The Ethics of Evil: Stories of H Division

By Ray Mooney

This non-fiction book explores the true story of H Division, the punishment division within Pentridge Prison, Melbourne, that operated from 1958-1994, which was responsible for cultivating criminals who committed horrific crimes upon their release.
Established in 1958 to punish prisoners like William O’Meally, the last man legally flogged in Australia, H Division, or Hell Division as it became known, established a culture so ferocious, in 1972 the Victorian Government was forced to hold an inquiry into the brutality.
I served four months in H Division in 1973 and prior to my release in 1975 I asked numerous H Division inmates to write their stories for me. They included Chris Flannery, aka Rent-a-Kill, Stan Taylor, responsible for bombing Russell Street Police Headquarters, Archie Butterly, infamous for blowing his way out of the Melbourne Remand Centre and Julian Knight (written recently), responsible for the Hoddle Street massacre.
The book includes their autobiographical stories and a detailed analysis of the inquiry including quotes from original transcripts of evidence presented to the inquiry, giving insight from both sides into a punishment prison that was once the most brutal in Australia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ray Mooney
• Release date: Feb 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9780987593641

Ray Mooney

Ray has been a freelance writer and lecturer in creative writing for three decades, specialising in novels, plays, film scripts and non-fiction books. He’s one of a handful of writers with major success in each category.His plays have been produced throughout Australia. His novel, A Green Light, became Penguin’s second biggest fiction seller for 1988. His screenplay, Everynight Everynight, co-written with director Alkinos Tsilimidos, won awards throughout the world and his recently published non-fiction book, A Pack of Bloody Animals, sensationally revealed another side to the Walsh Street murders.Ray specialises in crime and social injustice. His articles have appeared in many national and local publications including The Age, The Sunday Age and The Crime Factory.As an educator Ray lectured in novel, playwriting, screenwriting and short story writing at Holmesglen Institute, Box Hill TAFE and the VCA Film and Television School.Recently he completely rewrote A Green Light, regarded by many as Australia’s best crime book, into three stand-alone eBooks.His latest non-fiction book, The Ethics of Evil, about H Division, Pentridge, is due for release as an eBook.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Ray Mooney

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in Australia

First Printing, 2016

ISBN 978-0-9875936-4-1

Bow Wow Productions

PO Box 47

Kangaroo Ground, 3097, Australia.

The main category of this book: 1. Prison.

Other categories: 2. H Division. 3. Warders. 4. Violence.

5. Jenkinson Inquiry 6. J Ward. 7. William O’Meally. 8 Chris Flannery. 9. Stan Taylor. 10 Julian Knight. 11. Criminology. 12. Penology.

Editor AB Bishop

Production: AWM Agency

Cover Photo by Adrian Didlick of corridor in H Division

Cover design AWM Agency

Dedicated to:

The prisoners who endured the struggle

Acknowledgments:

Heartfelt thanks to Eugene Donnini, Rupert Mann, Adrian Didlick, Julie Van Kesteren, Teena Ross, Alex Miller, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Wilde Mooney, Autumn Mooney, Patricia Mooney, John Kerr, Julian Knight, Adam Shand, Don Osborne, Marty Ryan, Nick Barkla and AB Bishop for their creative support and encouragement.

CONTENTS

SECTION 1

Introduction

SECTION 2

Crime and Punishment in Australia

SECTION 3

The Introduction of H Division

SECTION 4

My experience in H Division

SECTION 5

The Prisoners’ Stories

The Archie Butterly story

The Christopher Dale Flannery story

The Stan Taylor Story

The Paul Hetzel story

The Anthony Burton story

The John Edward Farrell story

The Malcolm Murray story

The anonymous prisoner’s story

The Daniel Joseph Webb story

More from Spanner

The Julian Knight story

SECTION 6

The Jenkinson Inquiry

SECTION 7

Accusations by prisoners

Chris Flannery

Thomas Donald

Colin Patrick O’Toole

Peter John Robertson

Dennis Raymond Kane

Edward Jockey Smith

Peter Walker

Frank Edward Fishman

Donald Thompson

John Edward Farrell

Geoffrey Taafe

Joseph Andrew Tognolini

Michael Buhlert

Eugene Donnini

George Franklin

Thomas Cummings

Paul Hetzel

John Reginald Killick

Stan Taylor

Terrence Rex Vallance

Tony Burton

Joe Pantorno

Lawrence Joseph Prendergast

Keith Watson

Raymond Chanter

Raymond George Allen

SECTION 8

Warders’ Testimony

Ian Grindlay, Governor

Roy Seamer Vodden, Governor

George James Armstrong, Head of Security

H.R. Clark, CPO H Division

Robert James Carrolan, CPO H Division

Alan Kenneth Lindgren, SPO H Division

Norman Banner

George Bertschik

Arthur Robert Dickson

Dudley Lawson Phelps

John Andrew Fraser

Leslie Charles Culmer

Thomas William Evans

Arthur Raymond Milte

Leslie Leonard Curll

Norn George Ackland

Walter Chanter

Kenneth Reginald Leonard

Maurice Frank Snook

James Edward Selfe

Murray Reginald Preston

John William Rogers

James Peter Low

Charles Le Feuvre

SECTION 9

The medical profession under scrutiny by Jenkinson

SECTION 10

Jenkinson’s findings

SECTION 11

The aftermath

SECTION 12

The Literature on H Division

SECTION 13

The demolition of H Division

SECTION 14

Appendices

An essay I wrote for The Age on informing

Why I wrote the play Everynight Everynight

Stan Taylor’s opinion of William O’Meally

Letter to Australian Book Review re hanging of Ronald Ryan

Steven Sellers – Extract from Beach Inquiry

Demands to Prison Minister, Ian Smith

The Butterly letters

Letter to Director General of Prisons

SECTION 1

Introduction

My mother, Patricia Mooney, July 1973

The walk to H Division is really something out of this world. Along the first part of it there are bearded irises planted singularly along the wall. They look so pathetic in a great long line. One poor little flower broke the monotony. I thought that everybody knew that irises had to be grouped into a mass to show off their beauty. And believe me they can be beautiful but not in a straight line. Then further along there are two bushes pruned to shape and on top of the poor things a cross has been shaped. It reminds me of a cemetery, so depressing. And as you get closer to H the flowers and scrubs no longer exist. It’s like going to ‘no man’s land’. Just a bit of dirt with nothing growing out of it. It looks so lonely…

This book

Fiction and non-fiction writers thrive on portraying criminals as cowards, idiots or immoral. Subtext for the criminal bully is they mask cowardice. Bank robbers who threaten staff and customers are cowards because they terrorise innocent people. We’ve been weaned on criminals giving themselves up in the dying minutes of television shows when the only incriminating evidence was suspicion from Inspector Heeler, so criminals must be stupid. Prisons are populated with criminals who’ve been caught; if you’re a prisoner you’re an idiot for being caught. It’s a given lawbreakers are immoral.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Many criminals and prisoners are courageous, moral and intelligent, defining their existence by adherence to values and principles superior to the ethics of countless eminent people. There are cowardly, idiotic and immoral criminals but those labels apply to all groups, including religious, judiciary and professionals. If I had to choose between putting my life into the hands of a principled criminal or a celebrated dubious cop I’d choose the criminal every time.

