Chopper Unchopped (74 page)

I AM without a shadow of a doubt the fastest eater in captivity, bar maybe the odd polar bear in a zoo somewhere. It was the same at Pentridge. No-one finished their meal before me, and not because I went to any special effort, either.

I would create havoc if I was sentenced to death and then had to eat my last meal. I would finish it so fast that the hangman would still be getting the hood out of the boot when I was ready to rock and roll.

I got this skill at eating food with great speed from my dear old Dad who, in his heyday, could polish off a three-course meal in no time flat. He ate like a snake, swallowing things whole and in one gulp.

He would be sipping on his cup of tea having eaten his meal and a second helping while others were about to start on their second course.

My dad’s dinnertime rule to me was simple: ‘Son, you get in there, get it into you and get out. It is okay for the womenfolk to ponce about at the dinner table but men don’t dilly dally about.’

After grace was said, I would lift my knife and fork and Dad would lift his. We would look at each other and Dad would wink at me and away we’d go. To eat fast yet maintain table manners is a skill. The secret is three chews, then another mouthful, three chews then another mouthful.

It mightn’t have looked pretty but, my oath, it was effective. It was constant shovelling of the food and chewing and swallowing all at once with perfect timing. Dad was always six or seven mouthfuls ahead of me and is the only man I’ve ever known who could finish his food ahead of me or at the same time.

It was a fine family tradition. Okay, it’s not likely to win us a family seat in the House of Lords, but it was a bonding thing any rate. Maybe our family crest could be a fork and a front-end loader.

Dad always said that he hated the way the wogs played with their food – a mouthful of this, a mouthful of that, a little conversation, a drink of wine and a nibble of something else, and an hour later the bastards are still piss farting about sitting around the table nibbling away and sipping wine like a pack of old molls.

Dad loathed it. ‘I cannot stand the way these bloody dagos play with their food, son. Get in, get it down ya and get out of the bloody place, that’s what I reckon,’ was my old Dad’s wise advice. ‘Bloody hell, son. When I was a boy I was lucky to get a decent meal, let alone a bloody hour to eat it.’

When Dave the Jew had dinner with us, Dad and I would finish off and sit and watch Dave as he fiddled about and chewed each mouthful for minutes on end and chatted away.

Dad looked at Dave once across the table and said, ‘I’ll tell you right now, boy, I don’t like a man who plays with his food.’ Now, Dave may have been criminally insane but when he looked at my dear old Dad he knew what he had to do.

After that Dave would sit at the table in stone cold silence and do his utmost to match my dad and me, mouthful for mouthful. We would finish three to four minutes ahead of him but Dad would say, ‘Ah, that’s what I like to see: a man who enjoys his food. No messing about, get it down ya, son,’ and he would give Dave a hearty slap on the back. Dad would start to wash the dishes as Dave struggled to finish off his plate.

I have always taken this way of eating for granted. Dad and me would resemble a couple of giant blue whales going through a school of krill. Just go past the food and suck it in. It’s only when I eat in company that people say I eat fast. ‘Don’t you swallow? You just seem to shovel it down your neck,’ they say. Yet I say with all modesty that I do so with perfect decorum.

I can shovel down steak, eggs, sausages, mushrooms and mixed vegies and sweets in under three minutes with total propriety. I have perfect manners. I eat like Prince Charles would if he was on Angel Dust.

I would challenge anyone in a speed-eating contest. I can do it and maintain good manners. The other night I ate my main meal of meat, potato, gravy, bread and butter to mop the gravy up and five full bowls of plum duff and custard and I was on my second cup of tea while the others in the yard were still struggling to finish their main meal.

And then Ray Sheehan could not eat his food so I finished off his, gave Peter Wright a helping hand on his and I was still ahead of the rest by minutes. I would have got into the plum duff in a big way but manners precluded it.

I think only Paul Newman in my favorite prison movie,
Cool Hand Luke
, could have challenged me in an eating contest. The way he ate those eggs got me quite hungry. I try to watch my weight inside, but there is hardly any great motivation. It’s not as though you have to trim down to slip into your dinner jacket so that you can get out on the tear and impress a few womenfolk.

