manipulating and cunning and that I always played the system and worked things to my advantage. Well, yes, yes. I did do just that. And anyone with half a brain would do exactly the same. If I was in politics, I’d be manipulative, cunning. I would work the system to my advantage. If I was in business, I’d be manipulative, cunning. I would work the system to my advantage. If I was in television, I’d be manipulative, cunning. I’d work the system to my advantage. If I’m in jail, I’m manipulative, cunning, and I work the system to my advantage. You know, I was the organ grinder and they were the monkeys, and that’s the way it worked.’
*
‘AS a teenager, I was always interested in joining the army. I did try to enlist once, but got knocked back because I failed the psychiatric test … the female captain psychiatrist said I had a personality given to violence.
Using that as an excuse to stop someone joining the army – well, I thought it was quite amusing. I admit, I also had flat feet, but I didn’t get as far as the medical.
In 1977, when I got out of prison, with my dad’s help and on his advice, I applied to join the Rhodesian Security Forces. I wrote away to the head of the forces – Major General Kurt something or other. As I expected, I was accepted.
I told the Parole Board via my parole officer that I was leaving. “No you aren’t,” said the parole officer. “You’re on parole; you’re going nowhere”.
Had I been allowed to leave, we wouldn’t be bothering with this now.’
*
‘SOME men dream of dying in a hail of bullets, and in 1977, I was one of those men.’
*
‘LET’S face it, the Australian crim isn’t a great one for any form of gun-in-hand, face-to-face shoot-it-out combat. If they ever get me, it will be in the back.’
*
‘I’M turning into that good man with a bit of a dark side, instead of a bad man with a good side.’
*
‘THE whole nation is turning gay or green in a vomit of political correctness. Everyone’s torn up their Smokey Dawson membership cards and tossed them in the fire, half the country couldn’t tell you who Banjo Paterson or Ned Kelly were, and the whole nation is steaming full steam ahead into the 21st century to the electric hip-hop beat of some Yankee Doodle basketball music … and I’m just walking backwards in the other direction “back down that track to an old fashioned shack” to the Aussie land of my memory.’
*
‘I LIKE the Queen of England and the royal family, although a few of the younger ones could do with a blindfold and a last cigarette. The Queen herself is a lovely old dear, but she is the Queen of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern (in name only) Ireland. She is not the Queen of Aussie land. Well, she is, but no-one really takes it seriously, outside the Melbourne Club.’
*
‘SOME of the young crims here think culture is something you make yoghurt with. They believe they can learn about Asian history by watching Ninja Turtles. They think Henry Lawson bowled for Australia, and Banjo Paterson’s is a theatre restaurant in Adelaide.
Can you believe that? Yet the same young men know the words off by heart to half the songs AC/DC ever wrote.
Who was it who wrote
Poor Fellow My Country?
Xavier Herbert? Well, he wasn’t far wrong, was he?
The Americanisation of Australia seems to be the problem. The Yanks killed Phar Lap and Les Darcy and they have been trying to kill off everything Australian ever since. The buggers have nearly done it and I’m just as bloody guilty as everyone else for falling victim to it.
This country has a great history and yet you wouldn’t know it. The kids walk around with baseball hats on, shirts with gridiron teams’ emblems on the front. They have pictures of American basketballers on their walls. They think Chips Rafferty invented the potato cake.
We look up to Yankeeland heroes and look down on our own. It makes me bloody sick.
Too much bloody television, if you ask me. It’s killing us all.
Kids should not be indoors watching television, they should be outside, punching on with their mates, getting a bit of fresh air and doing a bit of male bonding.
Mind you, my distaste for America does not include Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Paul Newman and Edward G. Robinson. God bless them all, the dirty rats.’
*
‘SYDNEY may have all the razzle dazzle, but most of the deadly serious work gets done in Melbourne. There is no doubt it is the unofficial murder capital of Australia.’
*
‘AUSTRALIA is a big country and shovels are cheap. Victoria may be the garden state, but if you dug it up, you would find a heap of bodies. The garden probably grows so well because of all the blood and bone that has been spread over it.
