Too Tough for Tears

By Barry Goode, Darryl Thomas and Eric Smith

In the gritty underbelly of Sydney's slums, where survival often meant breaking the law, Barry Goode's journey unfolds in this gripping memoir.
Born into poverty, he learned early on that the streets could be unforgiving. But it was within those shadows that he discovered his resilience and resourcefulness, forging a path that led him into a world of crime and evasion.
From his first brush with the law at 7 years old, to life on the run, his story is a testament to the human spirit's capacity for change. Serving time in prisons throughout Australia, he recounts his experiences of life behind bars in the tumultuous 1950s and 60s, where survival often meant adapting to the brutal realities of prison life.
 A raw, unflinching and sometimes amusing portrayal of life in the shadows, this Australian true crime memoir is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the transformative power of redemption, even for the hardest of criminals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beverley Goode
• Release date: Apr 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224281008

Book preview

Contents

Turbulent Yesterdays

Slum Rat

A Date With Darkness

Satan’s Chapel

Daring Robberies

Running Scared

Every Rat to Its Hole

The Grey Death

Silencer

Rape Happy

Punishment Division

Black Peter

Jungle Jim

The Race

The Blood-stained Axeman

Free, but Fearful

Too Tough for Tears

Yellow Maude

Lift to Success

Barton’s Mill

Betting Shop Bandit

A City Businessman

The House on the Hill

Mail up!

Yoga, Pig-farming, Pain

Ratsville

Suicide. The Only Way Out?

My Door to Freedom

CHAPTER ONE

Turbulent Yesterdays

The prison loomed ahead . Visible through the grime-spattered windscreen, it stood like some exaggerated and long-forgotten relic of yesteryear transposed to another time. How many lives had been spent, wasted, behind its sullen stone walls? How many terrors did it hide? How many evils did it perpetuate?

Out of habit, I checked the rear-vision mirror, making sure there were no police following. You always do that when you are on the run, and I had been on the run for most of my life. As I stopped the car I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. A flattened nose and leathery, lined skin testified to my wild, brawling past. I was a Christian now, but I still had the look of a criminal. I couldn’t shake it, and the habits of years on the run — always watching for cops, always looking back over my shoulder — were still with me.

I checked that the car was locked, then double-checked, then checked again before slipping the keys into my pocket. I was stalling. I was afraid. I did not want to go in there, but a guy had asked for my help. I pulled the collar of my jacket up against the bitter breeze of early winter, and head down, walked slowly toward the prison.

Never look at the object of your fears otherwise your fears will be intensified, someone once told me. But when those huge steel gates confronted me, I had no choice but to look up. There it was, in big white letters

Her Majesty’s Prison.

G’day Goodie, come back to us have you? said the prison guard as he led me through a narrow doorway in the gate.

Just try and keep me away, I joked.

A smile spread slowly across the face of the guard. He was a small man whose once trim belly drooped slightly over the belt-line of his trousers. A lock or two of greying, well-oiled hair peeped out from beneath his black, policeman-like cap.

I was in a courtyard. To the left was the keeper of the gaol’s office, and straight ahead was a barred gate which led to the main section of the prison.

Follow me, Goodie, said the guard with a smile. "We’ll look after you.

As we walked I caught sight of prisoners in the exercise yard. Some were reading, others were hanging out socks, but most of them were huddled together in the small pockets of sunshine. It was early winter and the sun, fighting its way from behind heavy clouds, zeroed in on small sections where the prisoners gathered for warmth.

Hanging from the guard’s belt, a bunch of keys rattled to the rhythm of his military-like walk. How I hated that sound! It brought back with a flood the memories of turbulent yesterdays. My mind’s nose was repulsed at the stench of dank cells, their tiny toilet buckets overflowing with urine and excrement. I relived for a brief moment the mind-numbing periods of solitary confinement in pitch darkness; my mind’s eye recalled the bruised body of a prisoner, viciously assaulted by the jail’s Biff Squad and I heard again the hideous cries of a seventy-year-old man, raped by a fellow prisoner.

Here we are Goodie.

The voice of the prison guard shook me from my memories.

Just wait here, he said, leading me into a tiny cell-like counseling room.

As I sat in that matchbox of a room, I assured myself that I had nothing to fear. Barry Goode, one-time criminal, was in gaol only as a visitor. Shortly, the reason for my visit — twenty years old and frightened — stood in the doorway, fear written all over his thin, fleshless face. He was beginning his first stretch in prison and was worried about what might happen to him. I gave him all the assurance and advice I could and said I would come whenever he needed me. It seemed to help.