But too often criminals’ principles work against them. Take the principle of never giving anyone up. The criminal who never gives anyone up dies the death of a thousand nightmares. They become victim to the ruthless interrogator, the unprincipled associate and sometimes their own stupidity when they choose to remain silent instead of implicating the guilty. In short, the fair dinkum crim can be their own worst enemy. I’m guilty of stupidity. But I’m also proud no one has served prison time because of anything I’ve said. While that’s caused me countless nightmares it has nevertheless guaranteed self-assured sleep.

The Ethics of Evil is a book about one of those nightmares, the untold story of H Division, the punishment division within Pentridge Prison. In 1973 I spent 4 months in H Division. My nightmare is represented by a non-linear jig-saw comprising my views on prison culture, stories written by infamous criminals, quotes from prison writers, media reports and an analysis of the 1972 Jenkinson Inquiry into brutality within Pentridge Prison which focused on H Division. It includes personal accounts from prisoners subjected to brutality in H Division. Their stories emphasise the viciousness of violent warders authorised and sanctioned at the highest level.

The Jenkinson Inquiry, or government whitewash as it came to be known, established to examine ill-treatment of Pentridge prisoners between 1970 and 1972, remains Australia’s greatest judicial travesty because it exonerated prison administrators and warders who were responsible for turning bicycle thieves into murderers, to quote Fr Brosnan, Pentridge chaplain. Those bicycle thieves went on to commit many of Australia’s most nefarious crimes.

That inquiry is dissected, giving access to previously unpublished documents exposing a prison system as brutal, if not more brutal, than the likes of Port Arthur, Devil’s Island and Guantanamo Bay at their worst.

Warders guilty of unlawful brutality in H Division never acknowledged their liability in creating an alumni of offenders responsible for a legacy of unimaginable crimes. To this day, warders and prison administrators deny there was unlawful brutality in H Division, claiming accusations by prisoners were a conspiracy to darken their good name.

The notion of giving people up is at the heart of this book because prisoners’ refusal to give warders up was the main reason H Division developed a culture of brutality that reigned unchecked between 1958 and 1970. Only when prisoners decided to give them up did the system change. That decision by prisoners was a monumental shift in their culture. This book documents that transformation.

Two personal stories to illustrate constant dilemma prisoners faced

I’m 71. Three years ago I was hurrying up Swanston Street for an emergency dentist appointment. That morning a molar had snapped at the gum and my dentist moved heaven and hell for a 5 pm appointment. I lugged an armful of student assignments and strode on the extreme left to avoid approaching peak-hour pedestrians. A solidly-built male, I assumed in his early twenties, masked in hoodie, and accompanied by two males, purposely veered into my path, forcibly clipping my shoulder. I realised it was intentional but kept walking. ‘An apology’ld be fucking good!’ demanded aggressive Hoodie. I could’ve pretended deafness and continued because at 68 it’s no shame admitting you’re incapable of taking on the world. But it crossed my mind if this idiot was ice-affected, walking away might invite a shiv in the back. These days, bump someone and you’re apt to be slashed to pieces with a cutlass.

I turned. ‘What?’ I enquired, feigning ignorance. Hoodie rolled his shoulders like a young Rocky Balboa and hissed, ‘You fucken heard!’ I intended replying, ‘You won’t be getting any apology from me!’ but before I got to ‘won’t’ he charged. I couldn’t tell if only Hoodie or three were charging. That’s another thing you lose with age, eye speed. Instinctively I threw a right. Sometimes there’s magic in the mist. All weight was on my back foot allowing transfer through the punch that hit him flush in the mouth. He buckled but came up throwing haymakers. I remember thinking he was trying to stab me. Assignments scattered like cut paper at a Royal wedding. An elderly woman bumped in the brawl would meticulously collect them. I hit him again in the face. He spun away. I clasped his neck in a headlock, pulled him to the gutter. Unable to breathe, he relaxed, so I released my grip, turned him and pinned him on his back. He immediately kicked upwards with both feet, catching me the ribs. I grabbed him round the throat and said I’d let go if he stopped kicking. He ferociously continued. A pain stabbed my heart. ‘I’m having a heart attack,’ I thought, imagining his buddies knifing me from behind. I lifted him by the collar and body slammed him. His head whiplashed into the gutter. Out cold, his eyes disappeared. Dead? He looked it. Blood seeped from his lifeless face.

A female screamed, pushing me aside. ‘Get outa the way. I’m a doctor. Get away!’ Caught in the fear of having killed someone, I backed. His mates had bolted. Had I imagined them? We were 20 metres from Melbourne East Police Station in Flinders Lane. When they arrived she was still working on him. I was ushered inside the police station, no idea if Hoodie was dead or alive and politely led to a room, told I’d been arrested then left alone. A plain-clothes male officer entered. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Ray Mooney,’ I calmly answered.

He wrote on a clipboard. I knew I needed to get in first. ‘I have a criminal record.’ He stopped writing, looked up. ‘A long one,’ I added. He left. Within 30 seconds a female plain-clothed officer entered, sat across the table. ‘You’ve been in trouble before?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What for?’ ‘The first time was for rape,’ I quietly admitted. She moved uneasy, checking the door as if willing her team to hurry. ‘In 1968 I served nearly 8 years in Pentridge.’ I saw her mentally calculate my age then slightly relax.

The male officer returned, handed her a folder to peruse. I guessed he’d quickly read my criminal antecedents. ‘What happened?’ he asked. His question presented the classical conundrum faced by ex-prisoners who held onto their culture-defining value: never make a statement to police, except ‘no comment’. I’d lived my life on the rule you tell police nothing, never give anybody up, certainly not yourself. In my childhood I’d been confused about the notion of informing. My mother wanted to know everything but my father thought you were giving the weatherman up if you mentioned the sun was out. I grew to respect my father’s version. Years later I’d even had an essay on informing published in the Saturday Age. (see Appendix 1) I was the so-called expert.

