Shot straight into isolation in the Charlotte punishment unit of Port Phillip Prison. I fucking demand to be placed in mainstream but they’re not even fucking listening; they won’t explain why I’m in management, why I’m in isolation. It’s a bullshit abuse of power. It’s persecution. And Kylie’s going to have my baby. They won’t even let me have a contact visit. Can’t even hold her. Just stare through perspex. And she’s going to have my baby. My child. Where’s fucking dad, hey? And Runty’s on a destruction order. I can’t take this shit. I can’t take it. Can’t take it. Pacing the cell. What are they fucking doing? Why are they doing this? Headbutting the fucking door. Why are they doing this? What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. Let me the fuck out. Round and round. Gonna be a daddy. Where’s daddy? He’s in a tiny room. Where are you? Out there. In Kylie. Where am I? In a tiny room. The belly of the beast. I’m a beast and I swallow myself. I swallow hope. But the prisons, man. What is this shit? Where’s Runty? They’re going to kill him. Where’s daddy? He’s in a tiny room going fucking insane. Why doesn’t he come and feel me kicking? ’Cos he’s a total fuck up. He’s nothing. He’s total rubbish. Let me the fuck out. Get me the fuck out. I need to hold my people. I need to hold my dog. I need to protect everybody. I need to stop the destruction. I’m sorry. Fuck you. It’s about time everyone else fucking stepped up. It’s about time these fucking walls fell down. I need more room. I can’t keep pacing here. It’s too small. I’m sorry. I want to die but I’m going to be a dad. Dads don’t die. Mine did, but only after he handed the instrument of liberation to his eldest son. Blow the fucking trumpets. Knock the fucking walls down.
*
So I’m medicated. I’ve taken the weak way out to cope and to blur all this shit out. Last time I accepted their zombie pills was, I think, eighteen years ago in Geelong Prison. That jail’s long gone – shut down. But I’m still stumbling around.
They tip me to Barwon. Hello Barwon – I’m even in the fucking Banksia Unit again – remember me? I remember you. I remember having you fucking whipped. I remember sawing my way out and having the ladders that could have been stilts to walk like a giant over your walls and into the fog of a winter’s night on Corio Bay. But it was Johnny’s call and call it he did.
In April Kylie has my baby. She brings my daughter into the world.
While I’m locked in here.
My daughter is the sun. My heart doubles, triples – in love and pain. I never understood before. I never knew that I hadn’t really loved anyone or anything more than myself but now I feel it through everything and in every moment, day or night, light or dark. I love her. I want to protect her, to hold her, to care for her, to play with her. I am her dad. And I’m not there.
*
It’s May. She’s a month old.
*
An inmate is saying that Gavin Preston is getting transferred here. Merry-go-round, hey. Makes ya dizzy. I feel dizzy.
The inmate is a bit geed up about Gavin, who lands in Acacia alongside his POW gang-leader mate, Matty Johnson.
I didn’t know but the inmate had an axe to grind with them both and he’s really laying it on about Gavin: ‘He’s saying all this shit about you. He’s saying he bashed ya in NSW.’
I go, ‘What the fuck?’ Then I explain to him that Preston thinks he’s a hard cunt, thinks he’s a fucking hitman, ’cos he’s running around with Benji – Andrew Veniamin the hitman – that he’s saying they’re really good mates and they’ve done this and done that, all these murders. And that it’s all bullshit.
I say to the guy, ‘Mate, that’s a fucking load of shit. He’s a fucking liar. He’s a fucking shit-talking anus. He couldn’t even take petrol. Ask him about that.’
So I unearthed Gavin.
And now they decide to move Matty Johnson and Gavin to Banksia. I don’t mention to the screws that I have issues with him. In fact, I say, ‘We’ll get together in the yard and we’ll catch up,’ thinking I’ll sort this out myself.
And once that bloke starts declaring what I’ve said in front of all his mates, everyone hears what’s going on. He’s got all the inmates crouched up the rear of the cells listening and watching through the windows, you know. There’s a bit of an audience. There’s a bit of stage play, a bit of performance, and Gavin knows it’s come from me ’cos I was the one in Sydney at the time.
He goes to me, ‘You think you’re a hard cunt, coming out with that?’
He’s dirty ’cos he’s lost his self-esteem, he’s lost his respect; he’s lost his standing in front of all the POWs – in front of his boys. He’s made to look silly.
