Speaker 1: Appoche production. Welcome to Secrets of the Underworld. I am
Speaker 1: Neil the muscle comments and in this episode I speak
Speaker 1: to ronnisher would about his journey from crime figure to
Speaker 1: recovery coach of.
Speaker 2: His mate said, what do you want to be in requirement?
Speaker 2: I said, I want to be a lawyer. And he
Speaker 2: started to laugh and he said, if you want to
Speaker 2: find the coppers by a gun? The police card came
Speaker 2: in excellence broadcast and big orange trains had been not
Speaker 2: the fact you just jumped the seat, and I started
Speaker 2: that I had no respect for human life. I had
Speaker 2: no respect for my own life. If I had been
Speaker 2: out of self toothpicks and make the same profit or
Speaker 2: tohold toothpicks. And he said, what are we going to
Speaker 2: do with you? Right? My mother? I said, put a
Speaker 2: gun and we had and blow my fucking head off. Ron.
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming on. This has been a few
Speaker 1: months in the making. Me and YouTube non stop talking
Speaker 1: backwards and forwards. Before we get into the nitty gritty er,
Speaker 1: you know, tell me about you as a person growing
Speaker 1: up and your family and then we'll get into you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, my family were all Qui criminals. My father,
Speaker 2: my uncles were fighters boxes. Most of my family were fighters.
Speaker 2: In the fifties. You made in money out of fighting,
Speaker 2: breaking in horses, breaking into factories, and they did all that.
Speaker 2: A very tough, tough family. No emotion. Never heard the
Speaker 2: word I love you in my house ever, ever, ever, ever,
Speaker 2: never heard that word I love you, isn't it? It
Speaker 2: was not a word. My father was extremely violent and
Speaker 2: yet the most loved guy in the world. Like everybody
Speaker 2: outside the house, oh, your dad's you know, such a
Speaker 2: lovely guy. And then my mother had ever broken ribs
Speaker 2: and black eyes, and so he's a really violent Do.
Speaker 1: You think they said that because they were scaredy of that?
Speaker 2: Though some did but respected him, especially in the boxing game,
Speaker 2: because he trained some good fighters, you know, he had
Speaker 2: some austrange champions, and he could fight himself. And he
Speaker 2: was also very unpredictable, and as we all know, the
Speaker 2: unpredictable the ones are the ones that you don't know.
Speaker 2: And I also, in retrospect, I don't think he really
Speaker 2: had a lot of self worth. I think he felt
Speaker 2: like he was a fraud because he was always trying
Speaker 2: to prove I found through my own experience. I found
Speaker 2: that when I was like that was because I had
Speaker 2: low self worth, you know, but I was I ran
Speaker 2: on fear, so I always wanted to prove that I
Speaker 2: wasn't scared, you know. Like you know, I was always
Speaker 2: the one who has the least to lose has the
Speaker 2: most power. So if I don't care about me, there's
Speaker 2: nothing you can do to hurt me. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: my old man was, as I say, I've said this before,
Speaker 2: I spent a lot of his in prison, which I'm
Speaker 2: not proud of, and am I ashamed of it. Shame
Speaker 2: is a pretty big word. Do I regret it? Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: of course I regret it. Shame is a word that
Speaker 2: I think is wasted on things you can't change. You
Speaker 2: can't change your past. You can learn from it, and
Speaker 2: you can, hopefully, for me, teach others from your mistakes,
Speaker 2: and hopefully they can have enough humility to grab hold
Speaker 2: of that lesson. But from my experience, a lot of
Speaker 2: young fellows can't learn by other mistakes. You know. We
Speaker 2: have to be able, we have to be a fool
Speaker 2: to become teachable, you know. And I believe my dad
Speaker 2: was maybe dropped on his head when he was a kid.
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know he was kicked in there
Speaker 2: by a horse because he was a buck jump rider
Speaker 2: and he was violently injured head injury. But his mum
Speaker 2: was even violent. My father's mother was violent. She just
Speaker 2: toold half a house and her handbag and go down
Speaker 2: the pub, you know. And on I sat there on
Speaker 2: the broads, she started hitting people with her hand but
Speaker 2: half her house bricking it. Yeah. Yeah, Like it was
Speaker 2: like we moved out of a country town because my
Speaker 2: old man and his mum that would punched up all
Speaker 2: the cops like that was normal coppers. From the time
Speaker 2: I can remember the coppers with the enemy. You drive past,
Speaker 2: you go look at them eff and dogs, you know,
Speaker 2: spit out the window. And from the time I can remember,
Speaker 2: from the time, what area did you grow up in?
Speaker 2: I grew up in a place called Fitzroy in Melbourn,
Speaker 2: which was slums when I was there, it was complete slums.
Speaker 2: At four years of age, my first memory is the
Speaker 2: copper is kicking bag in the front door in I
Speaker 2: mean it's handcuff, blood over and they beat the shit
Speaker 2: out of him and they searched the house, ripped the
Speaker 2: house to pieces. And I was four years of age.
Speaker 2: I was in bed with my mum, and when they
Speaker 2: came in the bedroom, I sat up and I went
Speaker 2: bang bang as a four year old kid. So that
Speaker 2: was how entrenched the hatred was. And I had two
Speaker 2: sisters at that time, older sisters. One was a half sister,
Speaker 2: one was a full sister. Everybody was terrified. Everybody in
Speaker 2: the whole house lived in fear. And I didn't even
Speaker 2: really understand why. I didn't really understand you as a
Speaker 2: small child, you don't understand why, I said, my father
Speaker 2: beating up his brothers. Like my dad didn't drink alcohol either,
Speaker 2: so there was no excuse that he was a drunk.
Speaker 2: And he beat people up, mumy and just beat people up.
Speaker 2: And when he beat them up, he wouldn't just knock
Speaker 2: them out. He'd break their ribs. He'd slowly break them down,
Speaker 2: you know, he punished them. He'd like to hurt you.
Speaker 2: He didn't want to I just want to beat you up.
Speaker 2: He just wanted to punish you and make an example
Speaker 2: of your And by the time I was eleven, my
Speaker 2: oldest sister had a child who she was at the time,
Speaker 2: she was seventeen, and she'd had this child out of nowhere,
Speaker 2: and I didn't quite understand it. But not long after that,
Speaker 2: I started getting into a real lot of trouble, a
Speaker 2: real a lot of trouble. I'd got arrested by the
Speaker 2: police at twelve years of age for major breaking and
Speaker 2: you know, kids broke into a car, I didn't. I
Speaker 2: broke into a major shopping center those days, was Coal's. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and we had a crew. I always had a crew
Speaker 2: of kids, and we all broken and we style closed.