I knew if my attacker was dead or seriously injured I had to tell the truth which implied giving him up for his attack on me. The corollary was, if he survived he should be charged with attacking me. The irony and stupidity of adhering to the value of never giving anyone up was not lost on me. We were our own worst enemies when it came to police statements. A lawyer friend once advised, if you’re guilty always answer ‘no comment’, but if innocent make a truthful statement immediately because how you respond when first questioned determines how people judge you later, especially juries. I knew it was good advice, but criminal status depends upon whether or not you gave anyone up, including yourself.

My situation wasn’t as simple as telling the truth. I needed time. ‘How is he?’ I asked, forcing concern. He shrugged. ‘What happened?’ repeated the female officer? I sensed the male officer was aware of my dilemma. He interjected. ‘He’s been taken unconscious to hospital by ambulance,’ he offered without hint of menace. ‘We’ve spoken to a woman who treated him. She claims you used unnecessary force.’ He wasn’t judging, simply according me an opportunity to offer my side. ‘She’s also a doctor,’ he added, implying her word would be given considerable weight. ‘Did the doctor see the fight from the start?’ I asked. Another shrug. I reasoned the doctor only saw the last moment because if she witnessed the start she would have known my actions hadn’t involved undue force. Another note was passed to the officer. He looked perplexed. ‘The victim has regained consciousness. We’re sending someone to question him.’ At last something to smile about. ‘He’s only a kid, 15. Did you know that?’ That was a genuine shock. My attacker’s face had been partly concealed but he certainly didn’t appear to be 15. ‘So, what happened, Ray?’ Crunch time.

I took the route of least resistance and revealed exactly what happened, without embellishment. I suggested they view CTV footage to confirm my story, which I knew they would already have done. I stressed I acted in self-defence because I considered my life under threat. Aware of betraying my cultural allegiance I felt the weight of never giving anyone up a millstone around my neck. It was a value burdened with hypocrisy because there were many exceptions to the rule. For example, if you knew someone was an informer you had an onus to give them up so people could be forewarned. And there are numerous books written by staunch crims premised on giving police up for being corrupt. In the land of the crim no one discriminates against crims anymore for giving coppers up, as the 1978 Beach Inquiry into Victorian corrupt police demonstrated. But that wasn’t always the case. There was a time when you were declared a dog for giving anyone up, even a copper. In The Age Essay, I wrote Watergate changed all that, followed by the emergence of talk-back radio turning the notion of giving people up into an accepted art form.

My story checked out and my assailant fully recovered. He’d been arrested earlier that afternoon for a similar transgression and suspected of being under the influence of drugs. Although I was still charged, finger printed and DNA swabbed, they never proceeded with my charge. They wanted to charge my assailant with assault and expected me to give evidence but I refused, suggesting it was more appropriate to find him employment and get him off the streets. And yes, I missed my dental appointment but all my students passed their assignments.

The lesson is crims can be their own worst enemy when they blindly adhere to the principle of never giving anyone up. Had that dilemma been confronted 40 years earlier when adherence to the same principle allowed the State of Victoria to brutalise a class of victims, then maybe those brutalised would not have gone on to commit atrocious crimes.

The other incident also involved teeth. After release from prison in 1975 I had an appointment to remove two impacted wisdom teeth. In the foyer of the Dental Hospital was an exhibition of antique dental instruments. Observing the rusted and frightening utensils that might have been used in the Spanish Inquisition I felt relieved to be entering a twentieth century clinic. Imagine my apprehension when similar implements, though now chromed, were on the dental tray. I declined anaesthetic because students would be extracting my teeth and I wanted to be conscious; a decision that proved harrowing but justified.

The procedure occurred in a corridor of open rooms overseen by a professor. I could see patients to the left and right of me. One student knelt on an unconscious patient’s chest while levering dental forceps with pipe-long handles. I momentarily reconsidered anaesthetic. My student dentist, a young Asian lass the petite size of a Romanian gymnast, introduced herself, smiling nervously. The injections hurt. The professor encouraged her to take longer injecting intraosseous into my gums, explaining the slower the injecting the less pain. ‘Are you fucking mad?’ I wanted to scream. She was thinking like me; get it over with. Done. I closed my eyes and thought of Vietnam for however long it took the anaesthetic to work. The Professor instructed where to cut, but I couldn’t feel a thing. ‘Thank Christ for the modern age,’ I mumbled.

The Professor left to assist other students. She tentatively attached forceps. It’s difficult describing what happened next because a certain section of your brain seizes when pain is at its zenith. Let’s just say her wrists were weak and strengthening exercises weren’t part of her curriculum. She levered the forceps sideways. I felt my jaw dislocating, facial ligaments tearing and instinctively grabbed her hand. She shrieked, dropped the forceps. The Professor flew back.

‘What happened?’ he screamed at her. She started shaking. ‘What happened?’ he repeated to me. I knew in that moment if I gave her up she could fail her course, but if I didn’t give her up then I’m the idiot who’s probably broken an undergraduate’s arm, and could be leaving with an exposed impacted wisdom tooth. I’ve known many people born without wisdom teeth but that didn’t justify them being idiots. ‘I think the injection’s worn off.’ I mumbled through a mouth of bloodied padding. ‘Impossible!’ he said putting a finger inside my mouth. Seeing my painful reaction he realised what had happened. ‘Hmmm, this is a really difficult one,’ he explained to the student. ‘I’ll finish and you take notes.’ If I said she was more relieved than me I’d be lying. He had to crush both teeth in the bone and suck pieces out. But he did it with the astuteness and tenderness of one thankful for having saved one of his children. There are good people in the world, though it was four weeks before I could eat properly.

Adherence to never giving anyone up can work both ways. Like the bully always at odds with their cowardice or courage, the crim is always at odd with their belief system. It’s never black and white for us.

Material for this book

When I was released from H Division in August 1973 Jenkinson presented his report to parliament. As suspected it was a total whitewash. Because of that, and the brutality I’d suffered in H Division, I promised myself I would become their nemesis. I set about researching the history of H Division. Before my release from Pentridge in 1975 I asked prisoners to write about their H Division experiences. Stan Taylor who subsequently blew up Russell St, Archie Butterly, who in 1993 blasted his way out of The Melbourne Remand Centre and whose bashing in H Division was the catalyst for the riots that sparked the Jenkinson Inquiry, and Chris Flannery, later known as Rent-a-Kill, detailed their experiences along with other prisoners. Their stories, exactly as they wrote them, are recorded in this book, along with a first-hand account by Julian Knight of his 1987 reception into H Division. They are important eye-witness accounts detailing the true nature of evil, an evil that was condoned by Government, purposefully hidden from the public, and when threatened with exposure, that evil was expunged by a complicit Board of Inquiry.

