‘Perhaps they could call me Saint Chopper of the Pump Action.’
THE most frightening thing for me when I got out of jail in November 1991 was being sent shopping by Margaret with money and a neat little list, but no gun. Margaret didn’t think it was manners to take guns to the supermarket.
When I was doing the shopping I would always suspect that some people were staring at me, and I wasn’t being paranoid, as their eyes never seemed to leave me. I would dutifully get all the shopping on the list, plus about $100 worth of stuff we didn’t need, only to be told off when I got home.
After I was on A Current Affair on television, I was walking through a supermarket with Margaret when one fat lady, standing with a bunch of other fat ladies and a flock of very ugly children, screamed out, ‘Look, that’s the man who was on the telly.’ They all started to giggle and point me out. They started to chatter and carry on so I hid in the frozen food section until they lost interest.
At the checkout counter of another crowded shop I was saying, ‘yes please, I’ll have one of those, thank you, it’s a nice day, rah, rah rah’ in my best, most polite going-shopping voice, when the woman standing next to me said to the sales girl; ‘He’s the most polite killer I have ever heard’.
I laughed along with them but, really, I was quite embarrassed. Some people would actually complain to the management that I was in the shop. What do they think I am, a vampire?
Then there were other people who would ask me to autograph a copy of the book while I was standing at the checkout counter. In the end I left the shopping to Margaret.
There is not a gunman alive who frightens me, but I became terrified of people in shops, especially of fat ladies in lambs’ wool slippers. They would scream out, ‘Look, that’s the bloke on the telly. He’s a murderer.’
Call me sensitive, but I couldn’t cop that.
*
I HAVE a loyal and good friend who acted as a secret agent against a dangerous crew who wanted me dead. She risked her life for me and I will never forget her. Her name is Tracey Glenda Warren. She was the buxom young lady who acted as a double agent for me in matters of war with my enemy, the drug dealer Dennis Bruce Allen.
Tracey would cuddle up to Allen, but later tell me in detail the plans he had made for my death. It would drive him crazy that I always appeared to be one jump ahead of the psychotic little weed.
Now, there was nothing sexual between Tracey and me, although I have to admit that she was a top looker, with a 38-24-34 figure. I have many found memories about Tracey, but that is exactly what I want them to be: memories.
Well, imagine my shock and horror, when, two weeks after my release from Pentridge, she arrives on my dad’s doorstep in Launceston.
I was with Margaret and my dad when a cab pulled up out the front at Ravenswood. We were having a quiet cup of tea when there was this enormous ‘bang, bang’ on the window. I nearly dropped my scone at the noise.
It was a screaming and crying Tracey yelling. ‘Is that Margaret, I’ll kill the bitch’. Now Tracey is a big girl, and she was hysterical. I had to physically restrain her from rushing through the flat door and engaging in mortal combat with Margaret.
But little Margaret is not to be trifled with. She was heading in the other direction towards the kitchen, no doubt looking for the carving knife. This could have been a real blood bath.
I had to pick Tracey up, and she is no lightweight, and carry her to a taxi rank. She was then driven off, not without a hail of verbal abuse at my good self.
Despite this dispute, I still have a soft spot for her.
Hey, women … you can’t live with them, you can’t live without ’em. Pass the beer nuts.
*
I KNOW that the question of whether or not I really walked away from crime when I came to Tassie is on a lot of people’s minds. I know that police and crims don’t agree on many things but that many from both sides openly stated that I would be back in trouble sooner rather than later.
Well I am the only man who knows what is in my heart and let me say that I have turned my back on the Melbourne crime world and I will never return there.
All I can do is put my best foot forward. But if, now and again, I put my best foot on the thick neck of some smartarse, that is not returning to crime, for God’s sake.
But just because the lion has left the jungle, it doesn’t mean that he automatically turns into a monkey. I am what I am and I am who I am and I cannot and will not change my mental and emotional makeup. Walking away hasn’t meant that I have gone through a personality reconstruction. I have not become a born-again Christian, nor have I joined the Gay Liberation Movement. So when I came to Tassie I wasn’t going to be allowing two-bob gangsters to kick sand in my face when I went to the beach.
I am not involved in crime or the criminal world. I have turned my back on my former life, however, I would relieve any man of his heart and lungs with a double barrel shotgun if he tried to turn his hand against me or mine. In other words, hurt me or mine and I’ll cut your ears off, put a hole in your manners and I’ll rip your bloody nose off with a pair of multi-grips.
