Hellbent: Ces Waters & Me

by Margaret Wentworth

  Hellbent

  a tale of

  trust & treachery,

  truth & lies

  Margaret

  Wentworth

  Ces Waters: one of Australia's top motivators and most successful sports trainers

  Why was Allen Hall shot dead on the night of 30 June 1988?

  Three brothers who punched an unprecedented path to glory

  self-reconstruction in a prison cell

  the pimp?

  animal lover who worked miracles?

  Unpromising beginnings

  First published 1998

  Kerr Publishing Pty Ltd, Australia

  This edition published 2015

  This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission from Kerr Publishing or the recording of copying by Copyright Agency Ltd under their rules for use.

  Cover photography: Brendan Read

  Cover photograph ©: Fairfax Photo Library

  Cover design: Tanya Smith of Hall & Jones, Brisbane

  National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication data:

  Wentworth, Margaret.

  Hellbent: a tale of trust and treachery, truth and lies.

  ISBN 9781925281187 (eBook)

  1. Waters, Ces, 1926-1987. I. Title.

  920

  Digital edition distributed by

  Port Campbell Press

  www.portcampbellpress.com.au

  eBook Created by Warren Broom

  To the memory of

  my mother

  Acknowledgements

  The author wishes to thank Dte Insp Dennis O’Toole, Dr Robert Finlay-Jones, Bruce Kennedy, Margaret Barnett, Sylvia Waters, Did’s family—especially Lee and Laverne, Ces Waters’ family, especially Tracey, and all those who wished to remain anonymous for their time, documents, memories, photographs and expertise. You helped me in my quest for the truth. Sandra Coffey and Sandy Dobson at Honeywell for continuing support. John Kerr for editing. Karen Finch for reading. John Meagher for help and encouragement. Dean and Jinka for walking Tippy while I was at the keyboard.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Book 1: Merrie England

  A Meeting at Bumble

  Muddy Waters

  Opinion, Prejudice and Portents

  Family Unity

  From Out of the Midlands

  Hard Times

  Gutter

  Schooling and Fooling

  Trout Stream

  Stardust

  Ces’s war

  Dancing on Air

  Trouble with the Law

  Santa

  Violation

  Doing Bird

  Trust Me

  The Downward Spiral

  Epiphany

  Swinging London

  A Question of Remorse

  Showbiz

  Where’s Mummy?

  Book 2: Sunny Australia

  New Place, New Life

  Fists of Fury

  Going Pro

  Hey! Tyson! Yes, You!

  A Dangerous Game

  Strained Union, Reunion

  The Murder of Allen Hall

  Trials and Tribulations

  Reduced Circumstances

  Truth and Lies

  Trouble at Bumble

  Serpent’s Tooth

  Loose Ends

  Battlescars and Inspirations

  Introduction

  Between the idea

  And the reality

  Between the motion

  And the act

  Falls the Shadow

  T S Eliot, ‘The Hollow Men’

  Biographers will claim their biographies are ‘different’, and are always right. A life is unique, a biographer has only two eyes and ears, one mind, one heart, and cannot escape his or her fate as a filter between a subject and the reader. That’s generally understood.

  I have a different problem. When I began the work, I had an inspiring and uplifting life in mind. Ces Waters was born to poverty and violence which played a major part in sculpturing the early part of his life. A move to Australia helped him realise his ambitions for his three sons to be true champions. I admired Ces for the audacity of his dreams. He achieved plateau after plateau, time after time, on track to the stars. Ces was charming, funny, charismatic. I became a close friend and admirer. He and his boys seemed destined for the most unlikely greatness and I wanted my book to capture their success. Ces’s life said, ‘Nothing is impossible, and it doesn’t matter who you are. The stars are within your grasp.’ But three years after starting the biography, things went terribly wrong. I became part of Ces’s story, a victim of my trust, loyalty and shyness, someone he could confide in and then silence by threats. I lived to tell the tale without fear or favour. That’s why there is a select account of my own life within these pages. The reader will better understand this biographer’s trust and trauma if they know where I’m coming from.

  Ces was—and I still believe this—ruthlessly honest about the texture and shape of the bulk of his life. I did my quasi-journalistic duty and found, where the public record allowed, no contradictions with what he told me. When I look back on it, the true picture only emerges when you examine what he hadn’t told me. So read between the lines. Watch for motives not stated, particularly the generosity of the spirit of Ces Waters, and the meanness he ascribes to others. Ces filtered his life to give me an interesting, inspiring story of a flawed yet redeemed man. Yet beneath the warmth there was a heart of ice.

  It’s now a matter of court record that Ces has been compared, by a psychiatrist, to the evil Charles Manson. And I agree. Not from my experiences as his neighbour, friend, producer’s assistant in the doco Rebels with a Cause about his life, biographer, bail guarantor, landlord, and witness for his son’s defence—certainly, I knew him well—but as his perceived enemy. My suspicions had been aroused by his lies; he was losing the plot and hanging himself on his own words.

