Chopper Unchopped (70 page)

Old Vincent, a former heavyweight boxer, was sending men crashing to the floor with lefts and rights. Someone hit the Jew over the head with a bottle. Vincent decked the offender with a right hand that would have killed a horse.

By this time Loxy had made his way to the lounge room. Frankie and the Croydon Boys, from the Dorset Gardens pub, were making short and bloody work of the rest of the party goers.

Head Butt Larry had his collarbone broken. Leo the Lion lost an eye and nearly all his teeth. Poor Piss Ant just sat in the lounge totally nonplussed. The party had turned into the bucks’ night from hell. ‘Was it the dips?’ he must have wondered.

At the finish of things we all headed for the front door with Piss Ant’s sister yelling, ‘I’m coming with you guys.’ Poor Piss Ant was helping his friend Head Butt to his car. The whole thing was chaos. Me, Dave and Vinnie with the girl in her school uniform, all jumped into Vinnie’s old Pontiac and, followed by Loxy and Frankie and their crew, drove to the Rising Sun Hotel to gather our thoughts.

We regrouped in the bar and checked our injuries. Razza had a broken nose, Fatty Neil a broken arm, Loxy had busted two knuckles and, more importantly, lost his cricket bat, and Dave the Jew had blood coming out of his head. Vincent had broken his new watch and I had somehow lost my left shoe. A good Hush Puppy is hard to find. There were assorted cuts and black eyes with a few fat lips tossed in, but all in all, sixteen men against nearly 60 had won the night.

We were all standing around the stripper, who was barefoot and wearing nothing but a short school uniform. If we were going to get arrested that night it would be if the police saw us with her, as she looked like a cheerful rape victim.

As we left the Rising Sun and got into our cars, two shots rang out and hit Loxy’s car. No-one was hit, but it made us very angry. A car chase started up, and took us at speeds of 70 to 100 miles per hour from Richmond across the river down Chapel Street, Prahran, where the car we were chasing sideswiped another car turning a corner.

The driver and passenger got out and ran. We headed them off and got them outside the College Lawn Hotel, where Dave the Jew pistol-whipped both. We held them until they lay in a bleeding unconscious mess on the concrete.

The night was over. All good things must come to an end. As my mum used to say, you should always leave a party before the end so that you can remember the good times. Mind you, I don’t think she meant the sort of good times we’d had that night. Loxy and Frankie took Piss Ant’s sister home, probably to lick her wounds. Dave, Vincent and myself went back to Vinnie’s place and sat and pondered the night’s events. In a strange way it was Johnny Harris coming back to say hello, as the whole thing had really started in 1974 when the Cowboy was killed. For me, it was just one more reminder that the ghosts of the past will always be there ready and waiting to pounce on me when I least expect it.

It was the last blue we ever had that could be attributed to the death of Cowboy Johnny and the revenge that followed. As stories go it’s not one of the best or the bloodiest, but for me it’s a blue I’ve always remembered.

Vincent Villeroy died in 1990 in his home town of Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Piss Ant died in a traffic accident in South Australia in 1984. His grandad returned to Scotland in 1988 to attend his brother’s funeral and died there a fortnight later, aged 90 years.

Piss Ant’s baby sister got married and, I understand, lives a good life. But two of the other sisters weren’t so lucky. They both died of heroin overdoses in St Kilda massage parlors within a year of each other.

Frankie had three heart attacks in a row and is no longer the raging bull he once was. Loxy is still alive and well, even though he was recently stabbed. Dave the Jew is still going strong. And Cowboy Johnny Harris, as readers know, had his ashes poured into the Prahran Swimming Pool late one night in 1974, after which Dave and I gave him a 21-shot salute with a sawn-off .22 rifle.