Speaker 2: This first time we had new clothes. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 2: we ate all the food and all that. But what
Speaker 2: the deal was with my family was if I broke
Speaker 2: into a factory and it had a safe or a vault,
Speaker 2: I come home and tell my dad him and his
Speaker 2: mates had go and cut the vault of the safe,
Speaker 2: and they'd reward me pats on the back ten shillings,
Speaker 2: you know, which was a potent shilling note those days.
Speaker 2: You know, you'll give me a quid, you know, good kid,
Speaker 2: you know, And you go down the waterside workers paintings
Speaker 2: and doctors where he was, to the union rooms and
Speaker 2: all the kids, all the guys to be pat me
Speaker 2: on the back. Eyes Ronnie's kiddy. He set up that
Speaker 2: McDonald's joint for us. We don't want McDonald's was met
Speaker 2: Robertson's chocolate chocolate factory or Calvin's chips because we were
Speaker 2: up with slums, so it was all factories. So what
Speaker 2: I'd do, I'd started off breaking into the factories. They're
Speaker 2: stealing the lead off the roofs. We're going sell the
Speaker 2: left of scrap. This is a eight nineteen years age.
Speaker 2: Then I realized there was more money watching the demolishers
Speaker 2: pulled the scrap off and put in the back of
Speaker 2: their truck. Then they'd go to the path and they
Speaker 2: would go pinch it off the back of the truck.
Speaker 2: That way, we didn't have to do the hard work.
Speaker 2: Now we just pinched off the truck. We'd put down
Speaker 2: a billy cart and we'd rolled home. Then Miami has
Speaker 2: made it take me down the scrap metal joint. We
Speaker 2: get paid on the SAT Day. They pay the guys
Speaker 2: their money. So it was always a little bit of
Speaker 2: an entrepreneur when it came to that stuff. My father
Speaker 2: didn't believe in education, which is really sad. Now I
Speaker 2: love education. I love learning. I think the greatest gift
Speaker 2: we have is human being, is to learn. You know,
Speaker 2: that's why we misspased to be the superior animal, because
Speaker 2: we have the intelligence to learn. And he didn't believe
Speaker 2: in education.
Speaker 1: He never went to school.
Speaker 2: No, no, not really, not really. I said to my
Speaker 2: dad when I was about twelve, and probably got the
Speaker 2: rest of the first time. One of his mate said,
Speaker 2: what do you want to do and you grow up?
Speaker 2: And I said, I want to be a lawyer. And
Speaker 2: he started laughing. He said, if you want to fight
Speaker 2: the coppers, buy a gun the fucking lawyer. You know
Speaker 2: how much money I give them, can't you know? And
Speaker 2: I said, that's why I want to be a lawyer.
Speaker 2: I say, how much money you just give them? All
Speaker 2: wore the hats and the suits, and the tailor made clothes,
Speaker 2: handmade I teen shoes. Even me as a kid at twelve, fourteen,
Speaker 2: fifteen years of age, wore tailor made suits, handmade shoes.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, full full. I'd go to the
Speaker 2: races with him. He was a gambler, that was his addiction.
Speaker 2: And if he was winning by about the third or
Speaker 2: fourth phrase, he filled my pockets up with money and
Speaker 2: he put me a taxi and semiam so he couldn't
Speaker 2: punt the money any more. Money you know, because once
Speaker 2: I got out of there, once I got the cabbage,
Speaker 2: sent me home that game, and I'd give me a
Speaker 2: mom of the money. She'd put the money away. And
Speaker 2: the old man can only apart when he had left
Speaker 2: on him. But one week we'd be eaten, you know,
Speaker 2: good food. The next week we've eaten bread and ripping,
Speaker 2: which is the fat that the lard off off the meat.
Speaker 2: Because he was a putter. And then by the time
Speaker 2: I got to about fourteen and fifteen, I was very
Speaker 2: obsessed with rifles guns, and i'd become adopted by send
Speaker 2: me adopted by a guy who owned a gun shop
Speaker 2: called Melbourne Firearms. His name was George Joseph and later
Speaker 2: on in life he would get arrested for the Donald McKay,
Speaker 2: the politician was a politician who got killed and disappeared
Speaker 2: over the marijuana growing down at Griffith. And it goes
Speaker 2: right back to this whole mafia of Australia. And George
Speaker 2: was like he took me on like a steps done
Speaker 2: and taught me how to shoot, taught me how to
Speaker 2: pull weapons down and all that stuff. So I became
Speaker 2: a little bit of an asset in my father's friends
Speaker 2: because I could change barrels, I could change firing pins,
Speaker 2: and I could make what was that rifle into a
Speaker 2: different rifle, and I could load bullets, and I could
Speaker 2: do all that sort of stuff. And this is at
Speaker 2: fourteen years of age. I could do that. And by
Speaker 2: the time I was sixteen, I was arrested with having
Speaker 2: a shoot over the police. To shoot over the coppers.
Speaker 2: So myself and three other guys we've done a break
Speaker 2: and enter. We used to do break and edit into
Speaker 2: what you'd call like a Harvey Norman store today, but
Speaker 2: it was a different store those days. We broke into
Speaker 2: the warehouse next door, cut a hole in the roof,
Speaker 2: in the wall. You know, the hard work. People think
Speaker 2: it's being a thief so easy at not it's hard work.
Speaker 2: You know the other days when you did break it
Speaker 2: down to you you got in, you had a port
Speaker 2: of power, you jack the bricks over, you know, you
Speaker 2: cut the bricks out and you've got so many bricks out.
Speaker 2: Then you jack the bricks out to you got a
Speaker 2: whole big enough so you could fit the TV. So
Speaker 2: and you've got to remember the TV from jo Normous
Speaker 2: TV's and rental players weren't like they are today. So anyway,
Speaker 2: the cops came and we end up having someone had
Speaker 2: a gun started to shooting the cops. Cop was shot
Speaker 2: at us two of my motes. One got shot in
Speaker 2: the mouth, one got shot with a shotgun, and I
Speaker 2: got all the oversprave of the shot on my back.
Speaker 2: So I was seventeen years of age sitting Pendridge as
Speaker 2: a seven year old kid, horrified, even though you don't
Speaker 2: show that, but you're horrified, you know. And I thought
Speaker 2: my mate was dead. The one that got shot in
Speaker 2: the mouth, I thought was dead. The other guy that
Speaker 2: got shot with the shotgun, he was okay. And there
Speaker 2: was another guy that was with us. He decided that
Speaker 2: he'd tell the police about two other guys that I shot.
