Bali 9: The Untold Story (7 page)

He wishes like hell he wasn’t there, especially because of his parents, and he worries about how he has caused this unhappiness for them and whether they will cope. He worries about them getting older and spending their hard-earnt money visiting him in jail. He hates that, and he knows life will only get harder from here on. But at least he has God now. He always believed in Him, but, like so many others, in his own way. He didn’t regularly turn up as a churchgoer, but he considered himself a Christian and liked to think he pretty much lived life that way. Now, in the long hours between dawn and dusk, and the long nights when the sounds of Bali permeate his jail cell, he prays, reading the Bible and searching for a way ahead. He wants the burden to be lifted from his parents’ shoulders. The
woman he loved and whom he was planning to spend his life with has now gone her own way, though they are still friends. She is young and it would be inconceivable to expect that she should wait so long for him. And he prays for his co-worker Renae Lawrence, who shares the same jail. He knows that Lawrence has come to rely on him, perhaps even to survive on him, some days, and he has a mission now. He must protect her. So he listens to her. Spends big chunks of his day with her. He likes her, thinks she’s funny, but he also watches out for her and everyone knows that. The pair hated each other during those early days in Bali, before they were nabbed, but now Lawrence is his ‘sister and best friend’.

This doesn’t surprise people who have met Martin: his soft personality is obvious even to those who deal with him in jail. Bill and Michele Stephens are proud of that, the way he was brought up. That’s why they never thought that they had any reason to worry about where he was heading in life. Along the way he’d run off the rails a couple of times, which was fairly normal. But they had been happy with the big picture. So when he went off for a short spell in April 2005—on a trip to deliver furniture to Darwin, his parents thought—none of his family or friends thought any more about it. That is, until they turned on the television news and saw his face fill the screen.

M
atthew Norman and his best mates at Quakers Hill High School in Sydney’s west would have the girls in stitches over their juvenile
Jackass
hijinks. The antics made famous by the MTV prankster series would be played out in the school playground, or on the weekend, or at any other time, as long as there was an audience. Of course, Matthew and his friends didn’t always have the props to deliver the same level of puerile pranks made famous by the real
Jackass
stars, but their show was just as funny. And it didn’t need department stores or golfing greens or international travel to make it funny. It was never cruel, either—just a few dumb stunts and a dose of good-natured fun to pass the time. They developed a bit of a following over
it and, as long as there were witnesses, Matthew and his mates were happy to perform.

Matthew’s friends came from two different years at the local high school, with a big casual group of girls and boys mixing easily. Everyone pretty much got on, and were open to new people joining in. A few of the girls thought Matthew was a pretty good catch. He was open and funny, easy to talk to, and he seemed really genuine. But he only had eyes for one young teenager, Jess, and her friends thought she was pretty lucky. They also thought that Matthew spoilt her rotten.

‘I keep thinking of the way he treated his girlfriend and how caring he was towards her,’ one of Jess’s friends says now.

Matthew would buy Jess presents, sit and talk to her during recess like she was the only person in the world, and he even planned to take her up to the NSW Central Coast to live when they were a bit older. Jess was a year younger than Matthew, and her friends liked him from the start, and looked up to him. In a way, that’s what brought the two school years together.

Jess’s friends thought Matthew Norman was gregarious, but he wasn’t loud. And he didn’t get embarrassed talking to the girls. Some of the other boys did, and that was a real turn-off. But Matthew was great for a laugh.

Like most of his mates, Norman didn’t rate school too highly, or take it too seriously, and English, especially, was well down the list. He didn’t read much, but he knew what was going on. Sport, on the other
hand, made turning up each day well worth the effort. He loved sport—any kind—and now, sitting in an Indonesian jail cell, he still misses it madly. So much so that the first sentence he uttered to a group of waiting media late last year was a plea for them to find out the score in rugby union’s Bledisloe Cup.

At school, Matthew liked recess too—the time when they would all sit around and have a laugh. Whether it was fake fights he staged with his friends, or other
Jackass
-inspired stunts he and his mates would play, Matthew always looked like he was having a ball. He rarely talked about his home life; no one really asked and he never really offered much. So few, including many of his and Jess’s good friends, knew of the enormous upheaval and drama that had characterised his early years.