As I sit in cell 42 in C Yard of Risdon Prison, all I seem to have is my memories. Nothing that happens these days seems the same as it once was, and while I live in the present I constantly miss the dead friends of old. All my life people have been coming into my life leaving their mark on my mind, heart and soul, and then dying on me or vanishing into the mists of time. It makes me sad and sentimental.

Loxy contacted me recently and told me that he would step forward and say that he shot Sid and go to jail, and I would walk free. It was a stupid idea, but this is the blood loyalty of the men I call brothers and friends. When I lose them it haunts me forever.

If my four books could be dedicated to anything or anybody, I dedicate them to my dead friends.

SO it’s come to this, as Ned Kelly said shortly before they stretched his neck. Chopper Read, the streetfighting lunatic who waged the legendary Pentridge ‘Sausage War’
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that left a trail of Australia’s hardest crims maimed and mutilated, has taken on debating.

Now, 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 blow torch. I have found in the past that lethal weapons tend to get opponents to see the logic of your argument.

But in a debate like this, under the Gentlemen’s Rules here at Risdon Prison, pride of the Tasmanian penal system, the only weapon allowed is the gavel held by the adjudicator. I would love to stuff it sideways down the neck of those on the other side, but good manners – and the fact that I would be thrown in solitary – preclude me from that course of action.

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.

Joining the prison debating club, and being able to mix with normal people for a few hours every second Friday night, is my small attempt to join the human race. It’s the first time in my life I’ve tried to do something with my head that didn’t involve losing ears or teeth. Apart from writing books, of course.

I’ve never really mixed with squareheads and normal people, even when I was on the outside. I was surrounded by thousands of the buggers, but the only squareheads I ever really spoke to were publicans, barmen, cab drivers and bookies. Oh, and I almost forgot, gunsmiths and the proprietors of gunshops. But to stand with a cup of tea in one hand and a cream cake in the other and chat away to people was never my go. The idea of partaking in the la-di-da pastime of debating would have been repugnant to me previously.

But here I am 39 years of age – secretary of the bloody debating club. Once, I would have given big odds against me reaching my 40th year, much less having anything to do with debating. In fact, ten years ago I would have put anyone who was a member of a jail debating club ‘on the poof’; meaning I would have questioned their manhood in a most severe and vigorous manner.

But it’s the way it goes. They reckon we change every five years; a fifteen-year-old has different interests from a ten-year-old, and they change again by the time you’re 20, and so on up the ladder. I’m a different man than I was at 35. 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. 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.

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. It’s easy to see the dark side in every good man you meet, and you can find a good side in every bad man. When you look at history it’s been built on a never-ending bloodbath, with the winners claiming the moral high ground.

The losers are always the bad guys, because the winners write the history books.

How did I get on to this? The point is that I think I am changing, or at least mellowing. Maybe I’m turning into that good man with a bit of a dark side instead of a bad man with a good side. I don’t know. The difference between good and evil will always be a blur to me, but I am coming to grips with the difference between normal and abnormal, and to date my whole life has been abnormal. So a little normality – such as the debating club – is a welcome change.

Mind you, there’s one thing I don’t fancy about being secretary of the Spartan Debating Club, as we call it, and that is the title, ‘secretary’. The only secretaries I know of got blown away in the Painters’ and Dockers’ wars. It wasn’t the healthiest job description. Names like Pat Shannon and ‘Putty Nose’ Nicholls keep coming to mind.

The Spartan Debating Club or, as I like to call it, the Desperate Debating Club, has been going for more than 20 years in Risdon and does battle with a lot of visiting outside debating teams, clubs and groups. The club pledge is as follows: ‘We promise to submit to the discipline of this Spartan Club and to advance its ideals and to enrich its fellowship to defend freedom of speech in the community, and to try at all times to think truly and speak clearly. We promise not to be silent when we should speak.’

The club runs with the full permission of the prison hierarchy – as long as we stay within the rules on what we speak about.