I stress that many warders in Pentridge were humane. I knew warders who’d never stepped inside H Division and some who refused to work there. In the early years of my sentence, my overseer was Senior Prison Officer Danny O’Brien, and one of the most decent humans on the planet. He had never ventured past the reception area of H Division and refused to believe the tall tales prisoners told him about the Division. During the 1972 riots in H Division he was ordered to participate in a baton gauntlet for prisoners forcibly removed from the labour yards to their cells. I saw him when he returned, pale, distraught and silent. He resigned the following day.

Why write his book?

A better question is why write it now and not 40 years ago. Although I never wrote this book upon release I did write about H Division 38 years ago. Upon my release I established an ex-prisoners’ theatre company, Governor’s Pleasure. Our first production was, Everynight Everynight, a play I wrote and directed while a drama student at The Victorian College of the Arts. It was first staged at St Martin’s Theatre in South Yarra in 1978 then later the same years at The Pram Factory in Carlton and was based on the H Division experiences of prisoners Chris Flannery, Stan Taylor, Bobby Barron and myself. It’s since had numerous productions throughout Australia.

In 1985, my close friend, Chris Flannery, disappeared, presumed murdered by corrupt police, so I wrote A Green Light, a novel based on both our lives, including our H Division experiences, which Penguin published in 1988. It became their second biggest fiction seller that year and has been credited with establishing an industry of crime fiction in Australia based on first-hand experience.

In 1994, film director Alkinos Tsilimidos turned Everynight Everynight into a feature film of the same title. It won accolades throughout the world and was nominated for 2 AFI awards for best directing and best adapted screenplay, subsequently becoming an Australian cult classic. (see Appendix 2: why I wrote Everynight Everynight)

I moved from prison writing to other genres but always wanted to reveal the documents instrumental in my emergence as a serious writer. However, back then part of the jigsaw was missing.

When the Jenkinson Inquiry was completed in 1973, Jenkinson presented Parliament with two documents outlining his findings. In short, from hundreds of detailed assaults he found five instances of unlawful brutality in H Division, but made no recommendations for charging the perpetrators. Consequently, no H Division warder was ever charged, nor were any administrators held accountable. When Jenkinson filed his two reports he notated 4000 pages of transcripts, accompanying but not included, in the reports. They specified cross-examination under oath of prisoners who complained of brutality plus subsequent cross examination of accused warders.

After my release in 1975 I attempted to track down those transcripts. I’d been informed a copy was in the Social Welfare library, at 55 Swanston Street, Melbourne, the same building as my Parole Office. One afternoon I impersonated a parole officer and was given access to boxes of material from the Jenkinson Inquiry. In the short time available I read cross examinations of prisoners who gave statements to the inquiry detailing the brutality inflicted upon them. I also accessed justification by warders under oath. Not one warder admitted unlawfully mistreating a prisoner. Motivated by this discovery I returned the following week only to be recognised as a parolee by a staff member. Although there were no ramifications I was nevertheless refused future access to the library.

Years later I officially applied to view the transcripts but was informed they no longer existed. I tried unsuccessfully to track down other copies from the Public Records Office at Laverton, the Supreme Court library and Parliamentary libraries. I even attempted to discover where Jenkinson’s deceased papers were kept. I used historical researchers, but to no avail. I continued contacting the Public Records Office hoping the transcripts might have been lodged but still there were no transcripts available.

Two years ago Don Osborne was writing a book, Pentridge Behind The Bluestone Walls, detailing his experiences as a teacher in Pentridge during the seventies. He mentioned examining Jenkinson Inquiry transcripts kept in the Public Records Department at their new home in North Melbourne. I hurried over and sure enough, there were 11 volumes stacked head high. For the past two years I’ve slowly digested 4000 pages of testimony. Unfortunately, prisoners’ statements weren’t available but cross examination of prisoners and warders was there for all to read. Details are referred to and discussed in this book, along with media reports of the time.

The few books written by ex-prisoners featuring their experiences in H Division were dismissed by authorities as lies and exaggeration. Traditionally, warders argued accusations against them by prisoners were exaggerations designed to blacken their reputations. Consequently, the wider community knew little of the truth about H Division because it was warders and authorities who lied and exaggerated, not prisoners. Also, there was a belief in the wider community that H Division prisoners were the worst of the worst and deserved to be there. However, many prisoners were in H Division for minor indiscretions like back chatting warders, obscene language, malingering, self-harm, boisterous behaviour, disobeying orders such as failing to tidy cells, having pornography, possessing contraband, suspicion, even acting as a representative for other prisoners.

Delinquents as young as 15, were sent from Juvenile Detention Centres, sometimes imprisoned over a weekend for a taste. Maybe they deserved appropriate punishment but this book argues they definitely didn’t deserve the barbaric unlawful punishment inflicted upon them by H Division warders.

I wanted to write this book 38 years ago but didn’t have enough information to do it justice. Now is always a good time to write the truth and set the record straight. The world’s a better place when it has access to the truth.

Terminology when referring to guards

The common term for guard is prison officer. However, the legal definition of prison officer is anyone, except a prisoner, who works in a prison, which could include teachers, medical staff, etc. I use the generic term warder when referring to guards who work in prisons. Many ex-prisoners use the terms screw or turnkey, but they are highly derogatory terms, despite warders referring to themselves as screws. During my incarceration I came across numerous decent warders I was proud to call friends. My first overseer, SPO Danny O’Brien, was a thorough gentleman and will always have my heart-felt respect.

SECTION 2

Crime and Punishment in Australia

Imagine…

Imagine a man you knew was constantly terrorised by a group of thugs because they didn’t like the way he looked at them, the way he dressed, how he walked. Imagine this happened day after day, week after week, month after month. He couldn’t leave the area because the thugs wouldn’t allow it. They monitored his every movement, his conversations, determined what work he did, read his incoming and outgoing correspondence, controlled what he ate, when he slept, when he woke, the length of his hair, what he wore, and even supervised his ablutions. Imagine he was bashed for keeping an untidy house, having his shirt unbuttoned, not walking fast enough. He couldn’t complain to police because the thugs were the police so he complained to a higher authority. But they said it was a police matter. When he continued complaining he was threatened with certification to a mental institution for the criminally insane so he verbally retaliated and was subsequently flogged to within an inch of his life. His screams resulted in criminal charges of making unnecessary noise and abusive language. Consequently, he was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment. He attempted to take his own life and was further prosecuted for self-inflicted wounds. Imagine the outside world learning of his story but instead of coming to his rescue they accused him of exaggeration and conspiring to blacken the good name of the thugs.