Matthew Norman was born in Westmead in Sydney just after his twin, Cheryl, in September 1986 and life was a minor struggle from the start. Born weeks premature, the twins endured some early scares and a prolonged hospital stay before joining their mother, Robyn Davis, and their father, Michael Norman, in their Quakers Hill home. The couple already had one little girl, and the twins were a welcome addition to their family.

However, things turned sour for the couple, who had married only a few years earlier, and within a few more years they separated, with Davis and all three children initially moving out of their home. That’s
when things went from bad to worse—and they kept moving in that direction.

Michael Norman didn’t see his children for huge blocks of time that stretched into years. The bitter and acrimonious separation was coloured by nasty accusations, claims and counter-claims, legal accusations and Family Court involvement, before all three children came to live full time with their father.

The effect of that period on Michael Norman remains. ‘I ended up with the children, but it cost me a lot of money. About $80 000 I lost,’ he says, along with all respect for a court process that is supposed to determine the best outcome for the children of a broken marriage.

The impact on the children, being the subject of such a nasty and prolonged fight, must also have been great, and Michael admits that behavioural problems dominated their early time together. ‘They [the children] were sort of immature for their age…because of what they’d been through. They didn’t know how to make decisions for themselves and they didn’t know how to handle things. They used to have tantrums and this sort of thing.’

Robyn Davis now lives in Port Macquarie on the NSW north coast, and she deflects all public interest in her family. She stays in contact with all her children, and frequently sings Matthew’s praises to those who will listen. She has told people of how Matthew helped her when she was sick a few years back, and undertook repairs on her home. He was a good son, even becoming a member of the Salvation Army when he was younger.

Michael Norman found looking after three young children a full-on task, especially when he was also trying to hold down a full-time job. He took long-service leave for several months, and tried to get to know them all over again. The children were still a few years off becoming teenagers, and they had to learn who their father was again too. Some days were tough; others almost impossible. Matthew could be hesitant, withdrawn sometimes, and didn’t always trust people easily. But other days were action-packed with fun, and as time went on, the fun ones dominated.

Michael, his two daughters and son would go on family outings and share all the household chores, even the cooking. That was, until his daughters thought his kitchen creations weren’t quite as good as their own, and Michael escaped that task from then on. So did Matthew, who burnt almost everything he set about to cook—none of them really sure whether or not it was intentional.

Time passed quickly as the children raced through upper primary school and into high school. Matthew never stood out in any bad way. He was a respectful child, built his spare time around the sport he played, and was a fairly accommodating brother to his sisters. After the initial settling-in period, the three children gave Michael only rare moments of worry. Indeed, the pivotal moments in their teenage years proved to Michael that they had been brought up to know what
was right and what was wrong. And they would never be involved in taking drugs.

When Matthew was just fourteen, a friend’s mother almost died of a drug overdose. It was a terrible thing for a young teenager to witness, Michael Norman says: ‘Matthew and this other guy saved this woman’s life. That’s where Matthew got introduced to hard drugs, and from that day he’s had nothing to do with drugs.’ Michael’s trust in his son is absolute. He says he can read him like a book, and knows when he is telling the truth. For that reason, the controversy surrounding Matthew’s friendship with Leif Ibrahim, the young man who sold the ecstasy tablet that killed Sydney teenager Danielle Chalon—a revelation outed in the media as Norman sat in his Indonesian jail cell—riles Michael. Sure, he says, his son had struck up a friendship with Ibrahim, whom he had also met several times. That’s what children do at school—mix with other boys. But that friendship died ages ago, he says, with Matthew not having seen Ibrahim for more than eighteen months.

Matthew and Michael seemed to share a similar relationship to most other fathers and sons, with ups and downs usually generated by household budgets, curfews and meeting family obligations. Michael met many of Matthew’s friends as he passed through his teenage years, eventually moving out to live with friends. But he still had a room in the Quakers Hill home his father shared with his two sisters, and he would pop home at least twice a week. They would all look forward to that.
But sometimes that, too, would be a bone of contention, when Matthew would use the home phone to dial up a costly phone bill. Early in 2005 Michael had to chip his son over his phone use. Matthew was spending between $60 and $100 a month, and while he did contribute to the phone bill, he didn’t pay rent for any of the times he crashed there, and that was far too much money being wasted. Michael Norman told him so—all youths need to take responsibility.

