Chopper Unchopped (72 page)

ONE of my mad mates in Risdon, Micky Chatters, has gone around the corner yet again to N Division, the punishment division, which seems to be his second home.

He is a top bloke, Micky, a solid, staunch friend who sticks fat in a police station. He wouldn’t give people up, and is a hard man, but he can be a bit of a handful at times.

I wouldn’t call him a nutter but he can certainly be a bit of a desperate and without a doubt he is also a fast, fierce and furious street fighter with a hair trigger temper. It’s more a case of the insanity of youth, with his quick temper being his downfall. But the haste and madness of youth mellows with the years. Look at me, you couldn’t find a quieter chappie than me these days.

All in all, Micky is a good style of a bloke. He likes to pop around the corner to see our old mate, crazy Ray Sheehan.

Ray came to C Yard after nearly a year around the corner in N Division. He was rushed off to see his dying father and got only a short visit with him just before he died, which was a bit sad.

Me and crazy Ray are waxers. How do I explain the meaning of the word ‘waxer’? It is a mainland old-time jailhouse slang expression, meaning something like, ‘I’ve got the sugar, you’ve got the coffee, so let’s join forces for a cuppa.’

We share our canteen goodies so we both have plenty. If he is short, I help him; if I am short, he helps me. Waxing is a common term in Pentridge, but not used in Risdon. In Tassie the waxing normally involves someone’s sister.

Old Ray is a truly tough, hard old crim. He is in his late 50s and as fit as a fiddle and strong as a bull. Poor Ray spat the dummy over having his computer taken from him and went around the corner. Then there was an argument over his moustache.

Ray has about five years to do over an armed robbery and will probably do all of it in N Division. I’ve known old Ray for at least 20 years. He is one truly staunch old crook who has never given an inch in all the years I’ve known him, but cheerful and happy to be around.

I worry about Ray’s health around in N Division. In the winter weather it’s murder in there, especially at his age, poor bugger. But again I digress. Micky Chatters asked me if I would be godfather to his young son, Zane, and I agreed, so I have another godchild.

So the boy and I are almost related, a bit like in-laws. He is Zane and I am In-Zane.

The first time I ever went godfather was to Robert Lochrie’s baby daughter, Bianca. Young Bianca is now a grown-up young lady and calls me Uncle Chopper. She’s a beautiful kid.

On my wall I have a photo collection that I call the dirty dozen, photos of 12 female friends who all put together to make the driving force behind the letter-writing protest to the Governor of Tasmania.

My little mate Greg Hutt, known to one and all as ‘Buck’ or ‘Bucky’, likes to come and perve on my photo collection and make comic remarks. In my opinion he is probably the funniest bugger in jail.

A young model from NSW named Samantha Hough is his favorite and Bucky stands there and points and says, ‘She’s all right, Chopper’.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘she’s a good chick,’ and I patiently explain how she is one of those behind a letter writing protest campaign to the Governor on my behalf. And Bucky says the same thing every time.

‘Well Chop, she’d be writing a few letters of protest if I ever got my hands on her.’ Then he toddles off on his merry way with an evil chuckle. Of course, I am sure he is just joking and would be a perfect gentleman outside jail. If only he could stay out once he got there.

One of the other pin-ups is Gloria Kermond, a lady kick boxer from Queensland. Bucky said he wasn’t sure if he wanted to plonk her or punch on with her.

Some of Bucky’s remarks are a bit crude, but they’re comical. He should be on radio. He’d be better looking than some of the blokes that are on it now, not that it matters much on radio, I suppose. Anyway, one day I showed Bucky the photo of Tauree Cleaver, another loyal ally who campaigns for my freedom. I asked him later while standing on the muster line what he thought, and he said, ‘Shit, Chopper, you only showed me her photo 23 times. Ha ha.’

Bucky iron-barred a karate expert to death but never lost his sense of humor. He is half my size and twice my strength on the weights. He is quite a weightlifting toff, but it must be said I’m no longer the lifter I was.

I’m now having bother dead lifting less weight than I used to bench press. The last dead weight I lifted was Sammy the Turk. Oh well, I guess I’ll just get a lighter gun when I get out of here. Speaking of Bucky and his comical comments I guess in a crude and uncouth way the great Australian compliment in relation to any women is the one along the lines of ‘I wouldn’t mind getting into that’. It is the compliment that most men use behind the lady-in-question’s back, but few women see it as a compliment. It may not be politically correct any more, but I think it is a good expression.