The art of eating runs in the family. Evidently my grandfather, Alf the Bull, was not a man to fiddle at the dinner table. You may recall that Alf, a World War One veteran, was so strong he could hold the weight of a bale of wool singlehanded.

When I was a kid there was a ‘no talking at the table’ rule. We sat and we ate and we got the hell out of there, while the women did the dishes. These days people sit and chat and drink and nibble, and piss fart about for the best part of an hour or longer, then call for coffee and extra nibbles and buggerise about for another half hour like a bunch of grannies at a garden party.

When my dad left my mum he went to live in a boarding house at 1 Hawksburn Road, South Yarra. For a while I went and lived at the same address to keep him company.

An old Hungarian fellow invited Dad and myself to a Hungarian restaurant in Greville Street, Prahran, for tea one night. The time was set for six o’clock. As I recall Cowboy Johnny Harris, who was not well known as a food critic, was with us. Cowboy only had one rule about food. It had to be dead and he would eat it.

I was carrying a gun, as was my habit. I couldn’t dine comfortably unless I was properly dressed. We arrived promptly at six o’clock but the old Hungarian fellow was late, so we sat down and ordered up three giant plates of Hungarian goulash and got stuck in.

‘The Cowboy’ was not one to mess about and we soon finished and ordered seconds. We had polished that off and were drinking tea when the old Hungarian walked in.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You have finished your meal. You start without me.’ Dad replied, ‘Look sport, you said six o’clock and that’s the time we got here so don’t go crook at us when you ponce in 20 minutes late.’

The old bloke looked at his watch and said, ‘It’s only ten minutes past,’ but Dad wasn’t impressed. ‘Ten minutes, 20 minutes, what’s the difference? You’re still bloody late. You invite us to dinner and ponce in late. Well, we’ve had ours.’

‘No please, do not be cross. We sit, we talk, we have coffee,’ he said in a most cultured way. ‘Yeah, well, no offence mate,’ said my old Dad, ‘but that’s how the Germans rooted ya. You were too busy sitting talking and having ya bloody coffee.’

With that we got up to leave and the waitress handed Dad the bill. Dad handed it to the old Hungarian and we walked out. When we got outside it was raining. Dad said, ‘Remember that, son. If ya ever need to “sneak go” a dago, ya can always get the bastards while they are having dinner. The buggers take all day. I can’t stand these bastards who play with their food.’

‘I agree,’ said Cowboy Johnny, which was about as close as he got to being philosophical. He was always in full agreement with anything Dad said. Then Dad cracked wise with one of his pearls of wisdom. ‘There are three sorts of people who dilly dally at the dinner table, son … wogs, poofters and members of the Royal family.’

Whenever my maternal Grandfather, a Seventh Day Adventist minister called Pastor George Weslake, visited us my dad always let it be known he thought old Pastor George was a ‘la-di-da old ponce’. Needless to say, old George dilly-dallied at the dinner table.

Breakfast was a big meal for Grandad. It would take me and Dad three minutes under normal conditions but Grandad would sit and want to enjoy toast, butter, marmalade, Weetbix, brown sugar, hot milk and sliced banana and dates, with sultanas all over it.

Then he would have more toast and marmalade followed by a piping hot toby jug of Milo, and this would go on with the old bloke chattering away like a married magpie for a good hour or more.

My mother loved Grandad’s visits and would sit with my little sister Debbie and enjoy breakfast with him. So what Dad would do is finish his breakfast first, as always, then get up and start to clear the table bit by bit as soon as Grandad used anything.

The old fellow took a knife full of butter to put on his toast; Dad cleared the butter away. Grandad took some marmalade; Dad took the marmalade. Grandad took a bit of toast; Dad removed the toast. Grandad used the brown sugar and hot milk, then Dad cleared it away. This went on until the whole table was empty except for Grandad’s bowl of Weetbix and fruit, and Dad was hovering to grab that.