But the criminal world is no longer my business or concern, except in my newfound career as an observer and crime writer.
While some may think the pen is mightier than the sword, let me say that I will give up my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers. I will not eat humble pie or cop shit from others. Am I asking too much? I think not.
I was quite happy to be left alone. But I don’t like being lied to, robbed or conned and I will not allow myself to be humiliated or belittled. Yes, I have walked away from it all and I will shoot any bastard who tries to drag me back into it.
I know it might sound a contradiction but while I look to the future my soul was tempered in the past.
I have not entered the priesthood, I have just turned my back on the Melbourne underworld, and that is all I ever set out to do. The people who are out to kill me, set me up, destroy me, betray me, lie about me and pull me down haven’t gone away.
I had no illusions when I arrived here that my life will be trouble free. However, compared to my past life, I have been almost Saint like. Perhaps they could call me Saint Chopper of the Pump Action.
PS: Some uncharitable people might say my present legal difficulties arising from the shooting of Mr Sidney Collins prove that I have already returned to a life of crime. Not so. I am quite simply a victim of a case of mistaken identity.
*
ONE little giggle I had in Tassie was when I bumped into a Melbourne crim I had done time with in H Division. He was an Italian crook, kick boxer and drug dealer.
He wasn’t hard to pick. There he was sipping a cold drink in my local, wearing slip-on shoes, an imported suit with hair gel by the bucket. He was in a pub with bikies and tough Tassie workers. Most of them still wear flares for the big night out.
I immediately wondered what this bloke was doing in the same pub that Margaret and I always attended for the big Sunday lunch.
He was here to buy guns, or so he said. I didn’t believe a word of it. He was making too many phone calls for my liking.
We agreed to meet the next day. Naturally, I believed that he had come from the mainland on the instructions of some of the Lygon Street Mafia – the plastic godfathers who seemed convinced I would one day return to Melbourne to deflate their big fat bellies with a sharp instrument. These were the so-called heavies who slept with the lights on in case big bad Chopper ever decided to have a working holiday in Melbourne.
Anyway, to cut a long story short we drove our Italian visitor to the banks of the South Esk River. I then put my arm around him in an almost fatherly manner, and explained that the South Esk flowed all the way to the sea and that the current was swift.
I told him that if the fish did not eat the flesh from a body before it got to the sea, that the bloated dead remains would float into Bass Strait, never to be seen again.
He went quiet. This made me sad, as I hate to see a guest look unhappy.
Then I told him that there was a plane flying to Melbourne within the hour. I gave him an alternative. The river, or a few drinks in the airport lounge.
Frankie said he was thirsty. I wasn’t surprised.
We drove to the airport. Frankie bought the drinks.
He must have had a pressing engagement he had forgotten about in Melbourne because he forgot to stop at his hotel to pick up his luggage.
Never mind. I am sure there are plenty of good tailors in Lygon Street.
Really, I was just having a giggle. But I don’t think Frankie knew that.
*
ONE important matter that I should mention is money, or lack of it. I have written a book and people seem to think I walk about all day in a smoking jacket stuffed full of cash and live on champagne and caviar. In fact, people think I have become a millionaire through writing. Let me tell you I made more money with a blow torch than a ball point. And I didn’t get too much out of the crime world either.
I have done most things in my life for a giggle, not for the money. But try to tell other people that. Government departments, legal aid offices — they all believe I am rolling in cash.
I have been told that because of the book, I will never get the dole, but what I have got from the book would not keep me in drinking money and ammo.
I have been told that I am supposed to have a secret bank account in Melbourne where there is millions stashed away. Well, I must have forgotten the branch account and the account number. Which is a pity, because I could do with a bit.
Sure, before Sid Collins was unfortunately shot, I had a fair amount of cash at one time and another, but most of that came from casino winnings, and it went back from where it came, with interest. It was fun while it lasted but it didn’t last too long.
I knew that I would never get the dole while there was one copy of the book on sale. The employment market was not exactly crying out for out-of-work gunmen and toe cutters.
I am proud of the book, but it was no magic wand for making money, believe me. I also have been the subject of some TV interviews. I have found to my cost that TV people pay you in greasy smiles and flap doodle. So for those who think I have made a fortune out of making an idiot of myself on television, forget it.
While I certainly don’t regret putting my life story on paper, the money earned is trivial compared to the massive headaches it has caused. Budding authors be warned: books are done for love, not lucre.