If a crook goes missing in Melbourne, chances are he isn’t on holiday at Surfers Paradise. Anybody who adds up the numbers over the last 100 years will see I am right. Victoria is the state of the big vanish.’
*
Yeah, they call it Aussie music,
With their Mississippi twang,
Singing down home Yankee songs,
With a touch of Aussie slang,
They sold out to Waylon Jennings,
And sing Rockabilly Blue,
But what they all forget
Is that Aussie land has its legends too,
Yeah, I know Tex Morton’s dead,
And his songs are getting rusty,
But there’s one Aussie Boy who won’t die,
A legend named Slim Dusty,
And what about Banjo Paterson,
And a bloke named Henry Lawson,
Old Flash is dead and gone,
But we’ve still got Smokey Dawson,
They get up there to Tamworth,
With their Texas hats and bash,
But as far as I’m concerned,
They can jam their Johnny Cash,
Give me Waltzing Matilda,
And the Road to Gundagai,
Hell, I’d rather hear Chad Morgan scream,
Than Willie Nelson cry,
Did you know that Hank Williams died,
With a needle up his arm,
He was just a southern junkie,
And a long way from the farm,
So if you want to sing Aussie country,
And become a legend too,
Forget the Yankee Doodle shit,
And stick to Old True Blue
*
A POEM for legendary Tasmanian QC Michael Hodgeman.
From Queenstown to Hobart Town,
From Canberra to Darling Downs,
He’s fought a thousand battles,
In a hundred different towns,
And while he’s very sober,
And always in good condition,
He’s a soap box battler,
A dinkum Aussie politician,
And while most just call him Michael,
When they’re drunk they call him Mick,
They know the Mouth from the South,
Will never miss a trick.
The champion of the underdog,
And the drinking man’s friend,
He’ll start a fight then finish it,
And take it to the end,
And when it comes to trouble, boy,
He don’t ever run and hide,
And when your back’s against the wall,
You’ll find him at your side,
And when the Devil comes a knocking,
He’ll stick there to the end,
And I’m proud I even shook his hand,
He’s the Aussie battler’s friend.
*
READ was charged with the murder of Sammy the Turk Ozerkam. He beat it on self-defence.
She said get The Chopper out of the bar,
Shane and the boys are in the car,
If you help set up the Big Fella, Turk you’ll be a star,
The boys farmed it out, they got ghosted,
But as Sammy walked out the door, the boys just left him posted.
The game was for real, it was no lark,
But Sammy walked toward the wrong car park,
Silly boys, was all The Chopper had to say,
It wasn’t their lucky day,
And poor Sammy the Turk got blown away.
*
He sat on the bench,
For many years,
He gave us laughs,
And sometimes tears,
He had a way,
All his own,
And for style,
He stood alone,
With smiling face,
And big bow tie,
My word, he did look classy,
Every crook in Melbourne knew him,
The Magistrate called Darcy.
*
In a world feeding on war and fear,
A world starving of love,
I watched a man drowning in blood and the tears,
Of a sick and dying dove,
A total enigma, a puzzle misunderstood,
Seen as evil in his attempts to do good,
They paid him in torment and emotional pain,
For trying to save us from nuclear rain,
And why, I asked, does he even care,
For a world that cares nothing for him,
Apathy, he answered, that’s our greatest sin,
He spoke of a nuclear nightmare that will come upon us all,
It’s just a question of time before our Rome will fall,
I read a bit about him and what he was meant to be,
Some said he was CIA, some said he was KGB,
The answer’s there, the answer’s clear,
But still they fail to see,
He screams words of sanity to the deaf, dumb and blind,
So they locked him away with the criminally ill,
But he’s not one of our kind, nor is he a dill,
I see a rage within him others fail to see,
In his utter frustration and the knowledge he can’t prevent what he knows he will be,
The anti-nuclear warrior, or the monster from Death Heaven,
The nightmare prophet in cell 37.