Farfetched; too Kafkaesque; a figment of someone’s furtive imagination? Wouldn’t have happened! And definitely not in Australia because we are a caring and compassionate nation, a democracy with checks and balances. If we believed there was the slightest evidence of the above we would protest. We’d march in the streets; put our lives on the line. The media would pressure the government to hold an inquiry and those responsible would be brought to justice quick-smart, resulting in laws ensuring it never happened again.

Well it did happen in Australia and nobody marched in the streets. It happened in H Division for more than three decades and those who could have prevented it turned a blind eye and covered up the crimes of the perpetrators. It was at its worst between 1958 and 1970 where violence on prisoners reigned unchecked, where prisoners were systematically flogged on reception by savage warders and continually beaten throughout their duration in H Division. When prisoners defied the system and rioted in 1972, the government held an inquiry which was a judicial disgrace because not one warder was brought to justice. Conditions changed slightly for the better but brutality continued intermittently until H Division closed in 1980 with prisoners transferred to Jika Jika, a concrete and electronic mausoleum built to contain the worst of the worse. But it never really closed because H Division continued housing prisoners until 1994, three years before the closure of Pentridge.

A window into our soul

If the adage that we gain insight into society by examining the nature of its prisons is true, then studying H Division gives perspective into hidden aspects of our history that too often resides in the shadows of officialdom. We know Australia was settled by prison officers and convicts but most are unaware we had a thriving Kanaka slave trade in the Queensland sugar fields, predicated on injustice and violence, or that we put Aboriginal warriors on leper colonies off the West Australian coast for minor infractions. Our history of intolerable brutality is intertwined with our inherent need to punish. Open slightly Pandora’s History Box and you gain access to the evil we were capable of, but police-tape the Box with do not open rhetoric and we eternally chain justice to up-hill rock-pushing.

The official history of H Division

This book doesn’t revisit the horrors of H Division for sensationalism. It unlocks Pandora’s Box for the reader to judge. I’m interested in an historical, social and cultural manuscript for future generations. Except for one government funded book, there have been no books or articles by warders disclaiming the allegations of brutality in H Division, nor have there been books or articles by warders specifically about H Division. One might reason if H Division prisoners fabricated allegations they were unlawfully bashed as claimed by warders, there would be books and articles by former warders arguing that point.

The one exception, funded by The State Library of Victoria, From Pentonville to Pentridge: The History of Prisons in Victoria, written by George Armstrong and Peter Lynn, past employees of Victorian prison administration, is so remiss and dismissive in its factual description of H Division that one could be forgiven for assuming the H in H Division stood for heaven rather than hell, which is what it came to stand for. But George Armstrong, who I knew personally, had a vested interest in downplaying brutality in H Division. During my time in prison he was Governor of Security at Pentridge. If any H Division prisoner complained of brutality their complaint was directed to him. In his role as Governor of Security, George Armstrong dismissed every complaint of brutality by H Division prisoners against H Division warders, adding credence to the old adage that history is written by the winners. And this was the man funded to write the history of H Division.

But, you say…

Some might contend our imaginary friend was responsible for atrocious crimes himself and deserved what happened to him in H Division. Many believe the role of prisons is to punish offenders by making their life misery. He might have killed innocent police doing their duty, robbed banks, terrorised the community, raped and mutilated women, forced children to participate in pornography, ambushed unsuspecting citizens, killed and wounded dozens, or simply been guilty of any of a thousand crimes punishable by imprisonment.

Here’s a sample comment taken from hundreds of online comments after remand prisoners recently rioted in Victoria:

Take away all their rights...starting with the only things they didn't damage...their televisions...let them stew in silence and boredom...they are there because they are CRIMINALS...show them what punishment means for their deeds...do not pander to them...they lost their rights when they committed crimes…which warranted a jail sentence...judges are usually soft and the fact that they are in there is because even our benign Judges thought they deserved to be.

Despite those comments referring to un-sentenced prisoners, they still reflect the attitudes of many in our community. The rights or wrongs of that argument will not be satisfactorily resolved in this book, as the extra punishment sentenced prisoners deserved goes to a broader question of legal statute and one’s personal morality. However, that argument underpins a reason for writing this book: no matter what crimes a person committed, a prisoner’s punishment was and is imprisonment and extra brutality in H Division was undeserved, unlawful and those responsible should’ve been held accountable. I understand community outrage, especially from victims, towards offenders. I’m also aware there’s a media industry profiting from marketing that outrage. But our society is premised on the notion imprisonment is the appropriate legislated punishment for law breakers. If offenders are appropriately punished for their crimes that should be adequate.

Everyone’s a potential crim

Many unfortunates in prison are no different than the average Joe. Someone said, therefore but for the grace of god go I. I’m not religious but I’m aware everyone during their life commits at least one crime that could result in a year’s imprisonment. How many have illegally downloaded music or films, pirated computer software, shoplifted, driven dangerously or under the influence, rorted tax, cheated on exams or academic qualifications, used a fake identity or ID, racially or sexually abused others, broken privacy laws by snooping, used illegal devices such as GPS jammers, bullied, physically or verbally abused the elderly, taken recreational drugs, assisted a loved one to die, viewed banned pornography, been drunk in public, put an illegal bet on, dumped a mattress into someone’s hard waste, slowed the ambulance or divvy wagon to make a political point, left a child unattended in a car, failed to fence a backyard pool, pressured a partner into sex? How many magistrates and judges have admitted dubious confessions (verbals) into court cases when they’ve known police were lying through their back teeth? How often have we read something like, ‘the mass murders of Kosovo are people who 12 weeks ago were merely citizens?’ The list is endless.

It’s less conclusive when we consider moral infractions such as lying to advantage, claiming the item is for sale below cost, the produce was free-range or organic, the cheque’s in the mail, fitted braces on perfect teeth, sold lobster tails as crayfish, refused to pay a debt, coerced workers to join unions, rorted expenses, funded political parties to gain personal advantage, given diplomats immunity against prosecution, allowed estate agents access to councils so they can push through private developments, advertised items 100% wool when they contain different fibres, badgered parents into paying unnecessary school fees, taken hard waste from the roadside. That list is also infinite.

John Van Groningen, penologist

In 1976 John Van Groningen, Superintendent of Pentridge, was quoted in The Herald:

Society as a whole has unrealistic expectations of the prison system. Everybody in here is more like you and I than he is different from us. He has a family, good days, bad days, worries, debts, doubts. He happens to have committed a criminal act. Society rightly has said he must pay for it. Removing him from the community is the ultimate sanction. But how do you learn to live in society by being removed from it? Yet that’s what society expects.