*
NOW, many of you will think that a respected (but misunderstood) literary figure like my good self would have plenty of common sense and brains. Sadly I appear to have gone out of my way to prove time and again that this is not so.
Once I got on the outside I thought the fresh air would clear away the cobwebs and that Margaret and I would live the quiet life.
I thought Tassie would be filled with wild life I could hunt and fish I could catch. But there is something else down this way which lured me into deep water.
The casino.
It hooked me. Underneath it all I am just like most other blokes about. I like a bet, a drink, a good woman and the chance to occasionally catch some garlic-breathing, drug-dealing swine and take his loot. Pretty normal, I reckon.
So when I saw the casino it was as if all my Christmases had come at once. I would go there nearly every day. But I was no mug punter, not me. I developed a system.
My system was so good it enabled me to lose money at twice the rate of any normal tourist. Over an eight-day period playing my simple system of roulette I managed to have $23,000 pass through my hands. From one hand to the other and then back to the casino.
I blew $5000 of my own dough in the process. That is $5000 of legal money, not money from the old days. Once I would just shrug the shoulders, jump in the car and visit a drug dealer.
It would be a simple matter of explaining that my good luck was his good luck and my bad luck I would also share with him. Most would understand and hand over the cash, even before the blow torch flame went blue.
But I digress.
As an honest man $5000 is a heap of readies. I would stay at the roulette table, sticking to my system and after a short time I could double, or triple my money.
Then I would get the fever, go crazy, and start to break my own system. I would bet in large amounts and then ‘bing, bang, bongo’ I would be broke.
I won $500 the first night, $5500 the next night, lost the rest the following and so it went on. One night I was more than $7000 up, then lost it in about ten minutes. I was getting into debt over gambling and that was crazy.
One night I was playing roulette at the casino and my luck was really in. Within three hours I had won $7000. Within another hour I didn’t have a cab fare. As I was about to leave the croupier who had spun the wheel and seen me lose a fortune said: ‘Hey, Chopper, I knock off in 10 minutes, can you hang about and sign your book for me?’
Bloody cheeky bastard. Nevertheless, I did hang about and sign it for him.
Margaret was furious and I finally snapped out of it. I would go up there with $100 or $200 and walk away. In all things the power to walk away at the right time separates victory from defeat.
When I left Melbourne and the life and death blood rush I lost something. It is hard to explain, but living on the razor’s edge, with one foot in the grave, gives you a rush, just like a junkie gets from drugs. Why do you think people climb cliffs and bungy jump?
I suppose throwing money on a roulette wheel was a fool’s way of getting a small rush. It was a small thrill, but it wasn’t the same. I don’t want to return to the old ways of crime but I must say that dicing with life and death did turn me on.
It is no use denying it, I got turned on living a life that would have frozen most men’s hearts with blind fear.
*
WHEN I got to Tasmania and settled in it didn’t take me long to run into a group of rogues, rednecks and renegades, who, like me, feel naked unless they have a gun in one hand and a stubbie in the other.
Many of them were former members of major motorcycle gangs. There was my now well-known former friend Sid Collins, a former president of the Outlaw Motorcycle gang, Black Uhlans Larry and Big Josh Burling, the president of the Tasmanian chapter of the Outlaws.
Now I have known bikers for 20 years and have always kept in close contact with one member of the Hell’s Angels, known as ‘The Lawyer’ because of his great knowledge of matters legal and financial. I would often talk to him and he was able to set me right on who to trust in the bike world.
When I got out of jail and went to Tasmania I found that I was walking into all sorts of private bikie politics. In fact I was asked to kill Sid Collins.
Here I was, out of jail for just two weeks and the word was about that I had come to Tasmania to do a hit on Mr Sid Collins.
Now, he was a rather formidable fellow in his own right so it was obvious I would have to settle this and quickly. I needed all this bullshit like a hole in the head and I knew that if I didn’t settle it quickly someone was going to end up with a real hole in the head.
I was starting to wonder whether retirement in sleepy Tassie was worth the bother.
I went down there with the idea of getting a pipe and some slippers and enjoying the fresh air. But some of those leather-bound fatheads couldn’t get it through their crash-helmeted skulls that I was an ex-headhunter. That I was not for hire, and didn’t want a piece of their inter-gang rivalry.
I felt like Dame Nellie Melba (without ears) being asked to make a comeback. No, no, no, I would say. Yes, yes, yes, someone would reply. And besides, they never named a dessert after me.
