Mayhem

by Matthew Thompson

  We disarm him and get him to call the clinic, ask for the chief, say someone needs Panadol, so he and the doctor and the nurse will have to come to the unit, escorted by another two screws – who are armed. We’ll get the jump on them and now we’ll have all the keys. All the keys. To the fucking jail. We can get to any cell, any division, and we’ll have three .38s.

  I’ve been discussing this in our group, talking about it with those I myself trust and those who are vouched for. So one guy is going to stay behind. He doesn’t give a fuck. We’re going to leave him a .38. There’s a few people we don’t like and he’s going to clean ’em up. Julian is one. We’re going to open the door to people we don’t like and people we want to release. You know what I mean. Whatever we want to do.

  So first up I need to be in a rear cell.

  Every two weeks they’re shifting a few of us classed as top security, highest risk, so soon enough we’re going to land in those grouse cells adjacent to A Division.

  The desirable rotation comes at last and I arrange for hacksaws to arrive in A Division, where a long-time old-school armed robber slips them through to me.

  Now that the blades are here and they’re full length and not just empty talk, the level of commitment and enthusiasm just gets higher and higher. I feel like I’m commanding a guerrilla unit.

  Those of us who are red hot get our cells searched daily. The screws find the hole, which gets them all worked up, and they immediately move both me and the inmate on the other side. But their relentless and thorough searches don’t uncover anything else out of the ordinary, and eventually the screws are satisfied that all is okay.

  Now my focus is on the task: cutting a cell door lock. I’ve done my homework, my recon, and found that there is a cell at the bottom of the landing with a different door lock configuration than the others, enabling the tongue of the lock to be cut from inside the cell.

  Eventually the fortnightly rotations place me in that cell where a hacksaw blade never looked so beautiful. I could kiss it. Sawing time.

  But there’s a problem: a security device secreted in the tongue of the lock. The brass cuts like butter but it has a roller – a cylinder – in there so I can’t get a grip of it. It keeps on rolling; I can’t fucking get past this, although the game’s not up straight away because the locking device still operates when it is closed. But that plan’s hit a dead end.

  Time to activate Plan B.

  ANNETTE:

  In those days you could bring stuff in, and he asked me for some towels.

  ‘What colour?’ I ask.

  ‘Navy blue.

  ‘Oh, okay.’ So I brought him navy blue towels and didn’t think anything about it. Who would?

  CHRIS:

  Plan B is now to be activated. This is a totally different approach, a daytime escape from the two labour yards. This will be time-consuming as the four inmates in the two yards will have to cut the steel wire reo [reinforcement] used on top of each yard.

  An officer patrols the prison catwalk which runs along the yards but the catwalk tower is actually to our advantage, as it shields us from the outside tower’s view, when – as seems to be the preferred option – we climb out of the yard and drop down on the other side of H Division.

  That will place us at the rear of prison industries in a no-go sterile zone. However, by now we’ll be wearing fake prison officer uniforms and doing a perimeter check. From there we walk to an unmanned padlocked gate separating the rear of prison industries from the oval area; we wave to the tower some 90 metres away, shielding as we do so the tower’s view as one of us snaps the lock with an improvised iron bar lever. With the gate open, we walk unchallenged to the maximum-security D Division – another prison itself, basically – and from here the closest towers are a good few hundred metres away.

  We then proceed to a lower-security section, G Division, which holds the crazy inmates. The walls here will be much easier to climb. And then we’ll be gone.

  *

  Everything has come together. We’ve finally cut through the roof mesh hanging over the yards and we’re dressed in uniforms that look passable from distance. Homemade in navy blue, the outfits even sport replica prison insignias.

  ‘The screws have locked down the wing!’ an inmate yells to us. ‘They’ve found something wrong with a cell lock.’

  What the fuck? Emergency lockdown now? Now? Now? Are you fucking kidding me?

  Foiled by sheer tin-ass luck!

  As fast as we can, we strip off the uniforms and stash them the best we’re able.

  The screws go into an absolute frenzy. As they find insignias and bits of fake uniform, they don’t know if all that’s part of the same plot as the cut cell lock or if two or more plots were underway simultaneously. They don’t even know the escape route or routes. They are angry and worried.

  When they find counterfeit chief insignias in my cell, I’m charged in a Disciplinary Governor’s Hearing with possessing unauthorised items and accused of being the ring leader.

  However, it doesn’t stick. The paper and colouring pencils I used were authorised items. Dismissed on a technicality.

  The screws go crazy over this and do everything they can to make our lives intolerable. Yet it feeds straight into our us-versus-them mentality, fuelling us to bond even tighter into a hardcore unit.

  ANNETTE:

  I don’t normally get the Age but for some reason I did and I saw all this news about some massive breakout attempt with a plan for Julian Knight to be held hostage. But you don’t know how much is true and how much is media. There was nothing about the towels, just that they made up some uniforms and they got sprung and shoved it down the sewer.

  I thought, ‘You little bastard. That’s why you wanted navy blue towels.’ Who would think of towels? But as he explained later on, from a distance it looks like a uniform. Of course, when you bring something you have to sign and I thought, ‘Oh shit, I’m going to get in trouble.’ But no, nobody questioned me about the towels; they didn’t question me at all.

