Chopper Unchopped (71 page)

I’m told the screws nearly killed some of those blokes when they finally got caught. The story was legendary for years. I was only a teenager at that time and remember talking about the pros and cons of it with Cowboy Johnny and Dave the Jew. It was a big deal back then, on TV every night and in all the newspapers, and the stories relating to it went on for ten years.

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, as anybody who’s read my first book will know already. It was in B Division in Pentridge, with my best friend at that time, Jimmy Loughnan. We hid in the roof and Jimmy ate and drank all our supplies in a few hours. It was like being locked up with a girl guide on a camping trip.

We were caught after a few hours and I was glad to get back down. Poor Jimmy, he died later in the Jika Jika fire. He was like a brother to me until he betrayed me and helped have me stabbed. But I was still sad when he died.

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.

IN one Friday night debate we beat the Toastmasters on the topic ‘Should David Boon become the next Governor of Tasmania?’. I explained that I was already being held at the pleasure of General Sir Phillip Bennett, AC, KBE, DSO, and I didn’t really fancy the idea of being held at the pleasure of David Boon, Test cricketer and national drinking identity, even if the only books he has read in the last three years are mine, not counting the racing formguide.

I also explained that the Tasmanian Aboriginal population was wiped out in the name of the Queen’s representative, the Governor of the state. And thousands of convicts were tortured, beaten and killed in the name of the Queen’s representative. The role of State Governors and of the Governor General in Canberra, I argued, is a relic of the past. One day Australia will wake up and sweep this King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table rubbish out the door, but even while the Governor rort lasts I doubt that even a lunatic Test cricketer who looks like a Mexican bandit on steroids would put his hand up for the gig.

Boony is a top fella and a man of the people, but I reckon he would look pretty stupid in a top hat. And if you don’t believe the bit about him reading my books, cop this. I saw him on television one day hopping off a plane, with a book under his arm, and it wasn’t Wisden or a Gideon Bible he’d pinched from a hotel room. It was a copy of
Chopper
. Which proves the boy’s not only a handy cricketer, but a superb judge of reading material.

Anyway, the Spartan Debating Club won by two points. However, I understand that my habit of removing my teeth to speak could be a social no-no and did not necessarily help our cause, although you never can tell. Maybe it cracks the adjudicator’s nerve.

But it’s not my teeth that worry me. It’s my eyes. I am going to have to seek medical advice about them. They are always sore and playing up on me badly. For years now I have done all my writing by the light of my TV set in the dark.

Now and again I may have the light on, but the light goes off at ten o’clock and I write my letters late at night. Sometimes I am writing my letters at 2 or 3am. As far as my physical wellbeing and health is concerned it is like every bloody thing else: I am my own worst enemy.

We meet all sorts of people on Friday nights at the Spartan Debating Club, from bank managers to local politicians, lawyers, businessmen, and assorted local leading lights from all walks of life. University students and dope-smoking, whacked-out greenies. Anything from the raving mad to virgin schoolgirls.

The eastern shore Baptists are my personal favorite. Some of the sheilas they bring in don’t look like Baptists to me. Ha ha.

The other day, we had a good ‘night out’, if you can call it that. The Tasmanian debating union arrived with a bunch of little ‘butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths’ schoolgirls from a top girls’ college.

The young ladies proceeded to attack me with bits of paper after the debate, asking for my autograph, which was bloody embarrassing. Some older women acting as their minders started to scold them and call them away like a worried mother calling an infant child away from something nasty. However, this gaggle of teenagers stuck solid and thrust their bits of paper upon me.

I always feel uncomfortable when anyone asks me for my autograph. I’m not a rock star; I’m a crook who wrote a book, and the psychology of wanting an autograph from me is wanting it for its novelty freak value.

Being seen as a freak from another world is one thing. I can accept that. But people asking me to sign books and bits of paper has never made me very comfortable.

I do it because I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings, but knowing that my autograph is only wanted for its freak value doesn’t sit well and the novelty of writing my name on bits of paper is fast wearing off. I knew coppers who were always very keen to get my signature on records of interview which would have put me in jail for a thousand years.

I just hope none of those cute little girls has a daddy who’s a detective.

IN jail when there is a holiday it means we don’t have to work, and so we either play or watch sport. My mate Rocky Devine lost a finger playing footy last year and this year his luck seems to be just as good. He had a footy driven into his groin so hard that it semi-paralysed him all down the left side of his body, and there he was hobbling around the prison.

Now, Rocky is one tough fellow, but after his brief affair with a footy in the orchestras he sounded like Tiny Tim singing
Tip Toe Through The Tulips
. He was talking about the next game but no-one expected him to front up. Sure enough, he was on the footy field the following week.

One year he loses a finger, the next he nearly loses the pet ferret. I think he should quit while he’s ahead – or still got one.

They’re not polished, but the Risdon boys make most VFA sides look like choir boys. Micky Chatters kicked 18 goals and played for three quarters during one game with a busted ankle. Peter Wright nearly tore his kneecap off in another game. Pat Burling got hit so hard he swallowed his false teeth. Fat lips and black eyes and broken noses are commonplace.