As the famous biblical saying goes: Let he who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone...Van Groningen, who later became a criminologist, was the most academically qualified penologist I encountered. The Dutch-born Californian was a consultant criminologist with the Victorian Law Reform Commission and a policy adviser to the Attorney-General after leaving Pentridge. In younger days he worked in a Californian prison to pay his way through university and, in my opinion, was an extremely competent prison administrator who canvassed lethargic politicians to improve both educational standards and wages for warders. Unfortunately, political parties dump expenditure for prison reform in the ‘self-destruct’ basket. It was the famous Arkansas warden Tom Murton who highlighted prison miserliness when he created a national scandal by revealing mass graves of murdered prisoners on the Cummins State Prison farm and then revealed the Rockefeller government spent more per day feeding an ape at the local zoo than they spent weekly on each prisoner. He also wrote:

Discipline was routinely enforced by flogging, beating with clubs, inserting of needles under fingernails, crushing of testicles with pliers, and the last word in torture devices: the ‘Tucker telephone,’ an instrument used to send an electric current through genitals.

Murton wasn’t referring to crimes by warders but crimes forced on prisoners working as trustie guards because of the absence of salaried warders. When Murton ordered the excavation of the mass graves, digging was halted on the direct orders of Governor Rockefeller, the person who hired him, claiming, there was no point washing dirty linen for weeks on end as each body is dug up. Murton was ordered to resign within 24 hours or be charged with grave robbing, a charge carrying a 21-year sentence. He resigned immediately, living the remainder of his life duck farming. It’s a long way to the top if you wanta take control.

Van Groningen was powerless to implement his reforms despite later setting up a prison administration course at the Phillip Institute in Melbourne. He was a humanitarian reformer who believed in treating prisoners with decency. Before he resigned he downgraded the role of H Division. Unfortunately, his plans for future reform were thwarted. But he demonstrated his belief that prisoners deserved legal and humanitarian respect.

How to double our prison population

I was in prison from 1968 to 1975. During those years Pentridge contained on average around 2000 prisoners per day, Long Bay in Sydney around 3000. If every police officer employed by Victoria or New South Wales during that same period was held accountable for the crimes they committed, those prison population would have doubled. Police bashing? Probably, but I’m well supported. Duncan McNab, once a highly respected policeman, now a successful author of numerous best-selling non-fiction crime books, detailed his personal experience of rampant corruption in the NSW police force during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. When explaining that verballing, framing, copping a quid, etc., was the norm in police culture, he wrote:

Within the brotherhood of ‘the job’ it was best to toe the line. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ was the mantra of the time.

And that came from someone within the ranks. He detailed how police framed culprits, demanded bribes from illegal casinos, SP bookies, brothels, coerced informers, were deeply involved in illicit drugs, sly grog and even robbed victims after they reported crimes such as break and enters and fraud. Institutional corruption within the force was the reason he left. I would add to McNab’s list pressure by corrupt police on forensic scientists to support prosecution cases.

The 1970 Victorian Abortion Inquiry revealed high-ranking police masterminded abortion protection rackets. The Beach Inquiry exposed a litany of complaints about assaults, verballing, bending the rules and stitching up suspects on false charges by Victorian police. Those chosen to uphold the law sometimes behaved no better than the usual suspects.

I grew up in pubs where my old man paid local coppers, supposedly looking for drunks to lock up, not to walk through the bar at 9.45 pm, lest our clientele decided it healthier to drink at a pub willing to pay the bribe. And we were happy to pay. We also paid to sell sly grog on Sundays. While Sunday trading was illegal there was no doubting the community wanted it, but that was also the age of illegal abortions, SP betting, prohibited brothels and the cusp of the drug trade becoming commercial. My old man emphatically said the best crims were coppers. Times have changed and today our police forces are definitely more accountable but it wasn’t always so, and neither were all prisoners deserving of a system that established H Division to brutalise and humiliate them.

Dark history of our police force

In the sixties, Victorian police instituted the infamous Bodgie Squad where violent police nightly targeted hoodlums, beating them senseless. They were worse than the thugs they targeted and like the warders of H Division were never guilty of partaking in a one-out fight. I remember the legendary Jack Twist, a well-known Melbourne boxer and street fighter, offering to fight any two Bodgie Squad cops by himself after six of them battered one of his younger friends. The challenge wasn’t accepted. The wise money would have been on Twist. Later, a Bodgie Squad member, Paul Higgins, spent time in Pentridge for standing over prostitutes. I’m aware what sounds like more police bashing, but it’s not. I respect police and consider some close friends. I raised my children to request police when necessary. I’m simply encouraging readers to look beyond their prejudices when they feel an urge to unthinkingly dismiss prisoners’ rights, which so many media commentators scream from their new-age pulpits. Today, Victoria prides itself on having one of the best police forces in the world. I accept that’s a definite possibility but I’m aware there’s a dark history to our force the public have been sheltered from and if we’re to benefit from understanding crime and punishment we need to approach analysis with an open mind. Historically, the criminal’s point of view has been dismissed out of hand. This book might go some way to rectifying that.

An alternative argument

For the sake of balance, here’s an alternative argument adequately summarised by another ex-crim, using the pseudonym Spanner, quoted in The Herald, September 7, 1976. There wasn’t much sympathy for prisoners from media around that time. Some things never change.

Spanner: Too many people think that a big percentage of persons who go to jail are ordinary people like themselves but who have been unlucky, unfortunate, or got caught. It’s pretty bad, I suppose, for an ex-prisoner to say this, but I don’t have a lot of sympathy for a lot of people who go to prison. I think that most deserve it.

They say a person who commits a crime of a felony is sick. Do we know whether they’re sick or not? Was Hitler sick? They now say he was. But they didn’t say he was when they were dealing with him, all the statesmen and nations. Who’s to define which guy’s ill and which guy’s not? It’s about time calling bad people bad came back into fashion and not pity them as poor things needing help. That’s where it’s gone all wrong. It’s an abdication of responsibility.

It’s all Freud. Nobody’s at fault. Your mother was. But how could she be at fault? She wasn’t responsible for what she was. So there’s no blame attached. We’re making it worse for ourselves all the time by telling criminals they’re not responsible…I’m not sure whether flogging makes any difference…If people are sincere about wanting to stop violence they’ll have to stop alcohol. It’s at the root of violence, on the roads and on the streets…If society is to take a selfish point of view it’s better to execute people, rather than doing what they’re doing now, sending them to prison for many years. Executions need not be barbarous. Criminals could be put to sleep with drugs.

Spanner spent 13 months in H Division when brutality was at its worst. More of his story later.