Speaker 2: Six months before, we'd had an altercation at my father's
Speaker 2: gambling casino and he had a game of It was
Speaker 2: going to sound horrible to listeners, it was true. He
Speaker 2: had a game of pool for a dollar. The guy
Speaker 2: said double nothing. He won. The guy said double on nothing,
Speaker 2: he won, and the guy said, piss off, idiot. And
Speaker 2: he came back to the mental said did you go
Speaker 2: see I won three games? But he should where's the money?
Speaker 2: We're going to put on the pennies on the type
Speaker 2: game you see time in a piss off. I said, no, no,
Speaker 2: piss off and get the f and money. Long story short,
Speaker 2: they got downstairs, they have a fight and the guy
Speaker 2: and I hit the guy in the gun and said
Speaker 2: you don't get away, and he said, I know you're
Speaker 2: never going to come out and kill you and your family.
Speaker 2: That guy and his mate got shot that night walking
Speaker 2: down the street. So I got arrested for that too.
Speaker 2: So I'm sitting at Pendridge at seventeen years and three months.
Speaker 2: I'll charged with five attempted murders, use a fire for
Speaker 2: prevent love mansion, the break enders, and steel as a
Speaker 2: seventeen year old kid. And I'm sitting in jail thinking, wow,
Speaker 2: this is this is it. I'm never going to get
Speaker 2: out of jail home. I will never ever get out
Speaker 2: of jail. And I was a pretty little boy, blonde hair,
Speaker 2: blue eyes.
Speaker 1: You know, st thinking what what did dad say when
Speaker 1: you found out this?
Speaker 2: Oh he was wrapped, because I'm going to say wrapped,
Speaker 2: I'm his son. He's proud have a shoots the shooting
Speaker 2: of the coppers, good on you sort of type of thing.
Speaker 2: And and plus the word went into the prison. It's
Speaker 2: his he sh woulds kid you look after him? And
Speaker 2: you know, and old guy I sent a message and
Speaker 2: sent a chocolate him, which was unheard of those days,
Speaker 2: and sending me a stand which across from the kitchen,
Speaker 2: which is unheard of. You know, all the all the
Speaker 2: boards as in the boards going like who's this guy?
Speaker 2: He's getting all these messages and food and everything sent
Speaker 2: and the prison officers are coming across in here and
Speaker 2: you're a stand which you know, like that's from Charlie
Speaker 2: at C Division. I thank you, you know. So to me,
Speaker 2: jar wasn't scary, Yeah, wouldn't it be? It was you
Speaker 2: know people think Charles full of tigers and lions. It's not.
Speaker 2: It's not. It's not for a lot of today it's
Speaker 2: a lot worse because the drugs destroyed it. But and
Speaker 2: so what happened for me, Neil was while I was
Speaker 2: in jail, the government in there. You remember I'm seven
Speaker 2: stone seven. I was a boxer. I was seven stone seven,
Speaker 2: so that's not very big. I don't know that is
Speaker 2: in kilos. It was tiny. And they put me on
Speaker 2: a drug called li like actual, which is a psych
Speaker 2: drug to control me that was the beginning of my addiction. Wow,
Speaker 2: So I'd never never take took a drug of my loss.
Speaker 2: The reason for that because they said I was violent.
Speaker 2: And you know, don't get me wrong, if there's some
Speaker 2: sort of pedophile in there was going to come and say, hey, son,
Speaker 2: came Iria. You know, I'd probably hurt them. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: and I think anyone in their right mind would hurt them.
Speaker 2: And so they put me on like actual to control
Speaker 2: me and to stop me from being a menace. So
Speaker 2: I was pested. I was a Pesti'm seventy year old kid.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to show the world that I'm a tough guy.
Speaker 2: My father. How long?
Speaker 1: How long into your in society did they do that
Speaker 1: to you? So how long?
Speaker 2: Within six months they had me on like actual. Within
Speaker 2: six months they put me on lig actual and I
Speaker 2: went through the system. I wasn't in there for I
Speaker 2: got found not guilty. The attempt to murder the waterside workers,
Speaker 2: painters and doctors had it was very similar to the
Speaker 2: days of Sydney when there were certain people in the
Speaker 2: Sydney that were highly connected that had magistrates under their wing.
Speaker 2: So by the time I went to court, I got
Speaker 2: found not guilty of this. They lost the evidence to
Speaker 2: that the gods that pointed me out the line out
Speaker 2: said no, that's not the guy, they said, And then
Speaker 2: the prosecution is, why did you say that was the guy?
Speaker 2: Because the policeman told he said it was that guy,
Speaker 2: and the magistrate's look going to cross and go like
Speaker 2: this is this is just a joke. And I just
Speaker 2: missed the charges. But I still got thirty six months
Speaker 2: to serve as a juvenile. But I got out of jail,
Speaker 2: and what happened was I'd become a drug addict. I
Speaker 2: didn't know that there's no as information about drug addiction.
Speaker 2: So nineteen seventy four I started injecting heroin and the
Speaker 2: whole world changed. The gangsters didn't want to know about
Speaker 2: me because you're a junkie, your liability. We'd moved to Sydney.
Speaker 2: Did you hide it first or did you not know
Speaker 2: I hit it at first? It's quite sad in retrospect,
Speaker 2: I got because you lose so much weight on heroin,
Speaker 2: you know, and all of a sudden, you know, I
Speaker 2: was just super fick because I was always super fit guy,
Speaker 2: you know, and I love fighting. I like fighting. I
Speaker 2: actually like boxing, I really enjoyed. To me, it's a sport,
Speaker 2: it's a it's an art. And and I like getting
Speaker 2: if you if you enjoy this because you're good at it.
Speaker 2: Now it's a ship golf and loves playing golf, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. So I really enjoyed boxing, and
Speaker 2: I enjoyed fighting, and I got really skinny. And I
Speaker 2: remember the guys up here a bell Maine at the
Speaker 2: water side, they put on a turn theysed to call
Speaker 2: it a barrel where they put on a party and
Speaker 2: they'd all donate money because I thought I had stomach
Speaker 2: cancer because I lost so much weight, and they said,
Speaker 2: what's wrong with Then I said, I've got stomach cancer.