Thanks pastor, he said as the guard led him away. Thanks pastor. The words sounded so good that I repeated them again and again. I had come a long way to hear words like that. I had gone about as far as a man could go — from crime to Christ, from grey walls to God. In the thirty-six years of my life to that point, I had journeyed from the Sydney slums of St. Peters, collecting more than twenty High Court convictions in my quest for adventure. I had spent a large slice of my life in prisons and detention centres in four states. I had been a safe-breaker; a hold-up man and only the hand of God had prevented me from becoming a murderer. Yes, Barry Goode, once a hardened, hate-filled criminal who had offered to sell his soul to Satan for money, had found the peace and joy he sought, in Christianity.

"This is my story. The story of a criminal who became an evangelist. In telling it I open up a lot of wounds which time had healed. In one sense, I’m baring my soul by exposing thoughts and deeds that I have long since tried to forget. I tell it, not for myself, but in the hope that it might help others.

CHAPTER TWO

Slum Rat

Looking back on my childhood seems like intruding on the privacy of a stranger. I tend to see my youth through the eyes of a detached but concerned observer.

I find myself filled with pity for that young boy, who by his very environment and his reactions to it was predestined to a life of crime. I almost have to force myself to say That was Barry Goode; that was me when I was a child.

Hey Stench! Comin’ with us? I yelled.

Stench — he was one of my best mates — looked up, Where yer goin’?

Gonna flog some coal from the brickyard.

The sound of my voice carried across the narrow street we called Bug Terrace. Bug Terrace housed the ramshackle row of two-storey terrace houses in which I lived as a young boy. It was a treeless street, which wandered down off a main highway, and lost itself in the midst of a dirty industrial suburb. The soot from factories and the dust from the rubbish tip had dulled the once red brick of the terrace houses, which were only one hundred metres from our home.

I was a real little tip rat, spending many hours scrounging through garbage, but the smell of the dump was something I never really got used to. It was with us when we ate, it was with us when we worked, it was there when we played and it was there when we slept. Day or night, summer, autumn, winter or spring, Bug Terrace always stank.

The people crowded into the squalid hovels in that part of Sydney were desperately poor. In their poverty they hated to throw away anything that might come in handy some day.

Their backyards were crammed with odds and ends of old timber and iron, kerosene tins, packing cases and whatever else they thought might eventually prove useful, and much of this junk overflowed into the back street.

The fronts of the houses were little better, always in need of repair and a coat of paint, while the interiors reflected the despair and surrender of people who had given up hope. The plaster was cracked and chunks had fallen away. The wallpaper was faded and peeling, and where there was aged lino on the floor, it was almost devoid of its original pattern, and worn right through in places.

It was the perfect training ground for a life of crime, and no apprentice ever applied himself more diligently to the business of learning his trade than I did.

Got the bags, Bazz? Stench queried, joining me on the long walk down to the brickworks. I nodded. We needed the hessian sugar bags to haul away our stolen booty.

Stench’s attention was suddenly attracted to one of the single- globed lights, which lined our street. The globes, each suspended from a metal shade the shape of a Chinese coolie’s hat, were commonly used for target practice. Stench surveyed the ground for a missile, found a stone on one of the many hopscotch marks drawn across Bug Terrace and fired on the globe.

Damn it! Missed the $%@! thing, he yelled in frustration. Stench was a blonde-haired guy with soft blue eyes. We called him Stench, not because he smelt, but because of the crude things he’d say. He was good-looking and extremely sensitive, but always had a way of coming out with the filthiest language imaginable.

In the cool, half light of the early evening we made our way along a narrow dirt path, which ran beside the high brickyard wall. It was as we trod that narrow pathway, dodging the thorny branches of the blackberry bushes and the threatening stalks of stinging nettles, that I first tasted the sweet thrill of fear. I was apprehensive, but I enjoyed it. I could feel the tingling blood pumping through my veins. Stealing coal wasn’t just a job; it wasn’t just something I had to do, it was something I enjoyed. It was how I got my money and it was the only way the Bug Terrace folk could afford to keep warm in winter.

Darkness came early at that time of year and was beginning to cast its shadowy blanket over the brickyard as we scrambled up a bank to the top of the wall.

"Is it clear?’ Stench was anxious to get the raid over and done with.

The body of a brick worker cast an elephantine shadow as he stooped to stoke one of the kilns. In the flicker of fire we could see he was a man from the slums. His baggy trousers, torn at the knees, were fastened high above the waist with a piece of rope. He was a stocky man, whose huge, broad shoulders strained at the seams of his shirt.

Boy, he’ll kill us if he spots us, said Stench with a shiver.