I had only been out of jail six weeks and half the mad bikies of Tassie seemed to hate me. Was it my aftershave, I asked? Now, I was used to the mafia and a few Melbourne drug dealers hating me, but this was going too far.
So I rang ‘The Lawyer’ in the Hell’s Angels for advice. He told me the truth about some of the characters, including The Groper, Sid Collins and Black Larry.
I went out of my way to meet all of them to try and settle matters down. I told them that I had retired and had come to Tasmania to live the quiet life and not to take on any hits.
We had a million drinks and things seemed to settle down. At first I was treated with suspicion and distrust. But in the end, they seemed to accept me.
We formed the hole-in-the-head shooting club – a humorous, but clearly mental group with access to firepower which would put to shame the various crime groups and drug cartels from the mainland.
We would meet socially as many of us, sadly, did not have full time jobs and we would decide it was time to have a meeting of this refined group of gentle sports shooters and gun aficionados. It was then time to fill the sky with lead.
After a few beers one day we were having a shot when a bullet ricocheted and hit one of the crew in the leg. No problems. We were able to dig it out and there was no harm done.
*
A LOT of people have asked me if I miss Melbourne. The night clubs, the wog shops, the card games, the massage parlors, escort agencies, the night life, the street life, the blood, the guts, the money and the excitement.
They ask me how I have settled into the quiet life of Tassie. People forget that 17½ years in Melbourne was spent in jail. The night life in Pentridge isn’t too lively, believe me. Watching cockroaches run up the wall is not a big night out.
The point is that I am a gun freak and for me, Tassie is heaven. I have fitted in well here as a responsible member of the Tasmanian community. I love shooting and hunting, blowing the heads off native wildlife like the locals. Ha, ha.
Your average gun-toting Sydney or Melbourne crook couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a shovel full of wheat whereas I could blow your nose off at 100 paces.
As for night life, forget the disco scene. I prefer to walk through the bush with a sporting model .303 and a bottle of whisky and a lackey carrying the spotlight. That is all the nightlife I need.
Of course I also like to go to the casino and play roulette when I’m not hunting. Screw Melbourne, a city of plastic gangsters, smacked-out whores and bad shots.
I love Tassie.
*
BUT I’m now sad to say that the hole in the head shooting club is no more. Whoever fired the shot in the chest of Sid Collins, fired the shot that finished the shooting club.
Trent Anthony was put under police protection after the shooting, along with the Ford Fairlane I gave him as a gift. Another member is hiding under his bed while his wife cruises around Launceston in the car I gave him as a gift.
The rest of the crew seem to have made up their minds about my guilt and don’t want to know me.
Of course, Big Josh Burling, Mad Micky and Mad Mike have stuck by me. The Sid Collins shooting has taught me a thing or two about the guts and dash of the rogues of Tassie. It doesn’t exist.
How did I get involved with them? I can’t even ride a scooter without falling off. Whenever I foolishly allow myself to trust I am betrayed. Perhaps I will have to become a hermit to be safe.
*
SINCE I have been in Tassie, I have been approached by many and various odd-bods, who have read the first book and feel that they are free to approach me on all matters of violence.
I am constantly amazed at how blood thirsty the average member of the public really is. I have been approached in relation to killing this one and that one.
There seems to be a never ending stream of people out there who would like to see their next door neighbors, hairdressers, doctors, accountants, wives and husbands knocked off.
As a retired member of the crime world I treat these discussions of murder and contracts as the height of good humor. But many of these people are serious. Deadly serious.
One day a very old timber man, a wood cutter of the old school, approached me and asked whether I would be interested in killing the Tasmanian independent ‘Green’ politician, Dr Bob Brown.
He said he would show me where he lives. He said Dr Brown had a place in the bush where I could pick him off easily.
I was polite and respectful to the man. After all, he was nearly 80, and it would not be polite to laugh off the offer of a political assassination. So I asked him, ‘What sort of money are we talking?’ He said ‘I’ll pass the hat amongst the boys. I think I could get $500, which is nothing to sneeze at.’ Pretty bloody small hat, that’s all I can say.
The sad thing was, the old boy was serious, bless his heart.
NEVER SAY NEVER
Never say never again,
Even when the sun shines,
Yon know it has to rain,
We all try and fly straight.
We all want to love,
None of us want to hate,
But shit happens and things change,
You might have to pull the gun,
When trouble comes into range,
But night after night and day after day,
You see trouble and you try and walk away,
But you can only walk ’till your back's to the wall,
Then someone has to live and someone has to fall.