Speaker 2: So these guys went and put on this this doing
Speaker 2: you know, got you know, maybe fifteen our of bucks.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of money in the early seventies, and
Speaker 2: give it to me to donate to me to help
Speaker 2: me get me through and bat some more smack, you know.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's quite sad. And then when they
Speaker 2: found out I was just like basically I was banned
Speaker 2: from the underworld, from the from the gangster side of
Speaker 2: the underworld. But as we know, in the seventies, especially
Speaker 2: in the late seventies, the drug the drug world had
Speaker 2: taken over the underworld. And the guys that kicked me
Speaker 2: out of the drug out of the underworld seen me
Speaker 2: driving a new Dudet Felcon. You know, the good looking
Speaker 2: girl the apartment in town. It's like, what's going on
Speaker 2: with him? And it's like, I'm selling heroin. I was
Speaker 2: a heroin addicts'. Of course what you do is you
Speaker 2: you buy heroines, so you know, and in the seventies
Speaker 2: you bought heroin for five hundred dollars a half an ounce,
Speaker 2: and that's on that's in Australia. Overseas. I paid thripns
Speaker 2: for it, you know, you paid pennies for it over there.
Speaker 2: And it all came all all the heroines came out
Speaker 2: of Asia. It didn't come out of anywhere else. Those
Speaker 2: days came out of Malaysia. And you come out of
Speaker 2: plays that you know, it was the only brown rocket
Speaker 2: wasn't white, and it was just a different world. But
Speaker 2: you'd come to someone's house and there'd be some brown
Speaker 2: rocks sitting there, and there'd be some white powder sitting there. There,
Speaker 2: some hatshit on the table. No one was robbing each other,
Speaker 2: and it was a different you know, you turn up,
Speaker 2: you put some hass on the table and some Buddhist
Speaker 2: nicks and you make a few joints. You'd listen to
Speaker 2: a bit of music and it was quite a The
Speaker 2: rolling stage was singing about brown sugar, Area Clapton singing
Speaker 2: about cocaine. You know, everyone's blue reads, singing about heroin.
Speaker 2: You're put spiking to my vein. Things aren't quite the
Speaker 2: same it was. It was normal, was trendy. There's no
Speaker 2: more drugs squad. There's noses and drugs buy those days,
Speaker 2: that's were called customers agents. They hear from Pimont. They'd
Speaker 2: come and raid your house and half the time they
Speaker 2: wouldn't even pincher. They throw the dope down the toilet
Speaker 2: and to piss off, you know, because it wasn't nasty.
Speaker 2: It wasn't It wasn't the way it became, you know.
Speaker 2: But I went in and out of prison all just
Speaker 2: I was never pinched for dope. They loaded me up once.
Speaker 2: The cops loaded me up in the seventies and this
Speaker 2: is where I found out Melbourne was different from Sydney.
Speaker 2: All the coppers up here are on the take, in Melbourne.
Speaker 2: They weren't like that. The copp has just got your
Speaker 2: in Bassa. They'd have to bash you in your confession.
Speaker 2: If you didn't confess, your record of interview wasn't allowed
Speaker 2: in court. So there's no such thing as verbal So
Speaker 2: if you just stack staunch half the time, you'd never
Speaker 2: get found guilty down there because there was no verbal
Speaker 2: And so I got arrested up here and the cops
Speaker 2: verbaled me, and then the lawyers came to me and said, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, just plead guilty and we'll get you a fine.
Speaker 2: You know, it wasn't the only drugonvictionion I ever had.
Speaker 2: And then they said you got to give the coppers
Speaker 2: five hundred and I was like, oh, you know, so
Speaker 2: I gave them five hundred. Well, the next week the
Speaker 2: copers were back on the door in a different squad.
Speaker 2: We want money. And that's when I realized that you
Speaker 2: can't pay them. You can't pay them because once you
Speaker 2: pay them, they own you. And I just really lost
Speaker 2: myself in drug addiction, into the drug world, into King's
Speaker 2: Cross because they ended up up the Cross and did
Speaker 2: you sell it?
Speaker 1: Were you selling more or were you taking more?
Speaker 2: I was taking more. I was always my own best customer. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was always my own best customer.
Speaker 1: Like how much were we talking here? How much of
Speaker 1: an addiction was?
Speaker 2: Well, you're talking about pure her and now not street.
Speaker 2: I'd opened a ten grand bag, the stuff that we'd
Speaker 2: get out of Panang becoming ten grand bags they weren't.
Speaker 2: And there's like a big sausage. It's made like a
Speaker 2: big sausage, ten grams. And I'd opened a ten grand
Speaker 2: bag and thirty hours later, so it's one and a
Speaker 2: half days, was gone pure. And I used to think
Speaker 2: the dope's gone off. Something wrong with the dope. And
Speaker 2: the guy got out of jail. He come to visit me,
Speaker 2: and he's dead now, the good guy, and he had
Speaker 2: a mate with him. He said, can you give I
Speaker 2: made a shot? You know, he just got out of
Speaker 2: the nick And you know I'm not I'm not a
Speaker 2: really friendly person. Fuck you know. Anyway, there's a little
Speaker 2: bit of brown staying on the spoon. I squared a
Speaker 2: bit back in there, misseduff for him and he odeed foot.
Speaker 2: It must be a week, you know, it must be
Speaker 2: really weak person can do on that little bit. But
Speaker 2: my times have become so high because I was using
Speaker 2: so much dopa. You know, even though I didn't even
Speaker 2: realize it, I become heroin. You've built a very big
Speaker 2: tolance very quickly. That's why it's such a horrible drug.
Speaker 2: Not as bad as ice, but you know, such a
Speaker 2: horrible drug. Heroin is a physical drug. You know, you
Speaker 2: get stoned, you fall asleep, You set fire to your pillow,
Speaker 2: you set feel like by to your mattress. Where the
Speaker 2: new drugs these days, they set fire to your brain.
Speaker 2: They cooked their brain. Humans. I'm fried. You know you
Speaker 2: never heard that term in the open days. We just
Speaker 2: all fell asleep, just fell asleep, you know we did.
Speaker 2: We just fell asleep, mate, you know, I fell asleep.
Speaker 2: And then in nine eighty one, I was I just
Speaker 2: got out of jail, and I've met a good guy
Speaker 2: in there. His name was Warrelin Frenchy Roger Rogerson killed him. Well,
Speaker 2: French and I mates. We trained together. We trained and
Speaker 2: I was telling French you about drug deal and you
Speaker 2: know how much money because French was you to stick up,
Speaker 2: some stick up, said gone, there's no money's deck up
Speaker 2: and this is where the money is. You know. We
Speaker 2: trained every single day and we're super fit and you know,
Speaker 2: we're mates, and there's the worst part of our drug addiction.