Jamie Hosking is a bit of a weapon on the field and a bloody good player. Micky Chatters wants to fight everybody. Big Tony Barron is a top player and does not seem to get hurt a real lot. Every now and again C Yard wins a game but as a rule we lose all the time. I was elected the C Yard union rep which means if the umpire blows his whistle too many times against C Yard it’s everybody out. Ha ha.

F Yard wins all the games. D Yard wins a few but F Yard kidnaps all the good players with bribes and has all the umpires on side, and when the going really turns against them they pull big Mick Gill in as an umpire, banging yet another nail into the coffin of fair play.

I like to go out and watch the footy. I don’t play. I may be criminally insane but I’m not crazy enough for that. When they allow you to take firearms onto the field I am prepared to be drafted. Until then I will stick to the sidelines, watching prison matches that could be made into snuff movies.

The star of the footy field is C Yard’s Kimble Symons, who kicks a dozen goals a game with a faulty valve in his heart, meaning he could drop stone dead at any moment. Kimble says as long as he’s kicked his dozen goals he does not care if he does drop dead, providing it’s in the last quarter. Now there is a boy who has his priorities worked out.

The day we kicked off the prison footy season early in the year, Rocky ‘I can be bribed’ Devine was acting as umpire, and true to Tassie form the rain came pissing down.

Rocky cleared the field long enough for the boys to run off and pop on their hats and then return to play. Anywhere else you’d either keep playing or give up altogether, but in Tassie they put bloody hats on.

In the afternoon the rain cleared and the sun shone brilliantly and they switched to baseball. I would have given anything to have gotten my hands on a baseball bat in Pentridge. Bloody hell, when I first saw the boys swinging a baseball bat I started to go all agent orange, and get flashbacks. Ha ha. I’ve had a lot of fun with those in my time, but nowhere near a pitcher.

Peter Wright, a pint-sized but tough little crook, nearly took my head off with the bloody ball. If it’s not big Tony Barron with the cricket bat, it’s Power Pack Pete with the damn baseball bat. Innocent bystanders and onlookers should be issued with helmets.

I have never been all that good at ball sports, with the notable exception of the oldest one of all, I suppose. I’m a natural at that, but play only limited seasons when out of jail.

The jail is sports mad. Every weekend and any day off, two sporting events are held. Cricket, footy, baseball and running events are the most popular. On weekdays at lunch time it’s touch football. The crims here are a healthy lot. Playing baseball inside a jail is not considered too risky at Risdon. Neither is almost anything else … it is the only jail in Australia that has an education course in the correct use of the chainsaw, would you believe?

It’s called getting your chainsaw certificate. A lot of these guys are involved in the timber industry when not running riot in the local hotels. It’s nothing to meet a chap who has bad facial scars from having his chainsaw flick back on him.

The bloody greenies spike the trees with metal spikes and the timber cutters end up nearly killing themselves. The hatred between the greenies and the timber workers is very, very real. I don’t think it is really understood on the mainland. In a way it is a little civil war being played out in tiny Tassie, and it can turn really ugly.

I wouldn’t want to be a greenie caught spiking a tree in Tassie. You could end up being turned into wood chips. A mate of mine down here, ‘Wally’ Walford, has a terrible facial scar from a chainsaw accident after the greenies punched a two and a half foot metal spike through a tree he cut later.

My old mate, Wayne Spratt, or ‘Spratty’ to one and all, was the first man I had ever met who had hit himself in the head with his own chainsaw and lived to tell the tale, but since then I have realised that it’s commonplace down here. Which sort of explains why they can get their chainsaw certificate in prison.

The mind boggles at a chainsaw course being conducted in Pentridge or Long Bay, but it’s another world altogether down here. Imagine some of the brain-dead serial killers in Pentridge learning the fine points of your average chainsaw. The blood and bone would have been flying.

Pound for pound, some of the best punch-on artists in Australia come from Tassie. I’m talking about the old-style Aussie punch-on artist, the sort that will punch on with you on Sunday and shake hands with you in the pub on Monday.

Some of the biggest, meanest, wildest bar room brawlers in Tassie would have to come from north-west Tasmania. There is a mining town named Zeehan on the north-west coast, where all the mad bastards do when they’re not working is drink piss and fight.

The stand-up, toe-to-toe fist fighter is a dying breed in Australia. Tasmania and the Northern Territory are probably the last two strongholds left of the genuine knucklemen, and the Territory is slowly being taken over.

There is one very Aussie factor at the Pink Palace that you would not find in any other prison in the country. There are only three wogs in the whole jail, and for once I can play spot the Aussie and win. Yes, the Tassie criminal fraternity is nearly exclusively good old Aussies. Bless their black hearts.

I MUST say I was very pleased when the bloody cricket season finally came to an end. Big Tony Barron is lethal with the bat. The ball rockets toward him from Jamie Hoskings’ hand at a good 90 miles per hour and Big Tony swings the bat at a good 100 miles per hour and seems to take evil delight in sending the ball my way at 120 miles per hour. And I’m only a bloomin’ spectator. Imagine if I was fielding against him at silly mid-off.