"Be quiet! He’s lookin’ this way

As we ducked out of sight I was sure I saw the beginnings of a smile on his glowing face. I sometimes thought that the brick workers knew what we were up to, but because they too were from the slums, they turned a blind eye. Even on the few occasions we were spotted, the workers never seemed able to catch up to us. I guess they were giving us their silent approval. Nonetheless, we played the game for keeps. Stealing was serious business and we took no chances.

We watched and waited, Stench and I, until the coast was clear, then slipped down to fill our sugar bags with coal. One by one we placed the coal in the bags, making sure that the pieces did not click together. Then with a sudden, silent effort half-carried, half- dragged the sacks to the wall and pushed them over.

The coal I stole from the brickworks in our Street found a ready market among the neighbors. Why should they worry that buying stolen coal from a seven-year-old kid was contributing to his delinquency? The coal was cheap, and in their poverty that was all that mattered.

It was as Stench and I were returning from one of our regular raids

on the brickworks that I had my first brush with racial prejudice. Spud, a square-faced kid with a thick forehead, walked up to me and distorting his face, hissed: You’re nothing but a stupid little half-caste, Goodie!

The venom in his voice left me stunned. I turned to Stench.

What’s a half-caste mean?

Aw, don’t worry about it Bazz.

I could tell by the way Stench avoided my eyes and kicked at the ground with the toe of his worn-out shoe that he was uncomfortable. Stench shot an angry look at Spud. You shouldn’t have said that.

What’s it mean? I pleaded. Come on, what’s the big secret? Aw, don’t worry about it Bazz. Yer got nothin’ to worry about.’’ Come on Stench I dare you to tell him. He wants to hear it.

Don’t be chicken."

Stench was put on the spot. He looked at me. For a moment there was uncomfortable silence, then with a gulp he said:

Bazz, it means you are half black and half white.

I am? Well what’s the difference? It was all I could get out. I was shattered.

Half-caste ... half-caste ... half-caste. It echoed through my mind like some kind of dirty word.

It was true of course. I was a half-caste. My mother, Ruby, was dark skinned with a thick crop of frizzy black hair, while my father, Jack was part Jewish and English.

Everyone loved Ruby. Her black, native-like eyes sparkled mischief in their sockets. Hers was a short, pudgy nose, offset by beefy cheeks that liked to wrinkle into a wide grin. She had a wonderful sense of humor and every time she laughed her entire eighteen stone (115 kg) frame would quiver. Mum was hardly physically attractive, but she had a dynamic personality and we loved her dearly. Through all the hard times she was the one who held the family together.

There were eight children in our family. The first five were girls. Then I arrived, the first of three boys.

My folks were good people; unfortunate in their circumstances, and unable to give their children anything else, they gave them love. We were a close family, always ready to support one another in a crisis. Our home was in a district of poverty, and I am positive the poorest people in the area were the Goode’s.

Through the whole of my school days I cannot remember owning a pair of shoes. We wore second-hand clothes, and not many changes of those. There was often very little food in our house and many were the nights we went to bed with empty, aching stomachs. They say that hell is a place where all the emotions prevail, but without fulfillment. Hunger is like that. It’s like a little piece of hell — you know food is vital to your whole being, you crave for it, but you can’t do anything to satisfy it.

At night in my bedroom, which I shared with my two brothers and hoards of bed bugs, I would dream of food. My bedroom was upstairs. It was filthy and smelly and its walls were bare and unpainted, except for a few patches of childish, reddish-brown paintings.

The paint used was the blood of bed bugs. We used to drag the bodies of the repulsive little creatures along the wall under the ball of a forefinger, creating a work of art peculiar to Bug Terrace. Bugs of some sort were always biting us. I guess that’s how Bug Terrace got its name. Besides being plagued by bed bugs, our heads were often infested with lice.

Damn repulsive creatures, I remember Mum saying as she combed a mass of boobies from her frizzy hair. Boobies were huge lice, which we loved to crack under our thumbs. My father hated them, yet he suffered least of all from the complaint.

Look son, he said to me one time, I’ll give you a penny for every nit you can catch from my head. (Nits are lice eggs.)

Dad, a thick-necked man with a big nose and mud-colored eyes, was sitting at the kitchen table as I searched his straight black hair for those dreaded creatures.

I was about to announce that there were none, when I hit upon

the idea of transferring the lice from my hair to his, then onto the table.

Blimey... Dad muttered as the number of lice grew steadily. I had cunningly transferred about sixteen of them and was smiling at my good fortune when Dad discovered my game. His face twisted with anger and I took off.

You little devil, wait till I get my hands on you! I heard him yell, but by that time I was out of the door and halfway down the street.

Paper money was a rare sight in the Goode household and it was because of paper money that little Barry Goode, destined to become a much-pursued criminal, offered his first feeble prayer to God.