  Mothers are sometimes the last people to know and this was the case with me that time.

  CHRIS:

  Clashes are now regular between us and a hardcore killer group. It is at this time that I jump the screw’s desk and punch out Julian Knight.

  One of my original hardcore four, the mutual-defence combat unit formed back in 1990, lands back in prison after being pinched on murder. Given his high risk classification, they remand him here in H Division instead of the usual D Division.

  We find ourselves reminiscing about the ‘good old days’ we shared not even eighteen months ago, times that were profoundly disturbing and extremely violent, and from which I was released in a state of fury, almost immediately going on a rampage of bank raids.

  We must be more than a little disturbed if we’re waxing nostalgic over a time plagued by stabbings and broken jaws and wayward levels of bronzing up and rampant shit-bombing.

  But now everything is escalating again and my mate, now charged with murder, and I both go crazy.

  *

  I’m roaring at the ‘PUTRID GRONKS!’ outside my cell as I stomp and stride, proud and strong, daubing and smearing ever more onto my full, fresh coat of triple-A rated warpaint. ‘HUMAN FAECES!’ They have shields and clubs and can get guns and gas but I have a cache of shit-bombs ready and water approaching the boil. I’m the full solja of Hell, locked and loaded and under divine orders not to let any ‘PUTRID SCREWS!’ enter this cave unless they drop to their knees and ‘BEG ME TO DIE YOUSE FUCKING STOOGES!’

  So fierce a barrage and spray defence have I mounted this truly turdacious day that a tactical withdrawal was ordered during the initial assault. Now the screws are licking their wounds and licking my shit. They love it. They gargle with it and then kiss in the streets. And it’s all mine. But they’re selling it to the police for DNA samples, ‘CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS SHIT!’ and identity verification: ‘HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THIS PIECE OF SHIT!’

 
; I hear voices. The armies of the beast ready themselves for an assault not just on some run-of-the-mill hill tribe Brown God, but on the very volcanic peak of excremental power: the Lost Command of H Division, the rogue bronze-up elements whose caves are being assaulted one by one in a tactical clearing operation.

  ‘READY TO ENGAGE, YOUSE FUCKING GRONKS?’ I enquire of the forces of the Pentridge Cell Extraction Security Unit massing and murmuring outside my cave. ‘HUMAN FAECES!’

  The shitty kettle clicks off. ‘YOUSE READY, CUNTS?’ I select a carton of the finest blend: week-old faeces, three-day-old piss, and quite recent spoof. The actions I have been forced to take are against the Geneva Convention but I am a bronzed guerrilla: a solja from the realm of BADNE$$. I baptise you in excrement. ‘YOU HAVE NO FUCKING AUTHORITY OVER BRONZE-UPS!’

  *

  The Cell Extraction Security Unit proved a clever opponent. Had the raiding party entered the zone ‘clean’, my ferocious fusillade would have seen them turned tail like the preceding waves of screws.

  But respect where it’s due: the security officers first cut down my comrades, launching vicious extractions one after the other until BADNE$$ alone remained. At that stage, the officers were well covered in human faeces – a mix and match from all my fallen friends.

  Thus they were infused with the strength of many good soljas when they entered my cave, not recoiling and vomiting from all that bronze but giving themselves to it. Those men are worthy opponents.

  *

  Later I’m charged in Melbourne Magistrates Court over injuring an officer with boiling water.

  52. HUNGER AND RESENTMENT

  1994: STILL IN H DIVISION

  CHRIS:

  H Division is unhinged; madness infects everything. The air’s thick with rage and hate and the screws are stripping us of what little we have – underwear, sunglasses, crucifixes, anything – and slotting us right, left and centre into solitary, cuffing us even in the showers.

  Inmates start refusing food and this gets formalised when five of us start a coordinated hunger strike on Valentine’s Day – starvation being our love letter to Hell.

  It’s now March 1994 and I’ve been on strict separation since the first of November last year with every indication being that there are still months and months of this to go, even though charges against me have been dismissed.

  A letter campaign starts and the media picks up on the HSU-5, or the High Security Unit Five, with mentions here and there in the newspapers of the wretched state of affairs in Pentridge’s punishment slot – the lowest place in Victoria’s penal system.

  *

  Annette organises a protest on the nature strip outside the front gates of Pentridge in support of the hunger strikers.

  Barry comes to support his brother, Chris, as does a bloke they know named Gavin Preston.

  Barry gets along okay with Gavin but he’s better mates with Gav’s brother, Richy, who lives at Barry’s place for more than a year – before the heavy drug use that would eventually kill Richy. Barry puts up Gavin on occasion, too, but not for any real length of time.

  They’re all from the same general area, with the Preston brothers’ parents even living just a street or two away from Annette for quite a while.

  It’s a region that supplies both staff and inmates to the prison system. The governor of Pentridge at the time of the hunger strike is Barry’s neighbour.

  While Gavin’s not as notorious as Barry’s big brother, he’s had his fair share of scrapes with the law. When he attends the protest he is taking a big risk because at that time he is a wanted man.