It was another phone call, though, that shook Michael, his ex-wife and their daughters to the core. Michael was out at a first-aid course in Parramatta, in Sydney’s west, when his daughter Cheryl took the call. She gave her father the message late that day, soon after he arrived home: someone from the government was trying to contact him. Michael thought it related to a query over child support. Things relating to custody and children seemed to drag on for years and years, and he had no reason to suspect the call would be for any other reason. Certainly, in his wildest dreams, he would not have thought that the call would tell him that his son had been arrested in Bali with eight other young Australians, three of them his co-workers. None of that made sense. He knew Matthew better than that. He also knew one of his co-accused, the young woman by the name of Renae Lawrence. She had even been to his house once.

It was on a Sunday, around Christmas time, and Michael and his daughters were heading out for the
day. They’d packed the car and were ready to take off when Renae fronted. She had come around to look for a bag that belonged to her; she thought it might be in Matthew’s room. Michael Norman walked her up the stairs to check whether any bag had been left there. He remembers how boyish she looked, and how he really had thought, at first, that she was a man.

At the top of the stairs, Renae looked around but couldn’t find the bag, then left. And Michael Norman didn’t see Renae Lawrence again until her face filled the same television news bulletin as his son’s. Both of them, along with a handful of others, had been arrested in Bali on serious drug charges. Michael had also heard of one of the other young lads, but that was all. Even though Matthew worked with three of them, most of their names did not ring a bell. Certainly, with the exception of Renae, they’d never been to his house. Something just didn’t add up.

W
hen the 10.46 p.m. train from Graceville slides into Chelmer station on time, the young bloke hanging onto the back is met with the drunken applause of his mates drinking nearby. Others are focused on the middle of the train as a lad appears from nowhere, deftly using his spray can to sign his moniker on one of the carriages, before the train chugs off towards Indooroopilly and beyond. Others are too lazy for the short journey to the platform, knowing that, if they want, their turn will come later. A train runs between the two Brisbane suburbs pretty much every thirty minutes until 1.16 a.m. on this night, and there’s plenty of time to go for a B-ride—back-ride—or use the spray cans hidden nearby to put their tag on a train.

It’s Friday night and Scott Rush, Michael Czugaj and a gang of other youths are drinking and smoking in a little park snuggled in under the Walter Taylor Bridge in Indooroopilly, in Brisbane’s west. Not everyone in the group of twenty or so knows each other, but that doesn’t matter. Not everyone is drinking, either, but certainly most are. Nor is everyone smoking, but groups of them are passing around a joint. Everyone knows someone in this big, broad group of teenagers, almost all boys, from some of Brisbane’s best schools. There’s a couple from Marist Brothers Ashgrove and Marist Brothers Rosalie. St Lawrence’s is in there too, and Kenmore State High School, Corinda State High School. And other schools, either based in the local area or a quick train ride away. But, without uniforms, there’s not much to identify what school most of the young lads attend during the week. That’s not important here, anyway, where school books are forgotten and people’s school identities along with them.

The ages of the boys sitting around run from fourteen or so to seventeen, although you can’t rule out someone a bit younger or older sneaking in. No one stands out on these nights and everyone is dressed in similar gear. Tracksuit pants, polo shirts, runners and the odd hat are the uniform of choice. But the few girls who dot the circle of teenagers certainly stand out. Tonight there’s only a couple of them, and they are wearing short skirts and body-hugging tops. They seem to want the attention the boys don’t. But the boys aren’t entirely aimless—the school week ended six
hours ago, and most of them planned to drink until they were drunk and school was a hazy memory. They looked forward to having a laugh. Perhaps sharing in the joint that would be passed around. Maybe even kiss one of the girls, if they were really lucky.

The group had met a few hours earlier, as they often did on a Friday or Saturday night—sometimes both—outside the neon-lit convenience store not far from the railway station at Indooroopilly. That was always the deal, and they’d reiterate it to each other at the bus stop each Friday after school. Meet there, not too early: sometime after 7 p.m. Then they’d decide what they needed to buy and who would buy it. And then, where to head to. But it usually came down to a choice of two places: the small, dimly lit park sandwiched between McDonald’s and the Indooroopilly shopping centre, or the park they were sitting in now, just over the bridge and between the big white pillars that allowed them to practise their graffiti, or get lucky with a girl.

On this night they’d actually started at the park on the other side, near the shopping centre. Laden with supplies they’d either pilfered from their parents’ liquor cabinets or conned someone older into buying or been brash enough to buy themselves, they’d dawdled down the street, around the corner and into the park bordered by the imposing centre.