It’s a case of come one, come all when the club turns on a show. We even had a family night one Friday, where club members could invite their families along to broaden their minds. In all my years in Pentridge I was never invited to join in on a night like this one. I invited my new fiancée Mary-Ann, as she is the closest to family I have got in Hobart.

Dad is 70 now and is not going too well health-wise and no longer likes to travel, so he was a scratching. And of course my mum and my sister, my niece and my two nephews have nothing to do with me, as I am a terrible sinner. I am sure God will reward them richly for their Christianity when they get to heaven.

I had to take part in a debate on the proposition ‘That women should be returned to the kitchen’. I argued that of course women should be the queens of the kitchen. Your bib and brace women’s liberation types would disagree, but I think they haven’t thought it through the way I have. I believe that men should not be allowed to assist in the preparation of any food for health reasons.

Now, men don’t like to talk about it, but they all have one thing in common when it comes to the kitchen: they all end up pissing in the sink. There is not a man living who has not at one time or another pissed in the kitchen sink.

They may come home late at night and just flop it out for a leak because they can’t be bothered walking all the way to the dunny. They never tell the womenfolk that they do it. It is a bit like a dog with the tyres of a car.

I knew a copper once who said his wife was a dirty, lazy bitch. ‘I came home after a night on the squirt, had a piss in the sink and there were the dishes from breakfast still sitting there. The slag hadn’t got off her arse to wash them,’ he said. And a policeman would never tell a lie, especially outside a courtroom.

Ladies, it doesn’t matter whether you married a judge, a copper, a public servant or a crook: at some time they have pissed in the sink. I dare you to ask them. If they say ‘yes’ then they are dirty pigs. If they say ‘no’ then they’re dirty lying pigs.

Of course, it’s a known fact that men are usually better cooks – but they blow their nose on the tea towels, never wash their hands after a slash and are health hazards in general. If women could see their husbands, boyfriends and sons when they go away fishing, hunting or drinking they would be shocked.

Men are cunning rats. They pretend to be civilised and domesticated, but underneath that they are slobs. Always have been and always will be. Mind you, most women suspect the truth. And that is that men are like lino tiles … lay them the right way once and you can walk over them forever.

Anyway, my side lost the debate but won the laughs. It was a good night: plenty of photos taken with myself, Mary-Ann, Micky Chatters and his lovely wife, Rhonda, and his young son, my new godson, Zane.

Wouldn’t the Lygon Street Mafia choke on their cappuccinos if they knew that down here I am THE Godfather. Well, at least to Zane I am.

I am good with kids even though I have got none. Kids seem to like me; there is something about the nickname ‘Chopper’ they like. It is a word they can play with, breaking it down to ‘Chop’ or ‘Chop Chop’ or ‘Choppy’ and, in the case of one three-year-old, ‘Chippy Choppy’.

All very cute and ha ha comic except when their mums and dads feel they, too, can take similar liberties, the cheeky buggers. I would hate to see some of these kids as orphans.

IF I have to be in prison, Risdon is the jail to be in. It may not be a holiday camp but the lack of drugs and would-be gangsters makes it bearable. It is hard to explain but while you are in jail and your guts are being eaten out by the boredom, you can still have a good time occasionally. The crooks who do time well are those who learn to have a laugh, have a good time when they can and not dwell on the bad times.

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.

On the debate night Jamie Hosking invited his sister and brother-in-law. His brother-in-law is ‘Scotty’ Neil, one of the founding members of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in Tasmania, so a chance was taken to clear the air on many points of interest. There was an understandable bitterness on my part toward the Outlaws because their former president gave Crown evidence against me while the Outlaws appeared to me to sit back and not lift a finger to stop him. However, they reckoned there was little or nothing they could do beyond ‘efforts’ on their part to stop him. What those efforts were I don’t know.