  Gavin attempts to disguise himself at the protest, but lacking Chris’ knack for it, hides behind only sunglasses and a cap.

  ANNETTE:

  Half of the people who said they’d come didn’t show up so there was only about twelve of us. The media sailed past and didn’t think it was much of a protest, but the governor was watching from inside. They had their cameras trained on us.

  He knew what Gavin looked like because he’d seen him around Barry’s place. So when he recognised him from the cameras and knew he was a fugitive, he tells the police and the next thing there’s carloads of police pulling up, and everything goes crazy. I was stunned.

  BARRY:

  There was no getting away. They bundled him up on the boot of a car, and one copper’s fumbled and I just seen his gun go flying.

  I was about five steps away and I was on crutches [from a motorcycle accident]. I’ve gone over next to it and I was about two steps away and the copper’s looked at me and shit himself.

  I had no intentions of getting it. I was just doing it to fuck with them.

  ANNETTE:

  I yelled, ‘Barry!’ ’Cos I could see what could happen. If you had the gun in your hand they could have shot you.

  BARRY:

  Yeah, but like I said I was hoping to get the coppers paranoid. There was two of ’em on Gavin and one focused on me. If one of ’em had left Gavin and come over where I was to get the gun it would have been one copper on Gavin and Gavin could have belted him or something.

  They shit themselves, but I seen more cop cars – it wasn’t just that one. They were strategically placed.

  ANNETTE:

  There was about six to eight men just jumping out and running in to get Gavin.

  BARRY:

  Because he came down there to support me brother and got nicked, he ended up going in for about two and a half years.

  To tell you the truth, I don’t think he was too happy with that. From then onwards, Gav resented Chris a bit.

  And not long after, Gavin and Matty Johnson [who later bludgeoned Underbelly kingpin Carl Williams to death] ended up establishing the gang that they’ve got in jail. It had some other name first – Youth Gone Wild – and then became the POWs.

  *

  The HSU-5 hunger strike lasts 30 days, and it becomes part of H Division’s (and Pentridge’s) endgame. Gradually, H Division’s hardcore inmates are transferred to HM Prison Barwon, a maximum-security facility near Geelong that opened only in 1990: a showcase of everything nice and new and humane in corrections – a world away from the Victorian-era horrorshow of Pentridge. H Division is shut in 1996, followed by the whole of Pentridge the year after.

  53. SHACKLED IN BARWON

  1995: ACACIA UNIT 1

  CHRIS:

  From the rank, rotten, claustrophobic, historical stone hangover that is Pentridge, I land in Barwon Prison’s Acacia Unit 1, a modern housing cluster specifically designed to cater for the state’s inmates judged as its highest escape risks.

  Completely isolated from the rest of the prison population, allowing no contact visits, and run independently with its own staff, Acacia Unit 1 is its own sealed off world. And at full capacity it holds only six inmates.

  These unparalleled restrictions are meant to make us feel we may as well be on the moon: no way out, nowhere to go.

  But it raises the stakes in the challenge to escape. In fact, it expands our minds.

  Soon after arrival I put things in train, and although the security is intense and comprehensive with metal detectors and thorough searching, quickly enough I have a hacksaw blade in my hand. A tool for the free spirit.

  I’ll need more than one, however, but an attempt for a second blade fails. So be it.

  I investigate and test the structure of the cell’s window frame, discovering the window is one piece and held into the wall by about twenty screws.

  Once cut through, the screws and rubber sealant could be removed from the concrete with the entire window then removed completely intact. I could now gain access to the window bars, cut them and put everything back in place, sealing it all back up with the pliable re-used rubber sealant.

  The problem is that one hacksaw is not enough for everybody, hence the development of a tunnel project.

  In our new scheme, the hacksaw is of great use in forging other tools from bits of tin, in turn using them to unscrew bolts f
rom the tin roof of the TAFE metal workshops, so we can then peel back the roof to enter and secure the workshops’ entire stock of equipment.

  The plan is to use the oxy cutter to slice the bars and get us out of high security, but it turns out that the oxy is not portable – the gas bottles are not here and we can’t use it.

  Given our first goal is to get to the sterile zone on the other side of the metal fence separating our yard from mere maximum security, the only way, it seems, is travelling under the fence’s concrete foundation.

  This is no overnight job. It ends up taking about six months to achieve. The grey clay beneath the surface is hard to conceal or to blend in with the topsoil so we use the cover of a landscaping project.

  The beautification and improvement task involves raising the perimeters of the yard’s corners to form a smooth running track, with garden beds sitting behind the elevated corners.

  The veggie patch is strategically positioned in front of our excavation site – our descent point for the journey down under the fence foundations.

  The Acacia staff think it’s a great idea and they showcase our efforts to visitors as the gainful work of the inmates of Victoria’s most secure custodial unit.

  Patience and much hard work are the foundation of this; we all have a role to do.

  Some get down into the hole and dig, whilst others blend the clay into top soil. Others cut [walk] laps on the sweet track we’re making, keeping watch for those down the hole. We rotate through the roles, as tunnelling is bloody hard work, with all that clay and rock to get through and funnel back.