He has nearly taken my head off with the bloody cricket ball on a dozen different occasions. It doesn’t matter where I watch the game from, Big Tony seems to be able to pick me out.

It has gotten to the stage where I duck automatically whenever I hear the bat smack the cricket ball. Tony is a giant with not an ounce of fat on him and very powerful. He is fast and a top sportsman and I strongly suspect that the only way anybody could beat him in a fight would be to run him over with a steam roller … while he was asleep.

Nevertheless, if the big bugger hits me with that bloody ball I will consult the Yellow Pages under the plant hire section and invest in the steam roller. Having avoided death in 25 years in the underworld, I’m buggered if I’m going to be knocked off by a Kookaburra cricket ball to the back of the cranium.

Tony, the big Fijian, is a jolly-natured gentle giant and a lovable big bugger, and I class him as a friend, but I’ve shot people for a lot less than hitting me with a cricket ball.

It has reached the stage now whenever he goes into bat I am forced to take cover. I look forward to the footy season, although not because it was ever really my game. The only stab pass I have ever delivered is the stiletto variety. I was once offered ten grand to ‘tag’ Warwick Capper … but with a pistol. Mind you, the way he’s going since the Swans sold him, a .44 slug in the knee would probably have been a good career move. At least he would have had a good excuse for bad form, and a shitload of sympathetic publicity.

Come to think of it, there’s an opening here for a good gunman to do strategic wounding of celebrities who can’t cut the mustard any more. Think of the press coverage the occasional well-placed bullet would get.

There’d even be a chance of a bit of serious headhunting for record companies with old stars languishing on their books. Imagine it … ‘Sorry, old buddy, but the only way we can save your career is to shoot you very dead.’ And if you reckon that’s the crazy ramblings of a psychopath think about Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and John Lennon and how many records they’ve sold since they went to rock’n’roll heaven. Not to mention Marilyn Monroe. She’d be just another tired old drunk now, if she’d stayed alive.

Anyway, back to footy. The football season is quite a hoot here in Risdon. It is unique, really, as within the prison walls they play straight Aussie rules football, whereas the rest of the state plays Tasmanian rules football. Tasmanian rules is quite an easy game to play … instead of using a ball they use their sister and swap ends at half time. Ha ha.

I NEVER went to boarding school, unless you count the Bluestone College, but I reckon Risdon runs close in some ways. I mean, they even have annual Christmas sports, for God’s sake. They run the sports for ten days. This includes weightlifting, football, tennis, table tennis, cards, scrabble, chess, draughts, darts, quoits, volleyball, baseball, frisbee tossing, tunnelball, scramble ball, the piggyback race, the egg and spoon race, target handball, the spit the dummy contest, the gumboot tossing competition, the chariot race, fireman’s carry, shotput, the sack race, the long kick contest, sack relay, tug of war, discuss throwing, high jump, long jump, triple jump, the cricket ball in hats contest, the three-legged race, the iron man event, cricket, and many and various foot races.

I am writing this out of the official Risdon Prison Christmas sports magazine, so if you think I’m jesting you are quite wrong. This year I am seriously considering entering the toss the gumboot competition and the frisbee tossing. It sounds a giggle. Mind you, none of the above are really my areas of excellence.

Now, if they had a shoot a drug dealer in the eye competition, I am sure I would win the gold. And while talking of such manly sports, this jail doesn’t even have a boxing ring, gloves or head guards, which I think is a bit la-di-da.

A prison without a boxing ring is a bit unfair on the inmates. In my opinion it is a lightning fast way to separate who is who in front of everybody in three minutes flat, and is a true and healthy outlet for normal aggression, and the mental and emotional frustration that builds up in the minds and hearts of men in prison.

Down here, the most aggressive sport is footy, and they get pretty fair dinkum about it. There is even a North versus South competition. The inmates from the South of Tasmania play the prisoners from the North of Tasmania.

Anyway it’s all rock’n’roll at Risdon at Christmas time, with a party and so forth and so on. Mind you, most of this hijinks goes on in the bloody rain because it rains cats and dogs for a lot of the time. Speaking of cats and dogs, E Yard is invited to join in on all this. Child killers, child tamperers, sexual perverts, molesters and assorted sinners against small children are invited with open arms. All is forgiven due to the Christmas spirit.

What a disgrace and a total shower of shit it all is. Being a dog in Risdon is no great problem providing you have a few mates. Then again, the modern day Australian prison system is all going the same way, so I shouldn’t point this place out for special attention. Even in Pentridge and Long Bay, 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.

So piss on them all. It’s better for a bloke like me to just shut up and mind his own business. I may as well face facts and cop it sweet, but it is a sad thing to have to sit and watch.

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.

The Australian criminal world both inside and outside prison is changing fast. In the midst of this trash I find a few diamonds now and again in the form of good, hard, solid staunch blokes, and if you have to wade through a river of vomit to find a gem then it is worth it.

I have found a few diamonds in the Pink Palace, but in general as I say, the whole scene is very, very sad to watch, both in Tassie and on the mainland. The lions and tigers have all gone home to watch telly and the mice have taken over the zoo.

‘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.