I wonder if the ladies in question would find it better if men thought they were dog ugly and would prefer to talk naughty with the inflatable variety available in sex shops?

It’s all part of the rough-as-guts Aussie humor, the type of comedy that non-Australians don’t understand.

I HURT my neck and back in my cell one night while practising standing on my hands. There is a bloke here who is trying to teach me to walk on my hands, a short, thickset bugger with powerful upper body strength. He’s only half my size but I wouldn’t like to fight the little bastard.

I’ve always marvelled at people who can walk on their hands and this bloke is quite amazing at it. Up and down the exercise yard, up and down the stairs, balance on one hand – the lot!

Looking at some of the inmates of Risdon I suspect that a few of them have only recently managed to get off all fours, so the sight of one on his hands is quite a surprise.

He has been trying to coach me and I have been a keen student but alas, so far it has been to no avail.

The fall in the cell was quite a tumble. A pile driver onto a hard cell floor does nothing for the cranium, I can tell you. I may end up with a flat head and then I’d look like a Tasmanian’s sister.

Warren Oldham, the handstand champ, has been doing it since he was a kid. At 39 years of age I reckon I’m a bit old to be falling on my head in my cell, but coach Warren tells me to press on.

I’m already punch drunk in charge of limited intelligence as it is. Any more of this childish nonsense and I will be crippled as well. My neck will become squashed and I will look like an albino version of the English cricketer Gladstone Small.

I’m still doing the weights with Bucky’s ‘once a week for five years’ plan. My diet is working well. I’ve put on five pounds in a week. The bloody scales are wrong, I’m sure of it.

JAIL is full of blokes with plans to beat the system. Big Tony Barron, who’s the most Irish Fijian I’ve ever met, was telling me the other day about his latest scheme to aid in the training of greyhounds and racehorses. It involves attaching a parachute to the animal and galloping it with the animal pulling the parachute along behind.

Tony explained the whole invention to me in all seriousness, and it had a lot of sense and logic to it in an Irish sort of way. Nevertheless, you can’t avoid the fact it does involve tying parachutes to horses and dogs, and when you think about that it’s hard to keep a straight face.

I think the parachute idea has a lot of merit, but it needs one improvement from Chopper ‘Sports Psychologist’ Read. While Big Tony is tying parachutes to the greyhounds and racehorses I could take certain trainers and jockeys up in a plane and throw them out without parachutes. It would make the rest try harder.

Tony spends a lot of his time thinking up inventions and likes to tell me of his latest brainwaves. Some of them are very smart and unique ideas. But racehorses and parachutes may not take off. Ha ha.

Tony was also telling me about another brainwave invention … the unspillable glass for drunks. Tony thinks up things in his mind and on paper in his cell at night. He has some brilliant and some downright comic ideas, and is a bloody great bloke.

Speaking of characters around the jail, there’s a big fella called Pat Burling who’s had a lot of trouble with his false teeth. In fact, he has swallowed them a few times, but in the past he just shat them out, pulled them out of the toilet and gave them a wash and back in the mouth. Good roughage, he says.

This time he shat them out and still could not find them. My heart goes out to Pat, but there’s no way known I’d put my fist in the toilet bowl to try and locate his much-travelled dentures. Pat is a mad drunk but a good bloke, related to my old friend Big Josh Burling. That’s Tassie: everyone either knows everyone or is related.

I swallowed my own top teeth myself years ago. They bloody nearly killed me going down and it was an uncomfortable experience getting them out the other end.

So the message to all you kiddies is, brush after meals so that you don’t end up with false teeth. Because if you do, it can hurt both ends.

I played cricket last week, two and a half hours of standing there like a stale bottle of piss, fielding and trying to avoid being knocked out by a cricket ball that I’m sure was aimed at me on purpose. This week I sat and watched as 12th man. I like being 12th man. I don’t know why some of the Test players sook when they end up in that position.

After all, you remain inside for most of the day in airconditioned comfort, come out with the drinks every few hours and get first crack at the lunch. Far better than running around in the heat at the MCG, I would suggest.