Also there were rumors that members of the club were plotting to do me harm. I am now told that the rumors were totally false. The former president, ‘Never Tell A Lie’ Sid, is now an outcast unwelcome in any Outlaws clubhouse in Australia or America, and after a falling-out between him and former best friend and right-hand man, ‘Black Uhlans Larry’, he is no longer welcome in any Black Uhlans clubhouse in Australia. Or so I’m told.

I can’t say I’m broken-hearted that Sid and his glamorous young bride are no longer together – the ink hardly dry on the marriage certificate when she left him, or he left her, depending on who tells the story.

According to rumor, Sid is now involved in an area of work that, to put it politely, I do not agree with. All in all, his life, according to Scotty Neil, is not filled with joy.

Dennis Carr told me a while ago that he saw Sid in the company of members of the Satan’s Riders Motorcycle Club at a well-known hotel in Launceston. However, Sid vanished before appropriate action could be taken. Evidently he travels between Melbourne and Launceston with great regularity.

Trent Anthony, my former driver, who chose to give evidence against me at my trial, is living in Launceston.

Now, I am sure that at one point Trent was telling people he needed a new identity to protect himself from the Big Bad Chopper. Poor dim Trent would think he’d be safe in a fake moustache out of a cereal packet and an old plastic Beatle wig. Mind you, personally I think it would be an improvement.

The point is that Tasmanians on the run never run far. If they move two streets they reckon they should get a new passport. They start going to a new local pub and they think it’s the biggest adventure since Neil Armstrong did the moonwalk. They go a different way to work and they want to throw out breadcrumbs so they can follow them home at night.

Anyway, all in all, the Spartan Debating Club’s family night was a good night indeed, and not just because of the debating. Families, that’s what it’s all about. I just wish I had one.

AFTER the mass-debate we doubled up a week later for another animated discussion with the Spartan Debating Club.

I had to give another impromptu speech. Normally I leave my best speaking to address those 12 good people on the jury benches. But this time I joined in the fun and spoke about gun control and the belief that the police are behind a nationwide plot to disarm the general population.

I am a firm believer in ‘one man, one gun’. The state police and the Federal Police outnumber the Australian infantry, yet if Australia was invaded by a conquering army the nation’s police forces would not rise to defend an unarmed and defenceless Australian people.

The only way the coppers of today would fight back against invaders would be if hordes of armed Indonesian troops raided the respective states’ police clubs and tried to interrupt some serious beer drinking and then tried to jump the queue to order steak sandwiches.

The police are not an army of defence or attack. They are a civil force held in place to maintain civil law and order and to protect property and lives. The protection of lives does not extend to the protection of lives against an invading army. The police and all public service departments remain in place to serve whoever takes control. It is not their job or role to decide which government that is. The coppers have been trained to follow the instructions of the governments of the day, whether the Prime Minister is Australian, Irish or Japanese.

Imagine leaving the fate of the nation to a few fat detectives from the fraud squad. What would they do? Throw their calculators and cheese and Vegemite sandwiches at the invading hordes. Do me a very large favor, please.

There are a few coppers with a heap of dash, but they are supposed to follow the rules and wouldn’t be much good in an invasion. Except the Victorian police, maybe, who are in real good form at the moment, shooting anything that moves. And a few things that don’t. (What a brilliant career I could have had if I’d joined the cops instead of the robbers.)

After the debate, in which I believe I gave a best on the ground performance, the president of the Spartan Debating Club, Mick Gill, was telling us over coffee and cake about the ‘great escape’.

It was at Bendigo Prison in 1971, the biggest prison escape in Victorian history when Jimmy Colrain, Jimmy Gillespie, Hans Obrenavic, Peter Brown, Billy Nollan and yes, the well-known debater, Mick Gill, broke out of Bendigo Prison. I remember the escape well. I did time with all the blokes concerned at one time or another, but I had forgotten all about Mick Gill being involved in it. It was in my opinion not only the biggest escape in Victorian history but probably Australian prison history. That’s if you don’t count a few hundred Nips going over the wall at Corowa during World War Two.