The red and yellow lights of McDonald’s framed the other side of the park. They’d often drop by there, sometimes to grab a bite to eat and sometimes to hide
from police after complaints from passers-by. The manicured greens of the local bowls club sat on the other side of McDonald’s. But tonight they’d settled early in the middle of the park, on the grass, and opened their beers. Others lit a joint. Some claimed to have popped a pill or two, but most didn’t. And all of them toasted the end of the school week, and the beginning of another weekend.

Scott Rush’s family lived only a hop, step and jump away in the well-to-do suburb of Chelmer, in a leafy street that played T-junction with the river. The Rush home was not one of those with a Prado or BMW parked outside, but it was neat and tidy, and had been home to Scott and his brothers for a long time. Scott was born in December 1985, the third child for Christine, a teacher, and Lee, who worked for Telstra. Christine and Lee were nice folk and they took pride in themselves, and the home in which they’d raised their children.

Scott went to the upmarket Marist Brothers college in Rosalie, where he played in the rugby union team. He was toned and athletic and very good-looking.

Michael Czugaj had gone to the same school, but now was at Corinda State High School, part of an effort by his mother and father to stop him playing truant. They’d tried most other things, so changing schools was the next step. Michael, or Mikey to his family, lived with his father and a handful of brothers and sisters a little further away from the Rush family, in the working-class suburb of Oxley. He and Scott
weren’t good friends, but they had sport in common—like so many others there—and on nights like this, that was enough.

Scott Rush passed a beer down the chain of hands to one of the others, a student at Marist Brothers Ashgrove. The two didn’t know each other well, although they had their Friday and Saturday nights in common. So handing over a beer was a pretty generous gesture—but that was the thing about Scott, who had at least two girls vying for his attention at this time. Scott could be generous to a fault—until you crossed him. Then he could turn on you. And few wanted that to happen. He was muscly, and fast; stocky, really. And he wouldn’t back away from a fight.

As the night wore on, and the alcohol numbed memories of a school week during which many of them felt out of place or alienated, some of the group would get up to their regular weekly tricks. They might pick up a few sticks and venture the short distance to the bowling green, where they’d set about trashing the lawns, vandalising the club and breaking windows. They knew that the club’s managers would be hard at work before the school bell rang out on Monday morning, fixing it up.

It had become a bit of a game over the past few months. The gang of youths would wreak havoc, ripping up the lawns, kicking in walls and even painting graffiti on the roof. By the next week, though, the lawns would be once again manicured to within an inch of their lives;
the broken glass would be fixed, and the roof no longer host to their amateur artwork. They’d consider that a challenge, and the very next week they’d set about wreaking the same havoc, determined not to blink first. It was the same with Queensland Rail. The government authority would get rid of the graffiti straightaway, and that would just spur the boys on even more.

On the way back from the bowling green to their mates who’d remained drinking in the park, the youths would throw a few rocks, causing a bit of trouble for passing motorists, or even try to break into a car or two. No one can remember Scott joining in a lot of that mischief though. He would just sit quietly, having a drink on some occasions, holding court on others. He certainly had an air of authority about him; he was charming, but in an aloof sort of way.

Stealing was part of the scene, and you could tell who had souvenired their clothes by the gaping holes near the neck, caused by the security tags being ripped off. Getting spare change out of cars also helped finance some of their drinking and dope binges. The Indooroopilly and Chelmer train stations acted as honeypots to those workers who drove as far as the western suburbs before commuting into their jobs in the city. And on a Friday night there were plenty of cars not expecting their owners back for hours, just as there were on a Saturday night when the local cinemas attracted a good crowd.

Some of the boys would take their shirts off, wrap them around their hands, smash a car window and rifle
through the glovebox. It was a low-grade break-in, with most unable even to pick a lock, but it always seemed to net something worthwhile.

However, it certainly wasn’t as lucrative as stealing mobile phones, which could net some serious cash, as some of the group could attest. It seemed everyone at school now boasted the latest model, and to swipe one and sell it for $150 was no big deal. No one got much more or less for a phone. That was the going price, as one of the guys who worked at the local cinema had revealed. With access to the lost and found boxes, he had a really good deal. Each session would result in some patrons leaving behind their mobile phones. He would record the finds, and put the phones in lost property—but not before phoning his friends and providing detailed descriptions of the handsets. One by one, other lads would turn up, explain to the manager that they had left their mobile phone behind, describe it and walk away. For a while, that group budgeted on finding and selling two phones a day. That was $300 each day—and the racket went on for weeks.