My mum and sister would sit through this, angry and embarrassed. I, however, thought Dad’s conduct was very funny. As soon as Grandad had finished his bowl, Dad took the empty bowl and gave him his big toby jug of Milo and that was that.

Grandad’s hour-long breakfast got cut down to 15 minutes. Dad would sit on the back step and say to me, ‘Ya got to watch the old bastard, son. He’ll eat us out of house and home. Silly old prick’s got one hand on the bible and the other hand on the fridge door.’

I love all types of food, although at times I’m a little wary of your Chinese tucker. You would be, too, if you knew which crims used to be shipped off to a certain dim sim factory where they went on the missing list. It happened so often it became the norm, if you know what I mean.

Now I have been close to many members of the criminal fraternity, but not close enough to eat them with soy sauce and fried rice. Ha (burp) ha.

BREAKFAST, lunch and teatime at Risdon is always a great joy for me. With Ray Sheehan sitting on one side and Peter Wright on the other, the eating is fast and furious, although Peter’s table manners leave a great deal to be desired. Ray, on the other hand, likes to give me a verbal running commentary on every move he makes.

‘Ah,’ says Ray, ‘I think I’ll have a bit of the old butter on the old potato. Where is the old knife? Pass the salt, Chopper. I think I’ll have a cup of the old tea. Bloody hell, these potatoes taste good with a bit of the old butter on them. Gee, this knife is sharp, I’d like to jam it up George Lawler’s arse.’ As you may gather, gentle reader, Ray doesn’t like the Governor, Mr Lawler, and doesn’t care who knows it.

And Ray is a bit of a food critic, as well. ‘What’s this shit?’ he asks. ‘How can I eat it if I don’t know what it is? I’ll put a bit of the old butter on that as well.

‘Excuse me, boss,’ he yells. ‘Has the cook shit on my plate? What’s this crap?’

‘I’ll eat it if you don’t want it,’ says Peter.

Meanwhile, Bucky’s sitting at another table and flicks a portion of peanut butter over at Peter Wright. Then it starts. ‘Ahh,’ says old Ray, ‘a bit of the old food fight.’ Slop, a spoonful of stew gets sent hurtling across the room.

Warren Oldham stops inspecting his false teeth to let go with several slices of bread like frisbees across the room. Harry the Greek calls for order. ‘Turn it up, turn it up,’ he cries.

‘Shut up, wog,’ yells Bucky, as if he’s addressing the United Nations. ‘You are not a bad bloke, Harry, but you are a bit like a computer. Once in a while you need a bit of information punched into you.’

Laughter erupts and Harry starts air raiding, which he does well. More food flies, more abuse is directed at various ones, and chaos is the result. I sit quietly and eat my meal with Ray, who gives me a lecture on how it does not snow on the planet Mars, with Bucky calling him a senile old goat, saying he saw a TV documentary about us all living on Mars in the near future.

‘Well, you would know,’ yells Ray. ‘You are a bloody Martian, you’ve got two heads.’ The screws call for silence, but to no avail. All the other yards in their mess rooms are in an uproar.

The whole idea is to eat up and get out quick. Harry the Greek spends most of his day muttering and mumbling and air raiding about bloody two-headed Tasmanians, and then being told to sit down or be knocked down, but it’s all in jest.

Bucky has a standing joke that before Harry gets out of jail he will stuff him in one of the industrial washing machines down in the laundry where everyone in C Yard works.

The boss of the laundry is a prison industry supervisor named Eddy Fry, or Eddy the Head, as we call him. He enjoys the reputation of running a tight ship and having booked more prisoners than any other member of staff in the prison. A booking means that the prisoner will more than likely be sent around the comer to N Division. Harry the Greek is Eddy’s number one worker. Like all Greeks, Harry loves a day’s work. As soon as Harry hits the laundry he goes into work mode, whereas me and Bucky head for the coffee tin and start to make a cuppa.

‘I want to see some work out of you two bastards today,’ yells Eddy. ‘No problem,’ yells Bucky, raising his coffee cup in a cheers gesture.