Speaker 2: And I got out of jail a French. You'd been
Speaker 2: out about five months. He started working for Eddie Smith,
Speaker 2: started selling gift for Eddie and so I get the French.
Speaker 2: He hears I'm out. He comes and sees me, mate,
Speaker 2: give you half an hounce and give you a start,
Speaker 2: you know, thanks brother, you know. And he turned up,
Speaker 2: you know, six days later, I'm short. I've used most
Speaker 2: of it. He's like, what happened? I said, mate, it
Speaker 2: just gives another half and I'll get, you know. The
Speaker 2: week later, I'm short. And he said, mate, who the
Speaker 2: fuck are you? Where's my mate? Where's Ronnie? Where's my
Speaker 2: mate from jail? You know, the bloat that was staunch loyal?
Speaker 2: Where's he gone? And he did? He said to me,
Speaker 2: there's a funny joke. We said, joke, but he said,
Speaker 2: we said, but I'm gonna have to put one in
Speaker 2: your leg or something. So I can't just keep letting
Speaker 2: you rob me. He said, everyone's going to rob me.
Speaker 2: But that's what a dish had done to me. I
Speaker 2: could no longer be reliable, consistent, you know. I couldn't
Speaker 2: do anything. Man, if it come time to get a
Speaker 2: shot or save your life, you were dead because the
Speaker 2: drugs just took everything. That's why I hated them so much.
Speaker 2: That's why I hate them today. I hate what drugs
Speaker 2: can do to good people. What it does to a
Speaker 2: scumbag is terrible, because scum bag just goes to another level.
Speaker 2: But even people with good morals and good luck, you know,
Speaker 2: good principles, once they get on the gear, we lose
Speaker 2: that stuff, you know. You know. I didn't tell on people,
Speaker 2: and I didn't rob me family, but I robbed everybody else,
Speaker 2: you know, and I robbed everybody. I didn't care who
Speaker 2: it was. I didn't care if it was a saffron.
Speaker 2: I didn't care who it was if someone had dope,
Speaker 2: and I didn't care who it belonged to. I robbed
Speaker 2: them because if I was going to be sick, what
Speaker 2: are you going to do? Kill me? If you kill me,
Speaker 2: what are you going to do? Put me out of
Speaker 2: my misery? Because that was my attitude. Sometimes I just
Speaker 2: to wish you would kill me. I escaped from prison
Speaker 2: in seventy seven. I got recaptured the cross. Like I
Speaker 2: was going. I went a long way. How would you
Speaker 2: find an escape? Being a cross like? You know, it's
Speaker 2: true story and I got to escape?
Speaker 1: How did you escape?
Speaker 2: I swam. I was on an island called Mills and
Speaker 2: Island's on the hawks For river. But I wasn't real
Speaker 2: bright because I didn't realize. I didn't think it's a
Speaker 2: tidal river, right, it's a title, so it's only a
Speaker 2: sixth kse swim. The tide was coming in, so it
Speaker 2: took me six hours to get to the ridge because
Speaker 2: I swam from from the island to Brooklyn Ridge took
Speaker 2: me six hours. I left eleven o'clock at night and
Speaker 2: I hit Brooklyn Road at five am in the morning. Bloody,
Speaker 2: I was fucked. You can imagine, you know, you're swimming
Speaker 2: against the tide. I'm doing back straight side striking, and
Speaker 2: I'm going back the other way, back towards the island. Nothing.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I had a bag full of clothes. In
Speaker 2: those days, I stroked segrest so I had a glad
Speaker 2: garbage bag type. You saw me wait for the bell
Speaker 2: rounding way so I could swim and turned. So the
Speaker 2: bag has spinry and I had a few joints before
Speaker 2: I went. So every now and again in the bag
Speaker 2: and hit me on the leg and that's that. Joints
Speaker 2: pretty renowned for sharks try to ship me. You know,
Speaker 2: it's quite comic when you think about how insane I
Speaker 2: was to think that I could swim up. So I
Speaker 2: actually thought I was gonna be able to swim off
Speaker 2: the island going the cross rob some dealers come back,
Speaker 2: swim back to the island, and the screws wouldn't know
Speaker 2: I was gone.
Speaker 1: That's all you were going to do.
Speaker 2: That's what I was going to do, because on the
Speaker 2: on the island at eight o'clock at night, the screws
Speaker 2: would lock themselves in a room. There's only two screws on.
Speaker 1: The We're getting out just to fucking get out.
Speaker 2: You're getting out to just get I was going to
Speaker 2: get out to get on, not going around to the
Speaker 2: few of the boarders said he's got any cash, give
Speaker 2: me some car, fuck and we'll get on. Tom.
Speaker 1: I'm getting out of jail to fucking get out of there.
Speaker 1: You were going to get a fixed.
Speaker 2: I was going to need a fix. I was going
Speaker 2: to score ship and I fucked it up in my
Speaker 2: firing was a little bit off. And yeah, so the
Speaker 2: truth of the matter was by the tom I even
Speaker 2: got to the cross. I was I was an escape
Speaker 2: bee because I'd done the first six clock head check
Speaker 2: and I wasn't there. I didn't get to the cross
Speaker 2: of six am with.
Speaker 1: They nub where they nab you and the cross you know,
Speaker 1: one of the right.
Speaker 2: Across the way from the Cluechy Bar.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, well I was.
Speaker 2: Actually I jumped through the window of the Cluechy Bar
Speaker 2: at the top. There was a house up the top
Speaker 2: of the clutchi bar. I'd climb, I'd run along the roofs.
Speaker 2: What happened was I'd broke. I'd broken into a chemist
Speaker 2: a few days before. You know, I'd only been at
Speaker 2: jar twenty one day's night. I went into the jar
Speaker 2: because a chemist got me pitched from doing a bodgy script.
Speaker 2: So I went back and robbed the chemist, who's a
Speaker 2: square up. I thought, yeah, okay, I'll get square up.
Speaker 2: So I went back and I stole the safe and
Speaker 2: I've got the or the gear.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: I got on a drug called rittlin. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you know what it is. This they give it
Speaker 2: to adh t ad h kids. What it is. It's
Speaker 2: a smooth similar drug between spood and coke, and you're
Speaker 2: going to psychosis with it really quickly. And I'm a
Speaker 2: heroin atic, so here I am heroinautic using an upper
Speaker 2: so I was saving visual psychosis. And I'm standing on.
Speaker 2: I'm a skate peach, so of course I'm paranoid. Now
Speaker 2: this makes you ten times on paranoid. And I'm at
Speaker 2: the top of this empty house. You know, I know
Speaker 2: you're out there, you fucking guns come and get me.