As Friday night wore on, and lights in the homes around the parks were turned off, the boys would discard their mess of empty bottles and cigarette packets, gather up what remained, and head off on foot for the short walk across Walter Taylor Bridge. The park under the bridge was even more dingy, and unless the residents of the houses just nearby called the police, the group would pretty much be able to run amok.
That’s where some of them would go for a B-ride on a train heading to the next suburb or Graceville. While the trip took only a minute or so, it got the adrenaline flowing, particularly on a bellyful of beers.

It was important to concentrate, because the train worked up a pace; by the time they alighted at Graceville station, their knuckles were a deathly white. But they’d be keen not to miss the return ride back to their open beer at Chelmer. So they’d wait until the guard was looking the other way and jump back onto the end of the train, pulling into Chelmer station to accept the applause of their mates. It was worth the risk, showing off that way. And it filled in time.

The graffiti gang got the same buzz practising its art on the trains heading from Chelmer into the city. No one seemed to boast too much talent, but that didn’t stop them giving each other tag names and seeing who could own what carriages. They called the gang BDR, after ‘Bring Da Ruckus’, a song made famous by the Wu-Tang Clan, a rap group which helped move hip-hop from inside the clubs to the street corners of New York. The name suited this crowd of schoolboys who were struggling to find their way ahead, and whose parents paid thousands of dollars each year for a good private education, but who would spend their Friday and Saturday nights looking to belong.

For the most part, the trouble the group caused was along the lines of small-time break-ins, a bit of vandalism and the odd bin set alight. And, certainly, it was aimed more
at filling in time than hurting anyone. But the odd fight would occur. Sometimes, after a joint or two, Michael would hit out at those he knew. One night he was sitting down, sharing a bong with two other boys, when he asked whether he’d had one or two cones. When neither of the other two boys could answer, he grabbed one of their hats, threw it to the ground and tried to pick a fight. And then, just as quickly, it was over, and he apologised.

Many of them were into a bit of showing off, too. One week, a small breakaway group decided to end their boredom by forming the ‘goon kings’, a small clique of drunk boys who would buy a cask of wine each, wear the cardboard on their head, the goon on their belts, and walk around the nearby shopping centre. The more people laughed, the more they enjoyed it.

Sometimes, though, it could get a bit reckless, especially if Monday was a public holiday and they decided to meet on a Sunday night when movie marathons swelled the number of people pouring into the shopping centre. On those nights, up to forty teenagers might gather in the group, and that’s when things could get out of hand. On a dare, some would walk over the rails between the wooden planks on the train tracks, knowing that there was no easy escape if they had misjudged the timetable. On another night, a couple of smart alecks decided to set fire to a shading cloth that covered part of the park adjoining the bridge. A lightning rod for other disaffected youths, more joined in and soon bins were being set alight, trees pulled out and fights started. The police arrived quickly that night,
but not quite quickly enough: the youths disappeared into the night. Those caught had their names taken, but they didn’t hear anything more from the police.

Perhaps more through luck than good fortune for those concerned, police were not around on the night one of the boys brought along his older brother in a souped-up car. The older boy opened the car boot, proudly pulling out a gun, before running around the park pointing the weapon indiscriminately at others.

‘I remember this one guy who was absolutely pissed,’ one of the youths who attended that night said, ‘and he went up to one of the guys holding the gun and put it in his mouth and said “Shoot my brains out. I’m that pissed”. They said it was unloaded, but I’m sure they never really checked whether it was or not.’

While older youths dropped by now and again, these Friday and Saturday nights were usually the domain of the high-schoolers. When the older youths did arrive, it was usually because they were up to no good. They’d pull up in their shiny cars, revving their engines, before one or two of them would venture down into the darkness to do a quick drug deal. And then they’d be off again, and few would remember them being there.

There was another group of older youths whom it was good for the younger teenagers to stay away from. They were all in their twenties, and had met at school. One night, one of the regulars had $1100 in his pocket. This older group arrived and fronted him, accusing him of moving in on some of their territory. They said he
was becoming too successful, and as punishment they took him aside, bashed him, and walked away with his hat and his shoes.