Eddy has a sense of humor in spite of his best efforts to appear otherwise. ‘The wog’s got it all under control,’ yells Bucky.

‘You will miss Harry when he goes. This jail needs more Greeks,’ yells Eddy. ‘Good bloody workers they are.’ Harry spits the dummy at all this and starts air raiding and the daily chaos starts.

The whole day is spent in a mixture of work and laughter and friendly abuse of each other. Then up we go for lunch and more chaos. I quite enjoy getting into my cell for some peace and bloody quiet.

Day in and day out the laughter, friendly abuse and scallywag practical jokes continue. As jails go the Pink Palace is in a class of its own.

IT’S time a good-looking bloke like me got married, but the powers that be don’t see it that way. I applied for permission to marry the lovely Mary-Ann, but this was rejected on March 10, 1994. Governor George Lawler called me into his office. I had already mentioned to him that I wanted to marry and I had the distinct impression that I was given permission. But later they said I was jumping the gun, and that they had only ‘recommended’ that I could go ahead.

I thought it would only be a matter of some paperwork. After all, we are both adults. I don’t think I was asking for any great favors. It’s not as though I wanted to honeymoon at Christopher Skase’s joint in Spain. A small service inside the jail and some hundreds and thousands on bread and butter would have sufficed. But I got a letter from the General Manager of Corrective Services, Big Ben Marris, ‘the Prisoner’s Friend’, telling me permission had been refused.

However, Big Ben said he was willing to consider the request in 12 months’ time. 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.

Things were different in Pentridge. There the Governor has had the power to authorise anything from a striptease show to a boxing match and day leave to Luna Park if he felt so inclined. He was the boss of the jail. The bugger has so much power he could almost have you shot at dawn. But this is not Pentridge. As for the wedding bells, the hand of fate has interfered again. Every time I have ever got within 300 yards of the wedding chapel fate has stuck a spanner in the works.

I have become philosophical about the old hand of fate, particularly when that hand is attached to some arthritic bureaucrat. They are all the same. They are stiffer than a body after six hours in the boot. They are given a teaspoonful of power and they want to swing it round like a baseball bat. Oh well, never mind, it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry.

A rooster one day, feather duster the next.

GETTING to the stage where I wanted to get married has taken a while. I told Mary-Ann right from the start that all I wanted was a friendship and that not only was love and romance not on the agenda but I had no real understanding of the word ‘love’, and I certainly did not want to put another lady through the same torment I had put poor Margaret through.

As usual I set forth with the very best of intentions and after I received the shattering news that I had lost my High Court appeal against conviction, I had every clear intention of asking the lovely Mary-Ann to pick up her swag and boot off down the road, but she told me she loved me and had no intention of going away.

I explained to her that it is a stupid and impossible situation, but my protests fell on deaf ears.

She is a wonderful girl from a farming family in Richmond, just outside Hobart. Her grandfather owned six or seven pubs in Hobart but sold them to take up farming, which is a pity, as I always wanted to marry the publican’s daughter.

Anyway, I swore I’d never marry in jail. In fact, I swore I’d never marry. I’ve promised marriage a dozen times over and been able to avoid it on each occasion, but I’m no longer a young man, and someone has to care for me in my dotage.

Mary-Ann first heard of me in London. She had read my book while on holiday and became involved in a heated debate over my good name in a south London pub and swore to come in to see me as soon as she got back to Hobart.

She said she fell in love as soon as she saw me. In all modesty, this is perfectly understandable, as to know me is to love me.

The screws joke with me about marrying into the landed gentry when they see the Jag-driving farmer’s daughter come to visit. Ha ha.

Grave digger I may be, but gold digger? Never.

Mary-Ann has no brothers and only one sister and there were various crude jests about Mr Hodge not losing a daughter but gaining a Chopper, and at least I’d have plenty of room down on the farm to bury the bodies. (Memo to all authorities and potential in-laws … the bodies bit was a joke.)

I think jokes about Mary-Ann and myself are in bad taste because in spite of the comedy I do trust this woman with my life, and at the risk of using that word, I do love her. I have explained to her that I will more than likely break her heart and run rampant amongst the local harlots upon my release, but even that did not deter her.