Rocky Devine was telling me about a wild bar room punch-up in which he had his skull cracked open by a mad lady crashing him over the head with a frozen chicken. Sent to the deck by an angry sheila wielding frozen poultry.

He won the day and kept the offending chook, but it was a humbling experience. Next he will be telling me he got the stuffing knocked out of him by an angry girl scout armed with a snap frozen, free range turkey.

Another time Rocky and his crew, after attending to some serious business one night, returned to find that someone had pinched the getaway car. Ha ha.

We sat in the sun swapping wild yarns for the better part of the afternoon and it wasn’t a bad day. Far better than being out on the field risking GBH of the scone from some maniac with a cricket ball. It seems so unfair in prison. You are not allowed to carry a gentleman’s weapon, such as a shiv, but one is allowed to have the bad manners to hurl a hard object, to wit, a ball, at the cranium of another chappie down the length of a cricket pitch.

Mick Chatters was poncing about in a pair of high camp sunglasses that made him look like the late American rock singer Janis Joplin, only with bigger breasts. He can be a funny bugger at times.

Tony Boros was also in attendance, having landed himself in a bit of bother over hi-jinks with a sawn-off shotgun. He pleaded guilty and Anita Betts got him a rather lightweight seven months’ jail. Tony’s girlfriend is heartbroken, needless to say, but my big mate Spratty is keeping a watchful eye on her as a favor to me. You may recall she is the one whose name and address I swapped for a slow greyhound.

Wayne Spratt is a jolly giant, a former member of the Australian Special Air Service and a Vietnam vet. He is a wood cutter and hit himself in the head with his own chainsaw and lived. Most of the teeth in his head are the ones left there by the saw chain. Spratty is a tough bastard.

I roared laughing the other day over a newspaper article about a plot to kill Julian Knight, the Hoddle Street massacre wimp. The story raved on about Julian telling prison officers of a plot by other inmates to kill him. Well, what sort of secret murder plot is it if the bloody so-called victim knows all about it?

The story went on to say that young Julian at one stage had six female prison officers on a special exercise program and some sort of army diet. I wonder what the name of that diet was … the Hoddle Street savoury sausage diet? Ha ha.

Knowing the female staff at Pentridge, a sausage diet would be a big winner. In my time at Pentridge there was a frisky prison officer who had half the female staff in the place on a salami diet, if you get my drift. Sort of ‘Is Don is Good’, except his name wasn’t Don. But he must have been good.

Poor old Julian. In between plots to murder him and the dietary demands of female members of staff he must not have had a moment to call his own.

My old friend ‘Loxy’, Robert Lochrie, is up and about after getting a 22-inch butcher’s knife rammed through him. He sat down and had two large whiskies after the fight, then passed out. The funny thing was he actually won the fight, punching ten shades of shit out of the numbnut dago and continued to punch on with a 22-inch blade all the way through him. He’s a hard, weatherbeaten old bastard is Loxy.

We all thought he was going to die. Margaret Hamilton, big Margaret, a good and close mutual friend, rang the prison in panic and tears but all is well now and old Loxy is up and about, and making a nuisance of himself in public houses yet again.

Margaret is a lovely lady. I once toyed with the idea of marrying big blonde Margaret, but that, as they say in the classics, is another story. I always make it a rule not to marry anyone I don’t think I could beat in a fight.

Present circumstances apart, of course, I generally toy with the idea of marriage after the fifth whisky, and forget the whole frightening thought after the seventh. But in big Margaret’s defence I was stone cold sober at the time I considered proposing. It didn’t happen, but we are solid friends and will remain so. Now my heart belongs to the lovely Mary-Ann, the Richmond farmer’s daughter.

The ‘drug’ scene in here is not exactly out of
Miami Vice
. A bloke went around the corner to the punishment section the other day for trafficking in garlic! Not that you can blame the authorities for throwing the book at him: half the jail is reeking like the back streets of Sicily. Big Tony Barron gets on the prison video and tells everyone his health tips: drink more water, garlic is good for the blood, eat more roughage and so on. He spent a solid hour a while ago lecturing me on the benefits of drinking plenty of water to flush out the system. I now drink four litres a night – then I wake up six times a night to take a leak. Bloody Tony Barron and his ratty health tips will be the death of me.