That consumes him, but he and Matty are concerned that they aren’t prepared for the confrontation, so they gee up two fucking idiots: a fella pinched on murder and a fucking psycho – two gooses. Gavin and Matty put the pressure on them, put the fear in. These gooses are – well, one of them is a deadset spastic. No, I won’t say spastic but brain dead.
I’m in the yard, heavily medicated. I’ve got a lot of issues. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on. All I can think about are my daughter and my dog.
There’s a commotion in the yard adjacent. It’s Gavin and Matt Johnson, yelling, ‘Go go go! Get him! Get him! Get him!’ Get who? What?
I don’t know what the fuck’s going on until the third time in a row I’m smashed in the head with tins of tuna in a sock. That’s how fucked up on medication I am. The third fucking smash to the head and just now I’m thinking, ‘What the fuck?’
There’s two of them attacking me. And everyone’s pressed around the wire yelling, ‘Do it, do it, do it! Get him, get him, get him!’ I’m in the arena. Two of them are attacking. They’re trying to knock me out and my reactions are so dulled.
Now I realise what’s going on. I chase them. I hit one, the big fella pinched on murder, and he’s going down but he’s pulling me down with him and it’s like a bear hug on the ground. He’s not worried about fighting, he’s just wrestling with me, and while we’re wrestling the other cunt comes from the side: slash-slash-slash-slash-slash – all within five seconds with a razor. It’s this quick, and I’m up and gaining control. I’m recovering my wits, my switch to combat mode. I know there’s blood. At first I think it’s from around my eye, the side of my face, where they got me with the tuna cans. But I’m starting to realise the extent of my injuries; I’m cut to shreds – my wounds hanging open. And I’m trapped in the yard. I disarm one of them, get his weapon: two plastic knives with razor blades fused in between, like a cut-throat. So now I’ve got it off him and they run to the corner where I bail them up. I know the law on self-defence and I’m in a crime scene now. If I do anything, my blood trail will show that I challenged them, that I am no longer in defence, that I am attacking them. If I try to slash them, to kill them, whatever, then I’ll be charged. I try to lure them back out to fight: ‘Come on, give me a chance.’
Then I’m looking at the situation – what the fuck – with my blood still settling, staring at Gavin and Matty thinking: ‘What the fuck? Youse behind this? Youse didn’t want to get in the yard, and whatever I do to these fools here doesn’t get me closer to who controlled it, who organised it.’
The two gooses won’t come out. And I have to walk up and down for an hour and a half. I feel nothing but war mode: no pain and no emotion.
The psycho has made a deliberate attempt to severe the main arteries on both my inner thighs, along with other, serious slash points on my torso, head and neck. I also have defensive wounds from fending this off – the fingers of my right hand are damaged.
The murderer got slashed, too, in the frenzy.
*
When it’s time to front up and get medical help, the first thing they do is ask what happened.
*
An officer tells me years later, and I believe this, that I was hated by the staff, especially senior management and the POWs were very close with them. I believe this was organised and orchestrated by staff and inmates, the POWs. The tuna was passed to the fools from Preston by prison staff fifteen minutes before the attack. They launched when I was in the right position in the yard – right down the end, out of the way – where staff could choose not to see. They walked past twice within an hour and a half. I don’t yell out asking for intervention or anything like that. That’s exactly what they were hoping for. The others were hoping that I would bail out, I’d leave, I’d surrender, fuck off see ya later. But I kept on walking up and down. I nearly bled to death, man. And I made sure that when there was a yard change, a swap over, that they left the yard before I did. That they got back to their cell. I had to clean up the fucking mess – get rid of the evidence. There was bits and pieces in the centre of the yard: tins of tuna, the sock, other things, and blood. They weren’t prepared to come out into the centre of the yard and clean that, to get rid of that. I had to mop that, to clean that up, I had to get rid of that. If I’d left it there they would have got charged. None of them got charged. I never said a word. Police come to see me but no one was ever charged in relation to this.
Gavin and Matt were the leaders of the POWs, so they had influence on these other two people who were shitting themselves because one of them was going back out to the mainstream, out back into the general population, and he had issues, problems, and he needed people’s support. So he basically found himself in a situation where ‘I’ve got to do something, I need numbers, I need people, I need help. Basically, I’ll do something for youse; youse do something for me.’ But it wasn’t like that. It was forced, and they knew that, too. So they said, ‘Listen, we’ll look after ya. You go out the back: you’re with us. You prove yourself here, then you go out the back and you’re with us so you haven’t got a problem.’