Mind you, I think that after five minutes of running rampant I’d need the aid of an intensive care unit and a heart specialist. I suspect any rampage throughout the assorted massage parlors and dirty girl centres of the nation upon my release is far fetched, to say the least.

Mary-Ann is very good-natured, loving, loyal, kind, generous, warm and she doesn’t nag at me.

Unfortunately Margaret, for all her wonderful qualities, nagged at me without mercy. When she didn’t nag at me the bloody dog would nag at me. I would have had GBH of the ears, if I had any.

Sometimes Margaret would stand there nagging and the dog would bark at me in time with the nagging and while I thoroughly deserved it, I’m most pleased Mary-Ann is not of the nagging disposition.

She went to a posh private girls’ school and speaks with a slightly la-di-da voice which I think is cute. I know it is a bit sad to get married in jail but the truth is I don’t want to lose her.

THE ‘let’s get Chopper out of jail’ campaign that started during the year is a tribute to the loyalty of Mary-Ann and all the great and good friends I have in six states.

Mary-Ann got the ball rolling with a small advertisement in the public notice section of the Hobart
Mercury
newspaper, on December 29, 1993. It went like this:

Mary-Ann comes in to visit me each week. As I say, she is a top chick and loves me dearly but I sometimes worry about dragging her with me through years of pain, visiting me in jail, as I care for her too much to want to see her hurt.

It is a very unhappy situation that does not sit well with me. Mary-Ann is a big buxom beauty and if I wasn’t in jail I would pull her on like a wet soapy sock.

She is a happy, cheerful, loving and loyal girl who tells me she entered into the relationship with her eyes wide open. Margaret said the same thing, but no one’s eyes are that wide open.

Sometimes, I feel I don’t want to be loved by anyone as I then have the tears and pain and sadness of that person hanging on my heart like a dead weight. I carry the guilt of that person’s pain on my shoulders.

It is not fair on me or on that person. Prison and passion do not mix. A jail is not the place for hearts and flowers emotions. Mary-Ann, as a rule, comes in to visit me with a shirt or top that shows a reasonable amount of cleavage, while talking to her my eyes are mostly glued to her ample cleavage. Bad manners, I know, but if Mary-Ann don’t like it she can bloody well wear a poloneck jumper.

She sends me polaroid snapshots of herself which are quite lovely. I showed one to my little mate Greg Hutt, nicknamed Buck. Greg looked at the photo then said, ‘Is that the chick that visits you, Chopper? I’ve seen her. She’s a buxom lass. She would walk a mile before she would even notice I was wedged between the cheeks of her bottom. Ha ha.’

The moral of that story is don’t ever show your girlfriend’s photos to Bucky, but in his rather crude, comical manner he was paying Mary-Ann a compliment. A few more compliments like that and he could end up in the dim sims, like some other people we needn’t mention.

Comedy aside, the situation with Mary-Ann bothers me as I don’t want another Margaret situation. It is all too painful. I don’t want to launch forth into the uncertain future that goes with a 12th of never jail sentence with anyone’s broken heart sitting on my shoulder.

For a bloke who has never seen himself as a great romantic, I’ve certainly walked a pathway in life that’s littered with the broken hearts of tearful women.

I once said to Mary-Ann, ‘I don’t want to get into another relationship and for Christ’s sake don’t fall in love or you will drown yourself in your own tears.’ Prison is no place for love affairs. How it all happens is a puzzle to me.

As I’ve said before, when I am outside there are few women interested in a man with no ears, but when I am inside there are offers aplenty. A tragedy, when you think about it.

All a bloke like me needs and feels happy with is loving friendships – cheerful, cheeky scallywags who cheer me up. Those are the perfect relationships to have in prison, and thank God I have people like that on my side.

I treasure those friendships, but a love affair is like a Greek tragedy in prison. It is a bitter-sweet adventure into the world of tears and pain. It’s a pain you cannot let go and when you do, it hurts even harder.