Speaker 2: You know, there's no one out there, and it's completely insane.
Speaker 2: And I jumped your taxi's poor taxi driver. I'd got
Speaker 2: to glebe. I jumped in the taxi, I go, takes
Speaker 2: me to King's Cross and as we're coming out Williams Street,
Speaker 2: my brain said he's a copper. It's going to cover
Speaker 2: cop of the taxi driver. And I had a knife
Speaker 2: for me bag and I grabbed the cop I grabbed
Speaker 2: the texture and I said, pull over you. I know
Speaker 2: you're a copper. Your ass wipe, you know, And I
Speaker 2: jumped out of the cabin. I start running up Wair Street,
Speaker 2: up the back where the train is used to the lane.
Speaker 2: Yet yeah, so I start running up that lane because
Speaker 2: I knew the closes your bar. Then they used to
Speaker 2: have a doorway there before they were the gate there
Speaker 2: went up on the roof. Don't know why. By this
Speaker 2: time I've lost the shoe. I jumped the fence of
Speaker 2: the church, put us tomatoes break through, steak through my
Speaker 2: leg so I got my legs split open. I got
Speaker 2: my shoe. I'm running and I jumped through the back door.
Speaker 2: You know the back door, Well that used to be
Speaker 2: call the black Cat. It was a gay bar. I
Speaker 2: ran straight through the glass window. Glass went everywhere, and
Speaker 2: I ran from they were sitting, They're like ah, And
Speaker 2: I ran to the front and before they had the
Speaker 2: back engine where the low tell is. I climbed up
Speaker 2: the pole and I climbed into the roof, and I
Speaker 2: thought I was going to get away, but you know,
Speaker 2: there's been this destruction the whole way. But the coppers
Speaker 2: weren't even chasing me. The copper started to chasing me
Speaker 2: when the guy across the road from the Cloisi bar
Speaker 2: rang the pleasure, said some manic. It just climbed through
Speaker 2: his window with one shoe on, bleeding and ran across
Speaker 2: and joyed through the front of the back door. So
Speaker 2: it was all. It was all in hallucination. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: was in psychosis. I was completely man. Anyway, the coppers
Speaker 2: got on the roof. I heard it on say, Sae,
Speaker 2: sare the blood everywhere here? Because I climbed under the
Speaker 2: awning and all the blood was just running down the
Speaker 2: corrugated iron. And they just lifted up and pulled me out.
Speaker 2: And the copper's name is Grace, Detective Grace. I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: I had known it for years. And he pulled me
Speaker 2: out and they put me downstairs, and they had me
Speaker 2: on the ground out in front of the hotel, and
Speaker 2: he said to me, what are we going to do
Speaker 2: with you? And I swell my mother. I said, put
Speaker 2: a gun on me, had and blow my fucking head off.
Speaker 2: That's what I wanted, That's what I said it. And
Speaker 2: I said, so put a gun in my head and
Speaker 2: blow my fucking head off. Put me out of my misery.
Speaker 2: And they took me straight at the Saint Vincent's Hospital
Speaker 2: and stitched up on my leg and took me back in,
Speaker 2: charged with escape and all that stuff. But I honestly,
Speaker 2: and the next morning the front page of the Telegraph
Speaker 2: was rogue animal recaptured and I sort of took that
Speaker 2: personal for years, I thought, but then I look back. No, right,
Speaker 2: that's pretty right, because you know that's what I'd gone to.
Speaker 2: I'd gone to that level of being a rogue animal.
Speaker 2: I had no respect for human life. I had no
Speaker 2: respect for my own life, no consideration for my family,
Speaker 2: and you know mom My mom was a piece of
Speaker 2: I didn't care about any But you know, I had
Speaker 2: a little sister and by that's why I had a
Speaker 2: son who I had deserted, and all that stuff that's
Speaker 2: really important to me today had gone away, and I
Speaker 2: was in As I said in nineteen eighty one, when
Speaker 2: French I'd go to jail and French he said to me,
Speaker 2: I'm going to shoot you. And I was laughing. He
Speaker 2: was laughing about it, and he said to me, he's
Speaker 2: a true story. And I've said this before, and he said,
Speaker 2: I'm going to knock Neddie. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: ever met Neddie. I don't like Neddie. I've I never
Speaker 2: liked him. That's just me personally. We never liked each other.
Speaker 2: We walked past each other for a hundred years and
Speaker 2: went ned ron nod of the head. That's all there was. Wow,
Speaker 2: that was the conversation because there was a guy called
Speaker 2: Bobby Chapman. He probably wasn't around when you were around here.
Speaker 2: He was a bad, bad guy. Him and Neddie got
Speaker 2: pinched together a hundred years ago on a rape charge.
Speaker 2: And I don't like rapists anyway, so you know, it
Speaker 2: was a conflict of my belief system, and so I
Speaker 2: always knew that ned was no good. And then French
Speaker 2: he said to me this particular morning, he said, I'm
Speaker 2: going to knock Neddie and I said, stop it. Don't
Speaker 2: tell me. I don't want to hear about it. I said,
Speaker 2: if you're going to do it, don't tell anybody. That's
Speaker 2: because if he gets wind of it, he'll get your knocked.
Speaker 2: Just don't tell me. You don't tell anybody. If you
Speaker 2: want to do it, just do it. A week and
Speaker 2: a half later, I got pinched. I'm in jail. Frenchhi
Speaker 2: gets knocked, you know, Roger Robson and Neddie got him down.
Speaker 2: Neddie padded him down, said French's unarmed. Those place. The
Speaker 2: French was going to pay me, tell me to argue
Speaker 2: twenty grand and he took twenty round, knocked him and
Speaker 2: took his chain, and he's watching his ring off and
Speaker 2: murdered him. And I don't care what anyone says about that.
Speaker 2: That's the truth, you know, that's the truth that's coming
Speaker 2: from the guy that got knocked. You know, I know
Speaker 2: what was going on. And so I was in jail
Speaker 2: and I shipped myself because another guy came into jail
Speaker 2: and he said, a couple of days after you got pinched,
Speaker 2: he said, I got grabbed by Roger, and he's looking
Speaker 2: for you. I said, what he's looking for you? He
Speaker 2: wants he wants you. And when Roger's looking for you
Speaker 2: those days, he didn't show off somewhere you went missing.
Speaker 2: You didn't know either way you went missing, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, he's just like a path. And the Maid
Speaker 2: of mind said to me, said, go to rehab because
Speaker 2: I can't. I can't get out of jail, I can't escape.