No, not like that. Come on Barry hold it tighter, I remember my parents saying on that occasion.

They had decided to send me to the store for some groceries and spent more than ten minutes instructing me on how to hold their precious ten-shilling note. It was more money than I had seen in my life.

Now look, we are trusting you with this, my father said, stooping to look into my eyes. He wrapped my hand tightly around the note until my knuckles turned white.

Now don’t lose it because if you do, I tell you what, we’ll kill you.

Realizing this was the most important mission ever undertaken by five-year-old Barry Goode, I pushed out my chest and clutching the note as though life depended on it, set off down Bug Terrace. In slum suburbs there are more kids than cats and Bug Terrace was no exception. The street was a playground and everyone seemed out in force that day. A man with a mission, I did my utmost to ignore the kids who asked me to play ball and refused to take part in my favorite game of wars. Armed with slingshots and green smelly berries the Bug Terrace brigade would often divide into gangs and launch offensives against one another. Their ammunition came from two berry bushes, the only plants that seemed to survive in the soot and stench of Bug Terrace.

Halfway down the street I realized that the ten-shilling note had disappeared. I stood, mouth agape, and then panic set in. I paced up and down the street searching frantically for the money. I retraced my steps time and again, but still there was no sign of that note.

What should I do?

God! I cried. You’ve got to help me. I don’t know how I found the words because no one had ever talked of religion in the Goode household and we possessed no Bible. I’m going to get killed if I don’t find that money. God, you’ve just got to help me. Suddenly, I had the urge to look down at my feet and there, quivering in the breeze, was that beautiful brown note.

Although Dad was a professed agnostic. He couldn’t call on God for help, either with his own burdens or in guidance for his family; he was a complete materialist, and acknowledged no God. Mum did have a faith of sorts. She considered herself a Christian, but her church visits were mostly confined to special occasions such as Christmas and Easter. A funeral was about the only other event, which would draw Mum to church.

Dad was a door-to-door salesman who bought clothing from warehouses and carried it round in a couple of suitcases. He was a crack salesman, and sometimes topped the month’s figures for the firms whose goods he sold. He had a remarkable talent, and should have become a successful and moderately rich businessman.

Unfortunately he had a weakness, which blocked him. When he was selling well and making good money, he would spend freely, and he would not think to put a percentage of his money away to cover the slump periods, which even the best salesmen experience.

A couple of bad weeks would dampen his enthusiasm. He would give way to despair and walk away beaten from sales that should have come easily to him.

In desperation he would start drinking.

When Dad took to the drink, it was complete surrender. He would get as full as a boot, and stay drunk for days at a time.

No matter how much he drank, Dad always remembered how much grog he had left. I can still hear the squeak of the cork and can see Dad holding his bottle up to the light to measure its remaining contents. In his surrender to alcohol, my father would progress from beer to wine to methylated spirits. And that’s when the rot would really set in.

Ruby! Where’s my bottle? I can hear Dad shouting as though it were yesterday.

I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was one of those occasions when Mum, in sheer frustration, had found one of Dad’s bottles of metho’ and smashed it.

You know what I’m talking about — my bottle.

Oh, you probably drank it. What would I want with your rotten metho’?

I want that bottle, old girl. I need it for my health and if I don’t get it there’s going to be big trouble.

Even when he was drunk, Dad hardly ever lost his temper or used a swear word. I don’t know of any man who, having had as much to drink, could have controlled his temper the way my father did. Drunk or sober, he was a very gentle man.

The time would come when he would decide to sober up. He had a tremendous reserve of willpower on which he could draw at this time. He would stop drinking. No tapering off or anything, he would just stop cold. Then, after a short period of drying out, he would get back to work, selling as well as ever. He would go six months or more without a single drink. Sometimes he would give up smoking as well.

My father’s periodic bouts of drunkenness were a tragedy, because he had in him the potential for great achievements.

My parents knew I was an incorrigible thief. Even when I started getting into trouble with the police, my mother let me go my own way. Stealing and contempt for the law were a part of life in the slums, and like a true woman of the slums, Mum was more concerned about me being caught by the police than she was about my increasing criminal activities.

My father did, at various times, try to point out the right path for me, but he was never insistent or very convincing. He possessed a great influence over people, yet he did not seem able to use that power to guide his children. My father decided, on one occasion, to make a salesman of me. He took me round with him, selling clothes and stuff. I didn’t want to go, but Dad insisted.

He stood on the footpath of what he called a likely looking street and pointed to a house across the road.

Right you are son. Shoot over there and knock on that door. Talk to the lady and arrange for me to come over and show her our lovely things.

I was weak with embarrassment.

I... I can’t Dad.