And then the other one was just psychotic. He had a history of slashing inmates really bad, you know, and slashing prison officers – cutting their throats and everything. An officer nearly died as a result of his wounds. But again, slash and run. He’s just a fucking coward. Wouldn’t stand toe to toe. Couldn’t fight. And they used to root him. Seriously. This is no word of a lie: they literally used to root him.
I looked at ’em. Two fucking gooses. Two fools. I felt sorry for ’em, in a way. But I was still fuming.
I’m transferred to Marngoneet, which is a satellite jail of Barwon that offers what passes for rehabilitation courses. I’ve been slated to participate in programs for people with drug and violence problems.
*
The compound I’m in has a total muster of 110 inmates, all specifically identified for violence, and the astonishing fact is that the kitchen knives are untethered and accessible to all of us. There’s no need to make a shiv here, although with only about 30 knives available, some inmates would have to share.
Within weeks a convicted murderer with a history of extreme violence in jail confronts me wielding a large kitchen knife. Fearing for my life, I flick to attack mode and he bolts. I chase him across the compound as he runs to prison staff, wanting to be locked away secure in his cell.
I can see the severed tendon in my left index finger.
*
When the inevitable investigation comes, I tell them I was cutting a grapefruit in my hand instead of on a chopping board. But the staff see it all on CCTV.
*
Back in Marngoneet after micro-surgery, I’m acting up – I’m going ballistic and threatening staff over visitation screw-ups with Kylie. I’m getting paranoid, assuming the worst all the time. I’m jumping out of my skin. My little girl’s out there, and she’s one heading towards two, ya know. Time’s going by; it’s really going by: slow in here and fast out there. It’s excruciating. It’s driving me nuts. And how is this place, that place, any of these fucking places, going to help me settle. I need help. I need help to get calm. I need help to settle. But this is just twisted shit. This is the opposite of therapeutic. I’m getting troubled and angry. Please help me. Please change this. Psychologists keep writing reports about how bad isolation is and how lacking our prisons are in seriously tackling rehabilitation. I’ve been in this shit since I was thirteen. What the fuck? That’s what – 26 years ago. So what’s happened in that time? The bash, the belting by guards, is no longer acceptable but at the drop of a hat they’ll stick me in solitary confinement to go crazy. Otherwise it’s gladiator time. What is this – some weird experiment? Am I a lab rat? Why was I selected as a child for this? Who selected me? What god does this?
My threatening tirades at staff land me in solitary again, and then I’m tipped back to Barwon where the psycho who sliced me up is still in residence. Officers tell me he’s now fixated on me, making threats, yelling and screaming. The guy is a drooling freak that normally I’d dismiss but he’s got the blood lust. He’s not a rational combatant. He’s a glaze-eyed thing from the depths.
When officers catch him with a shiv, they move me.
And then I’m moved again.
It’s back to Marngoneet for a six-month ‘intensive violence’ course – hopefully without knife-wielding killers coming at me. But during a three-day drug seminar I am accused of laughing and sent back to Barwon to be placed in solitary in the supermax wing, Melaleuca. The other inmates include a cast of warring gangland figures. I sit in my isolation unit and listen to the shouts and abuse traded between cells.
My release is coming up and, to my utter horror and dismay, this is how I’m being prepared. Like many times before, I revert to a hunger strike. I won’t take part in this world.
*
They move me to the Melbourne Assessment Prison to make reports on possible parole but when that’s complete they say it’s back to supermax, back to Melaleuca, back to 22 hours a day in a small room, with the brief times out never in the company of anyone but guards, and all the time living amidst and getting caught up in thunderous hate-fuelled slanging matches. The idea that this is how you prepare a damaged person, an anti-social person, to re-enter society is dogshit insane.
I’d rather be in hospital with a drip hanging out of my arm, so in front of the staff I swallow metal objects. I’m kept overnight at St Vincent’s – yes, back to St Augustine’s Ward: around and around we go – where they keep me overnight, and then I do it again.
After treatment I’m sent to Port Phillip Prison where they keep me in solitary until my release. Except for a couple of nights in hospital, the last six months of my term are all solitary.
And I’m regressing. Eighteen years ago in the depths of Pentridge, I made the ‘Eat Shit & Die’ t-shirt for my classification meeting. I make another one now and wear it out the fucking gate.
I am a time bomb.
*
Released 2 April 2008.