Speaker 2: I'm miss I'm escaped, but they're not going to let
Speaker 2: me into any way escape. And I went to my
Speaker 2: first rehab in nineteen eighty one, and that's where my
Speaker 2: recovery began. I didn't get clean fand then I stayed
Speaker 2: clean for a year, and then I mucked around and
Speaker 2: I stayed clean for ten months a year, and then
Speaker 2: thirty months and then I haven't had a drink since
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty two. Last time I had a drink was
Speaker 2: in I've got it out of the rehab for one
Speaker 2: day and a bloke said to me. I asked, you
Speaker 2: know you got to have on problem. I haven't got
Speaker 2: an helphol problem. So I had a couple of beers
Speaker 2: with him, and then I took a couple of pills
Speaker 2: and I need some money, so I went to do
Speaker 2: an armed robbery in Canberra. It was and I fucking
Speaker 2: stole a car, crashed the car because I'm drinking. I'm
Speaker 2: on the pills and on the drink. The police car
Speaker 2: came in accident quad casts, a big orange transit van.
Speaker 2: I stole that. I've made out like I mean, mates
Speaker 2: in the car. He's stuck in the bush. Know where
Speaker 2: I've crashed. The car never left the motor running because
Speaker 2: its not a police cars and I fucking just jumped
Speaker 2: to the seat and I stole that, you know. So
Speaker 2: that was the last tiay I to drink nine eighty two.
Speaker 2: And the last time I took a drug was a
Speaker 2: third of March nineteen eighty six. So I stopped using
Speaker 2: all drugs. But I never got out of the criminal world.
Speaker 2: That was the hardest thing to get out of because
Speaker 2: that's what I'd burned my whole life. I didn't I'd
Speaker 2: never been anything else. I didn't know anything else. Now,
Speaker 2: most people that get off drugs will get off whatever
Speaker 2: their additions are, go back to what they used to
Speaker 2: do before they become a drug addict. See, most people
Speaker 2: become drug addicts because you know, if something you know,
Speaker 2: they become criminals because they're drug addicts. I wasn't like
Speaker 2: that for me. I was a criminal. Then I became
Speaker 2: a drug addict, so I had nothing to go back to.
Speaker 2: I didn't really have a trade. My trade was crime,
Speaker 2: you know, And I went back into the world and
Speaker 2: try to be mister normal. It's really hard to be
Speaker 2: normals if you talk.
Speaker 1: But you think being what were you're saying you went
Speaker 1: back to the criminal Is it the fact that the
Speaker 1: people you're associaate with we're using you to be back
Speaker 1: in that criminal world, or is it yourself?
Speaker 2: But there are the any people I knew now I
Speaker 2: didn't know anybody else.
Speaker 1: But it's like it's like when you know, I got
Speaker 1: out of it myself, I made myself go away from
Speaker 1: everybody so I wouldn't be entasted back in.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. Well I didn't do that at first. Plus,
Speaker 2: to be honest, I like being the man. I liked
Speaker 2: being the man, you know, I liked. I liked. You know,
Speaker 2: we have a friend. He'd ring me up and he said,
Speaker 2: we've got the Penhouse pet party on the club and
Speaker 2: that's any way you can get me because I don't drink,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean so my other addiction was pretty girls.
Speaker 2: You so, yeah, we've got the Penno. Those days, I
Speaker 2: was driving a white trans am and Chevy Kamara convertible
Speaker 2: like any one in Australia, Like we're next on the
Speaker 2: number plates and Johnny just say, mate, you know, put
Speaker 2: your Everyone have to move their carry out so I
Speaker 2: can come and park in the lane right at the tunnel.
Speaker 2: You know, I just park there. You and of course
Speaker 2: I gave it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like saying that there's all these girls going to
Speaker 2: be there. You want to come to the club. Yes,
Speaker 2: we've got a fundraiser on for a child before Leeds
Speaker 2: want to come?
Speaker 1: No you know.
Speaker 2: The girls, yes, oh come to the front raise, you know,
Speaker 2: like the Penouse pep party would always get me to
Speaker 2: the club.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: That was sort of like it was Johnny's way of saying, like,
Speaker 2: I got you again yours, you know. But look, there's
Speaker 2: some really good memories. And the funny part is, I'm
Speaker 2: going to say this really quick because I think it's
Speaker 2: really important. I was involved in drug crime. Sjohn was
Speaker 2: never involved in drug crime with me ever. And I
Speaker 2: can say the hand on heart and everyone goes, I say,
Speaker 2: fucking no, it wasn't. No, it wasn't. It was not.
Speaker 2: Don't even go there because I won't accept that. Couldn't
Speaker 2: I know, because I know because I know what was
Speaker 2: going on up there. I was part of it. I
Speaker 2: was after hearing in that in that world, and he
Speaker 2: wasn't he was, you know, he was a really loyal,
Speaker 2: trusted human being that whatever he did, he did and
Speaker 2: that was his business. But he didn't do my business.
Speaker 2: He didn't, Mate, he really didn't, you know. And I
Speaker 2: say that a lot of people, and people try to say,
Speaker 2: you know, you're involved with John to say, mate, it
Speaker 2: wasn't that. Don't go near there. Don't even fucking insinuate that.
Speaker 2: Anybody else you can talk about, but don't go down
Speaker 2: that road with that one. Because our relationship was based
Speaker 2: on a mutual respect for each other. He would have
Speaker 2: known what I did because of associates. He never ever
Speaker 2: spoke about it to me, and I never spoke about
Speaker 2: it to him. You know. It was something that was like,
Speaker 2: had nothing to do with it, you know, and I do.
Speaker 2: I have had this conversation for many years with people
Speaker 2: to try to say, mate, what's your mouth? What's your mouth?
Speaker 2: Unless you've got something to put in front of me,
Speaker 2: wa'sch your mouth? Don't say that unless you can put
Speaker 2: it down and say I was there. Don't say that
Speaker 2: because it's not fucking true. You can talk about any
Speaker 2: of the other the brother you can talk about anything else,
Speaker 2: but that young fellow. No, don't bring that up with me,
Speaker 2: you know, because I actually knew George, and you know,
Speaker 2: I go back a long way because I'm an old bastard.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the most of the most of you your
Speaker 1: like your drug runs were based in the Cross or
Speaker 1: around Sydney itself, Cross Cross.
Speaker 2: Truss Cross and Inner West because back in the day,
Speaker 2: the Cross was it. That was it. After the Cross died,
Speaker 2: they went to camera, but by that time I'd already
Speaker 2: gotten clean, and I was ignorant to the fact that
Speaker 2: cocaine to me wasn't a drug. Cocaines fuckers for these
Speaker 2: lawyers and countings and stock exchange, fuck them, the rich people.