  Ces Waters’ story still inspires, in spite of his behaviour. His journey is fascinating and intriguing, a reason for persisting. There are people like Ces in each of our lives, succeeding, getting things done, motivating us, leading. These people think that the end justifies the means; some, any means. I hope Hellbent will be challenging to perfect victims—like me. If I can tweak their trusting perceptions, cause them to reflect, question and take more control, then my nightmares will not have been in vain.

  Book 1

  Merrie England

  1 A Meeting at Bumble

  When shall we three meet again

  In thunder, lightning or in rain?

  First witch, Macbeth

  Meeting Ces Waters was like being struck by a ball of energy and charisma. I was 27 and of somewhat delicate sensibilities. I didn’t really know what to make of him at first.

  Life was fun, exciting, full of possibilities. I was progressing very nicely as a pharmaceutical product manager with a background in market research and analysis. I lived a couple of blocks away in a modest brick home in the leafy northern Sydney suburb of Chatswood with John Meagher, who I had recently married after a long relationship.

  Tall, slim, with very long honey-brown hair, I enjoyed being flattered by men. It wasn’t that I was beautiful in any classic sense—my nose was too big, my chin receding, and my teeth better suited to eating grass. My rounded bottom stuck out too far, though it was very comfortable to sit on. I learned that a good deal of the attraction seemed to stem from my gentle personality and shyness—my cheeks flushed red whenever I spoke to strangers. As far as I was concerned this was a curse,
a handicap I had to fight every day. It had plagued my childhood and isolated me from other people. I felt I was an odd one from an odd family, and had always gravitated towards others who stood out in some way from the pack—just like John.

  I was only a 17-year-old schoolgirl when John and I started dating, much to my father’s concern. John was the complete opposite to me in personality but our tastes were similar. On first meeting he was confident, extrovert and socially skilled. I enjoyed the company of this tall, slim, 28-year-old aspiring film-maker with a very expressive face. He was artistic, sporting and full of fun and vitality. My dad would have described him- as a noisy irritation and a disruption to the tranquillity of his household. He would have much preferred me to go out with a quiet, academic young man with a more stable income and temperament; perhaps an electrical engineer like himself.

  Getting to know him more intimately, John was unrestrained in his outspokenness on issues or his reaction to events. This quality must have come from his feminist mother’s strong influence. She had raised him single-handedly after her ex-World War I soldier-husband died when John was only 11. Forthright in her opinions, she spoke with a sharp, acid wit. Over the years this trait caused me a fair bit of embarrassment as both John and his mum had a habit of saying or doing things that most people tactfully or politely refrain from. However, to them, it was very important to get to the truth of the matter even if feathers got ruffled in the process.

  John helped me break out of my very insular and protected private-school upbringing into a more exciting, yet challenging world. At first I clung to him, using him as a vocal and protective shield behind which I could hide, peeping out at times. Eventually I gained the courage to appear fairly normal to outsiders, although my blush, that hated betrayer, was a dead giveaway. All along, John was encouraging me to take one more step than I would have preferred and encouraged my independence, even recommending I keep my maiden name when we married.

  When I first started living with John I was surprised to be woken up in the morning by the bed vibrating. John would be scratching vigorously, trying to encourage more hair growth on his thinning scalp. And he grew odder. He insisted I sat in the centre of the back of his old Volkswagen so I wouldn’t unbalance the car (in case he took evasive action) and to ease his concern about uneven wear on the back tyres. He was fastidious about the house whereas I had an easy-going attitude to dust and mess. Careful about money, he could never understand how quickly it slipped through my fingers.

  There were incidents too when John was involved in verbal and, thankfully more rarely, fist fights in public. He was passionate about justice (or his view of it). The people who riled him most included restaurant owners serving substandard meals, food servers handling money and food at the same time, smokers, and inconsiderate neighbours in caravan parks or hotels making noise in the early hours of the morning. He would also confront public servants imposing rules that seemed preposterous, toll collectors charging too much and police patrols telling him to pull over. I’d cringe when I could see a confrontation developing and soon became skilful at disappearing on an urgent mission somewhere else.

  Despite those awful moments when I wondered how I ever got mixed up with someone so annoyingly practical and embarrassingly volatile, my relationship with John was productive and enjoyable. In addition to my pharmaceutical work, we formed a company to develop and produce feature films. John would be home-based writing scripts. I would edit them. John would approach financiers while I worked behind the scenes doing budgets and schedules. I would help John produce and he would direct. Our minds and personalities combined to make us extremely effective as a team. More than anything else, we were very close friends.

  That is why it took us eight years to decide to get married. We were suspicious of this institution and as our married friends fought, with many getting divorces, we thought it best to avoid such a formal commitment until we were serious about starting a family. John didn’t want any of our children called ‘bastards’ in the schoolyard. He also wanted to please my conservative parents, who had silently tolerated us living together.