MARY-ANN asked me if I’d be faithful to her when I get out.

I told Mary-Ann exactly what I told Margaret in 1986, before I got out of Bendigo Prison to join her: ‘I’ll be faithful to the best of my ability’. Mary-Ann asked the same question Margaret did: ‘What do you mean by that?’ and my reply was exactly the same: ‘I’m a very sexually faithful man.’ In a manner of speaking.

Women think you’re just pulling their leg when deep down they should know you are a total ratbag. How can any bloke who has been locked up in a cage for a long time be 1000 per cent faithful to any woman?

It’s like a dog on a chain. You put the dog on the chain for the night then let him off the chain in the morning and he runs around and around the backyard like a raving nutter.

You lock a man in a cage for a year or two or longer, then let him out, and you’re going to be a sad girl if you think he’s going to come home and sit in front of the telly with a tinny, 24 hours a day.

When a bloke gets out of jail after a long stay he runs around like a mad rat, drinking all the piss, eating all the food and pinning tails on every donkey, or should I say ass, he can find.

It doesn’t mean you don’t love the girl you have at home but it’s like boiling water and having nowhere for the steam to go. Then one day the lid gets removed and something’s got to blow.

It’s a bit unrealistic for any woman to come along to any bloke when he is in jail, form a relationship with him then say to him, ‘Please be faithful to me when you get out, please stay home, please don’t gamble all your money and please don’t go falling victim to the wiggling bottoms and fluttering eyelashes of loose women.’

The only thing that will pull me up is middle age and laziness and the fact that I’m no longer in Melbourne with the nightclubs and massage parlors.

One of my publishers, John Silvester, came down to visit me a while back. They must serve a nice drop of scotch on the plane, because he certainly looked pissed to me, but regardless of that it was good to see the sly scallywag.

He was telling me of the new rage in Melbourne, table-top dancing, where these exotic dancers get up on tables and dance for you personally, and according to him these chicks all look like they jumped out of the pages of
Penthouse
or
Playboy
magazine.

He was telling me about some nightclub called Santa Fe Gold and the gaggle of girlies at that place. My God, can you imagine me in Melbourne now, fresh out of Pentridge and drunk in charge of a hand gun in the middle of that place, especially with the rumors that some of my old enemies from Lygon Street, Carlton, are flat out trying to invest money in the new booming table-top dancing industry.

I wouldn’t be able to help myself. It would be like ‘High Noon in Dodge City’.

Being faithful all depends on the temptations that await me on my release. I won’t be returning to Melbourne, so there will be no dead dagos or kidnapped dancing girls.

Tassie isn’t quite the end of the earth and from what I’ve seen, half the toss-up molls in Australia live in Tassie, and a bloke fresh out of jail planning on being faithful to his beloved wife or girlfriend is going to be in for a hell of a mental, emotional and moral tug of war.

Anyway, it’s a fairy tale debate because the way things are going, by the time I get out of here, a good root and a green apple would probably kill me.

As for being faithful, well I’ll certainly put my best foot forward until I shoot myself in it. Lucky for me, Mary-Ann, apart from being good natured and understanding, is also a very realistic women. The truth is, the only person I’ve ever really been faithful to in my life is myself. Ha ha.

I WILL digress for a moment and answer a question in relation to myself and the fairer sex. All my life since my teenage years I’ve always had and kept the friendship of females, and I am by no means a romantic or a playboy.

I think the answer is that I always treated ladies like I treated men: with sarcastic disregard, yet blind loyalty when the shit hit the fan. I treat them as mates. Most of the female friends I’ve had and still have to this day have never been romantically involved with me.

I’ve put holes in my manners with a fair few of them but, as I keep telling the buggers, what’s the use of having mates with tits if you cannot get the buggers to knock the top off it now and again, for Christ’s sake?

Females are strange creatures. A good female friend of mine who I went to school with was giving me a lift home one night. I was a bit pissed and I put the hard word on her. She told me off for my bad manners and I said sorry. I then said, ‘Lend me $200.’ She said ‘okay’ and I took it out of her purse.