Law-abiding prisoners

Prisons contain violent criminals but not all prisoners are violent. Many are law-abiding citizens but in prison the notion of law-abiding citizen doesn’t exist. You’re a crim and the only rights you have are what the warders allow you. When I was there every prisoner lived with the threat of incarceration in H Division. Many law-abiding citizens ended up raving ratbags because of their experiences in H Division. And despite the wider community’s misconception that every criminal naturally claims they’re innocent I met plenty in Pentridge who were definitely innocent. The improvement in the forensic use of DNA throughout the world demonstrated that when the prosecution case was weak, unscrupulous law-enforcement officials resorted to illegal means to ensure convictions. There’s another invisible crime to add to our earlier list.

Changing trends in society

During the nineteen-fifties I played cops and robbers in primary school and everyone wanted to be the robber. Anyone guilty of dobbing was relegated to social outcast. When television introduced Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy the emphasis changed. Today, kids aren’t allowed to play cops and robbers in politically correct playgrounds but if they were you could bet your sandwiches the majority would play the cop. We live in an age of a different mindset to those knockabout days.

On my first day of school at St Vincent’s Primary in North Essendon, my pregnant mother walked me 4 miles to drop me off. I found my own way home and for years walked to and from school unattended. Today that would be considered child cruelty. I could wander to the park by myself and muck around for hours. The dangers were there, always had been, but media coverage wasn’t.

But I chortle when I hear commentators speculate how violent the world has become; the new dangers of ice addicts, hooligans, drunks, thieves, paedophiles, terrorists, etc. Have they forgotten the Inquisition, holy wars, slave trade, nation conquering? Only two centuries ago dozens of violent gangs roamed Europe looting and rampaging. The world has always been a dangerous place. Are we more violent in Australia today than when it was acceptable to slaughter thousands of Aborigines in the name of civilization and settlement? We complain of America’s outrageous gun laws responsible for drive-by killings, multiple school massacres, children accidentally shooting siblings, schoolkids carrying guns, etc., but three hundred years ago everyone in America carried a gun; so much so the right to bear arms was written into their Constitution in 1789. Gun violence in the good old days was a regular occurrence.

We’re told terrorism is out of control. Terrorism has always been out of control, dating back to the initial religious wars that morphed into political wars. But religious and political are the wrong expressions. The term should be discrimination because it’s discrimination that’s at the heart of every major conflict. We fight against what we discriminate against. Discrimination is the world’s paramount problem. As a toddler I was taught by nuns my religion was the one and only, that the other religions were pagan and followers would burn in hell. Protestants taught their kids Catholics were the enemy. The trouble in Northern Ireland wasn’t simply about ownership of land. It was about discrimination between Catholics and Protestants and discrimination against English political rule in Ireland and their hatred of concepts like occupation, imprisonment without trial and brutal interrogation techniques against detainees. The main recruiting ground for Pentridge warders was Northern Ireland.

Today our media is obsessed with the so-called new enemy, Islam. We’ve always had a new enemy. I remember when Italians, then Asians, then anyone labelled multi-cultural were the new enemy. We need a new enemy to satisfy our thirst for personal drama and conflict. Media needs a new enemy to sell product. And what underpins our satisfaction for our personal palaver in the selling of that product? The answer lies in understanding how we are taught to discriminate. As a toddler I was also taught that my football team, Essendon, because that was the suburb I lived in and it was compulsory to barrack for the team of the suburb you lived in, was the best and the eleven other VFL teams were to be hated. No matter how good a job the umpire did he was a white maggot to be despised. As I matured, if you weren’t a rocker and listened to music other than rock’n’roll, then see you later, alligator. After I moved suburbs and became a jazzer we fought the rockers in the streets, setting the legacy for mods versus skinheads.

We’re taught discrimination at an early age and internalise it until it becomes part of our DNA. One redeeming feature of that era was discrimination was public and openly broadcast. Today, while we’re constantly bombarded by commentators, opinion makers and publicists, social media has created a haven of anonymity for the discriminator to strike at will. And changing technology has given everyone the potential to become a terrorist. The thought of terrorists using drones is alarming. When crazies discover the power of matches in bushfire areas and dumping poison into water catchments we’ll definitely need strategies to help prevent the radicalisation of our alienated. The world is not more violent pro rata; it’s more frightening because we can’t predict precisely who and when.

But what about Al Qaeda and ISIS I hear you ask? Surely that’s made the world a ticking bomb? If that’s your criteria then the world has long been a ticking bomb. Think Pakistan vs India, Israel vs Palestine, Russia vs Afghanistan, etc., apartheid in South Africa; Gaddafi, Pol Pot, Amin, Hitler, Nixon, etc.; think, CIA, Mossad, Ustashi, KGB.

What I find threatening is the risk of being attacked by a steroid or Kung Fu graduate needing to validate their existence by demonstrating prowess. We have as many would-be’s who want to be instantly famous as we do pot-holes in Australia. Now that is scary.

Australia and prisons

Australia had a proud history for leading the world in punishment and retribution. Colonised in 1788 as a human repository to ease the burden on swelling British Empire prison populations, Australia became the dumping ground for English, Irish, Scottish, West Indian and Canadian convicts. The world-wide industrial revolution caused urban overpopulation and concomitant crime upsurges. Penal transportation to Australia served the dual purposes of ridding the Commonwealth territories of lawbreakers whilst expanding the Empire.

Australia can claim to be the only modern country colonised by prison officers. Even Captain Arthur Phillip, Commander of The First Fleet, was a prison officer, though he gained his apprenticeship working as a spy for the Portuguese against Spain and assisting Portugal in transporting Portuguese convicts to Brazil. No other country proudly boasts monuments to prison officers like Australia.

But we also struggled to come to terms with our past. Whereas America created a literary and art industry from its slave trade, segregation, prohibition, outlaws, native Indian massacres and criminal notorieties, we understated our slave trade, Hell’s Gates, Aboriginal massacres, white Australia policy, bushrangers, Port Arthurs and criminal notorieties. There are obvious exceptions like Ned Kelly, Squizzy Taylor, Chopper Read and Roger Rogerson, but when it comes to celebrating our history we can never be accused of sensationalism, unless of course you believe the recent televised Underbelly series authentically represents history.

It’s also unfair to accuse Australians of false or invented morality, like America who shrouded itself in sanctimonious black slapping for its stand against the iniquitous slave trade, tattooing its bill of rights on a parchment of independence and the great American dream, liberty and free will. Truth was, American abolitionists were as much about keeping the soaring number of immigrants employed as they were about moral righteousness. And her legacy is a nation of evangelical eye-for-an-eye flag-wavers whose homage to fairness is etched in blood on the walls of Guantanamo Bay, CIA execution squads, renditioning and a billion dollar laissez-faire approach to incarcerating juveniles, blacks, Porto Ricans, and an economic dependence on the arms industry. Of course her refusal to sign the 1994 Ottawa Treaty banning land mines had nothing to do with stockpiling land mines for international sale. Yes, Australia ratified the treaty, but only after considerable pressure from appeasement lobbyists.