  John and I both worked hard and went without a lot of luxuries in order to save enough money to invest in a natural bush block. We eventually found 10.5 hectares in a place called Bumble Hill, Kulnura, an hour’s drive north of Sydney. The property included a modest but comfortable bungalow poised on the edge of a cliff commanding spectacular views of the beautiful Yarramalong valley and the surrounding mountains. In the distant eastern horizon we could see the blue of the Pacific Ocean. Captivated by the place, we quickly set about turning it into our own paradise.

  Armed with an old mattock and spade, we attacked the sandstone, burned dry and crusty hard by years of drought, to make holes to plant saplings along our driveway and perimeter. We worked, drenched in sweat and pestered by flies, when a clapped-out car approached to check us out. We weren’t in the mood for visitors that hot summer’s day in 1983, but a short man in a beanie, singlet and old track pants, protruding biceps and flat wide hands with fingers all the same length, got out. His face was deeply lined and he had an intense inspectorial look in his eye. ‘Oh, so you’re the people who brought this place,’ he said in a thick Midlands accent. ‘I’m Ces, a neighbour.’ His three sons were crammed in the car with a couple of leaping, barking dogs. `In, dog,’ Ces yelled and they slunk out of sight. Ces sized up our inadequate progress in a glance and in minutes insisted he lend us his tractor and posthole digger, and his eldest son as operator. Dean, 21, was powerfully built and towered over his dad. He had a handsome olive-bronze appearance, dark eyes and a flashing white smile. Guy was tall, skinny and fair, with an awkward shyness, an attractive gentle quality I related to. Troy, 16, the youngest, had movie-star good looks and eyes that flashed intensity. The three fine boys radiated health, happiness and vitality, and were impressively polite and well mannered—I noticed how they waited patiently for their father to get in the car and drive back to their farm, about a kilometre away. Ces proudly said none had girlfriends, which seemed strange.

  Dean rode the tractor for hours, screwing sculptured holes at regular intervals, in dust and heat. There was no complaining, only positivity and constructiveness. Dean just wiped the sweat from his brow and got on with the job. Impressed and grateful for their neighbourly kindness, we asked Ces how we could repay him. As John was working in the media he wondered if John could get his boys some publicity, as they were soon to compete in the state amateur boxing championships. The previous owner of Bumble warned about a fellow named Waters—‘Watch out, if he gets his foot in the door, he’ll keep going’—but we preferred to judge people as we found them and we had benefited from his generosity. Perhaps these mountain people should gossip less.

  We saw Ces on a regular basis after that. He was charming, engaging, with a tremendous sense of humour. He nearly always wore a colourful beanie on his head which covered a thick tangle of grey hair. That was his trademark and he was proud of it. Being short, it helped people recognise him from afar. He had a wiry, stocky body which he held erect, proud of his fitness and stamina. It didn’t take any prompting to get him to stand on his head or do 50 push-ups. Sometimes he’d do a vaudevillian act with a George Formby imitation of ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’. He was quite an extraordinary 57 year old with a fantastic future ahead of him.

  Ces flirted openly with me and enjoyed how my cheeks coloured as I nervously shrunk away from his approaches. I had never met a man with such powerful energy and found it both hypnotically appealing and disturbing. I also identified in Ces someone who was `psychologically interesting’ because he was another one different from others. He wasn’t afraid to take on the impossible to fulfil his dreams.

  Stage 1 of those dreams was for all three boys to win state amateur titles in their weight divisions that year. They did—and we had it on film, hoping the footage might trigger financial backing for a 1-hour documentary on the family. John worked hard to raise interest and eve
ntually succeeded. Over six months we recorded Ces, Ces’s wife Christine Hicks, and the boys boxing, horseracing and caring for animals. Their achievements were inspiring and two boys won national titles that year.

  I was ringside at the nationals as sound recordist, quite an experience for a North Shore girl who’d never been to a boxing match. The microphone recorded the thumps and thuds of fists whacking flesh, the swish of prancing feet. The smell of liniment, leather and hot-bodies pervaded. Boxers’ sweat rained on me. Violent. Animal. Repulsive. Masculine. Sexy. Scary. Riveting.

  These simple people with enormous ambitions had little money, no connections and lived in a concrete shell of a house with bare floors, little furniture and few niceties. The non-swearing non-smoking non-drinking vegetarians’ lives were complicated by their dedication to helping sick or unwanted animals. The farm swarmed with 100 dogs, 30 horses, two cows, chooks and the odd sheep. Christine went to and from a part-time job at a garden nursery and went with Ces to Wyong racetrack every second day at 5 am. And the boys trained daily. It was a gruelling schedule.

  Christine was an attractive woman in her early thirties, physically short and powerfully built. Her long silken brunette-red hair was a striking feature. She had a gentle, shy disposition and never sought to draw attention to herself. But you could sense her quiet strength and courage.