But we Australians do have a comparable history when we compare the treatment of our prisoners to those of America or other nations, including Holland, Portugal, Brazil, China and Russia, whose treatment of their prisoners was decisively cruel in the gulags or penal complexes their bureaucrats designed.

In 1815 we were sending intractable convicts to work ankle deep in the infamous Parramatta kilns, where oyster shells were pulverised to provide lime for the Sydney building barons before limestone resources were discovered. There, life expectancy was three months. We mercilessly flogged transgressors to within an inch of their lives after tying them to three-beamed triangles, mockingly dubbed married to the three sisters, locked them to treadmills where they desperately peddled, turning bluestone into gravel, forced male and female prisoners to carry heavy iron balls bolted to their ankles, starved them, and locked them in dungeon punishment holes known as black peters, for whoever knows how long, because administrators destroyed records, or never kept them in the first place. But in those days the punishments were legal and supported by legislation because our law makers believed the best way to keep prisoners in line and deter other was to exact the harshest retribution possible.

The treadmill was an English invention designed to keep prisoners stepping up continuously on a wooden machine of rotating steps while holding onto a rail. Australia treadmills were specifically designed to crush rock into small pebbles and were capable of utilising the labours of twenty prisoners. If warders wished to make the treadmill harder to turn they simply screwed down the brake on the axle. That’s why warders were known as screws.

Prisons in Victoria

Victoria built large and expensive prisons in the 1850s and 1860s, mainly as a result of the gold rushes and the 1854 Eureka uprising in Ballarat. They were built near goldfields in Ararat, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Beechworth, Ballarat, and Geelong. The Melbourne Gaol in Russell Street was the biggest building in the southern hemisphere for decades, and a prison built in an outer borough called Pentridge in 1850, later renamed Coburg, would become Victoria’s main prison for 150 years.

In early days for the first few months of their sentence prisoners were isolated, forced to remain mute and wear silence masks (hoods made of calico) when they left their cells.

Pentridge

The word Pentridge never needed defining. Everyone knew what and where it was. Pentridge had a remarkable history of extremes. Designed by former convicts and built by prisoners in the 1850’s it enclosed more than 180 acres behind 20 foot high bluestone walls. At times it held both male and female prisoners. Executions, religious ceremonies, sporting events, concerts, boxing exhibitions, theatre productions, even festivals for children were held within the bluestone walls of Pentridge. It was also a remand prison for those awaiting trial, a maximum security prison for sentenced prisoners, a psychiatric prison for moderately ill patients, a prison for vagrants, alcoholics and young offenders, some as young as 14 and residence to live-in Governors and warders.

Recent discoveries in Pentridge

Specially built concrete boxes, supposedly for extra punishment and used up until the 1960’s, were discovered under the floors of two dungeon cells in B Division. We’ll never know the extent of that extra punishment because no records were kept. Hessian straps and the marks left from prisoners being tied upside down to the underside of a metal staircase were also uncovered. The hessian straps were made from 1950’s material. We can only image the severity of punishment those unfortunate prisoners endured because again no records were kept.

This type of torture wasn’t unique to prisons. There are ex-prisoners still alive who suffered the ignominy of being turned upside-down in police cells, their bare feet handcuffed to bars and batoned until they confessed. Peter McEvoy, charged and acquitted of the Walsh Street police shootings in 1988, had earlier been hung upside down and his bare feet batoned until he confessed to crimes he claimed he never committed. Medical evidence presented in court resulted in a not guilty verdict.

SECTION 3

The Introduction of H Division

1958 was a good year

In 1958 I was an innocent 13 year-old at a Ballarat boarding school, spending weekends counting down the weekly top forty. It was a one-eyed, one-horn, flying, purple, people eater... Volare was the big deal for oldies. Two songs defined my teenage world: Bird Dog and Witch Doctor – I told the Witch Doctor I was in love with you…I told the Witch Doctor he told me what to do… then the greatest melodic lyric ever written, Ooh Eeh Ooh Ah Aah Ting Tang Walla Walla Bing Bang. What more could an innocent wide-eyed teenager want in a lyric?

Buddy Holly was the man…Peggy Sue, and we sang along with every Elvis song, especially Jailhouse Rock. I snuck out of my dorm one night to see the film, Jailhouse Rock, at the Regent Theatre in Lydiard Street. Teenagers jitterbugged in the aisles. Goodbye innocence, hello puberty. Then came the forewarning Tom Dooley based on a real life story of murder, police verbal and judicial corruption. Murder ballads held a fascination for juveniles; us against the system. 1958 was a memorable year for music.

It was also a notable year for literature and films. Paul Newman played Billy the Kid in The Left Handed Gun introducing his wild and crazy interpretation of the gangster western. My mother took me to Gigi, Vertigo, The Vikings, South Pacific and Aunty Mame during holidays. But my all-time favourite was I want to live, the execution of a prostitute revealing the biblical truism that if you murdered but repented you still deserved to die but would end up in a better place. Even at that age I knew Hollywood romanticism was illusion. I wasn’t into novels back then; that would come later in prison. I was more into rereading the earmarked pages of Peyton Place, a book published 2 years earlier. But my parents read The Agony and The Ecstasy, Dr No, The Leopard and Exodus.

I was a sport’s crazy high-jumping fanatic, nick-named Chilla after Chilla Porter who won a silver medal for Australia in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. In 1958 we won 27 gold, 2 behind England, in the Cardiff Commonwealth Games. The all-white South African team collected 13. Two years later they would declare themselves a Republic and withdraw from the Commonwealth. Dawn Fraser, Ilsa and John Konrads became household names for their swimming achievements, along with Herb Elliott who won the mile and 880 yards in athletics. Aussie Peter Thompson was victorious in the British Open. My football team, Essendon, finished fifth behind premiers, Melbourne. Mel Schumacher rode Baystone to victory in The Melbourne Cup in near-record time. It paid ten to one and the owners collected fifteen and a half thousand pounds. Three years later Mel would receive a life ban for pulling the leg of an opposing jockey. If only he had pulled the other leg he might have escaped with a caution.

While 1958 was a momentous year for Aussie sport it was relatively quiet for major crime, though the Victorian Government rewrote the Crimes Act, removing the crime of suicide but adding female genital mutilation as an indictable offence. Two years