Speaker 2: I did like them. I'm a street kid. Soone was like,
Speaker 2: you get it, India, get it. You can get a
Speaker 2: nose full and got your fucking stepped and fucking fixed up.
Speaker 2: Like it didn't care. You know, I really can't care. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because to me, it was like I'm not involved in
Speaker 2: that world anymore, under the heroin world, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: But I still knew most of the guys that were
Speaker 2: running the coke in the country. You know, most of
Speaker 2: the guys I knew were still bringing the coke in,
Speaker 2: you know, because a lot of people thought coke as
Speaker 2: a party drug. And I laughed when when will sail
Speaker 2: I got arrested with it, he got a rest with
Speaker 2: a party drug. When I got arrested with it, I
Speaker 2: got to rest with the narcotic. So where it transitions
Speaker 2: from a party drug too, depends on your surname, apparently exactly.
Speaker 2: You know. You know, I laughed because I've got eighteen years.
Speaker 2: It's a fucking big sentence for conspiracy for twelve kilos.
Speaker 2: It's a big lag in eighteen years, I've read that
Speaker 2: at the time, it was a massive lagon and there
Speaker 2: was no gear got in the country, no coke got
Speaker 2: in the country. It was conspiracy, so there's no dope
Speaker 2: got in the country. And I lost a lot of money.
Speaker 2: They took all my went through me through the proceeds
Speaker 2: of crimes actor. But there was no process from that crime,
Speaker 2: you know, but it was it was just I'm not
Speaker 2: a victim. I'm not a victim. I'm not poor, ron,
Speaker 2: you know, I got to have a lot of stuff. So,
Speaker 2: you know, I think when you talk on the karma,
Speaker 2: I believe in karma. When I talk in the karma,
Speaker 2: will I'm okay today? I believe I'm waiting front. I
Speaker 2: believe not that I'm going to ever commit another crime,
Speaker 2: because I mean that my whole heart. I mean that
Speaker 2: as much as I say I've never used drugs again,
Speaker 2: you know, I have that much commitment to being a
Speaker 2: straight I like being straight.
Speaker 1: Based on what you've seen and what you've been through
Speaker 1: in the past. You know, the drug trade now compared
Speaker 1: to back when you were doing.
Speaker 2: It, it's disgusting. It's cutthroat. There's no such thing as loyalty. Well,
Speaker 2: the difference when I was in doing it, we all
Speaker 2: knew each other. Like if hash came into the country
Speaker 2: that day, I knew Victor Spings owned it. If pot
Speaker 2: came in, I knew mikel earlier, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: I knew who's it was. If certain drug came into
Speaker 2: the country, we knew who was doing it. These days,
Speaker 2: they've got so many people that are doing it that
Speaker 2: are not really criminals. They've got no how can I
Speaker 2: say they didn't do their apprenticeship, they didn't do their apprenticeship,
Speaker 2: they didn't do the hard yards, and they get all
Speaker 2: this money. Next thing, they're putting hits on each other.
Speaker 2: That was unheard of. That was unheard of. Fucking you
Speaker 2: don't lag your friends, you don't rob your friends, you
Speaker 2: don't route your friend's girlfriends. You know, there was this
Speaker 2: there was a code of ethics that was sort of unbreakable.
Speaker 2: Now that doesn't seem to be any code of ethics.
Speaker 2: You know, And the drugs changed, Don't get me wrong,
Speaker 2: the drugs changed. I'm horror because I still work with
Speaker 2: drug and alcoholic I help people know, I have been
Speaker 2: helping people a long time. Even when I went see
Speaker 2: when I went back into and got arrested in two
Speaker 2: thousand and two, I was still doing other stuff. I've
Speaker 2: run legal businesses for a long time, and I've got
Speaker 2: out of the scene and I came back and I
Speaker 2: shouldn't have. And you know what, maybe that was meant
Speaker 2: to be. Maybe it was maybe it was my calma
Speaker 2: being paid back. Maybe it was just the rocket ship.
Speaker 2: I needed to change my thinking because I always thought
Speaker 2: that it was okay, it was okay, I'm not harming anybody.
Speaker 2: Now it's just a bit of coke. Who cares, you know?
Speaker 2: And that was honestly, that was honestly my attitude.
Speaker 1: I do think the police got window that because it
Speaker 1: says they changed the drug to flowered or something like that.
Speaker 2: Right up on. Yeah, yeah they they we got we
Speaker 2: got shafted somewhere. Yeah, yeah, I don't. This is gonna
Speaker 2: sound terrible. I wouldn't. I never used to work with
Speaker 2: anyone who took drugs. I never sold to anyone who
Speaker 2: took drugs.
Speaker 1: Is that because of what you did to yourself personally?
Speaker 1: You see what you did to yourself?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know to me, it was and I'm
Speaker 2: not justifying to say this if I had been toothpicks
Speaker 2: and make the same profit, or to solve toothpicks, if
Speaker 2: toothpicks were illegal and I can bring them into the
Speaker 2: country and make the same amount of profit what toothpicks in.
Speaker 2: It wasn't the substance that I was bringing in. It
Speaker 2: was the greed. And it was also the fuck you
Speaker 2: because I had a real fuck you attitude towards the system.
Speaker 2: You know, I'd gone to jail as a seven year
Speaker 2: old kid, given drugs and basically traded a drug addict
Speaker 2: and lived in a system that was completely broken that
Speaker 2: the ship people got rewarded like pedophiles, kid touches would
Speaker 2: get into the best jobs, they'd be in, the best
Speaker 2: prisoners and all this stuff. The guys that was out
Speaker 2: there trying to in the early days, man, I was
Speaker 2: trying to eat. I was trying to fucking eat. You know.
Speaker 2: I used to steal food on my way to school
Speaker 2: to eat. Now, well that poor we had to steal.
Speaker 2: My sister is to steal fruit from the old it
Speaker 2: and fruit shops so we had something because we go
Speaker 2: to school with no food. So I started stealing to eat.
Speaker 2: I don't understand when I see rich kids drug dealing,
Speaker 2: I don't understand it. I understand it. But they're doing
Speaker 2: because they want to be the man and all that
Speaker 2: sort of shit. That's what it is. You know. I
Speaker 2: did enjoy it, you know when I got to the
Speaker 2: position where I could park anywhere. My accountant said to
Speaker 2: me one year, many many years ago, parking tickets on
Speaker 2: a tax deduction. But I just used to park on
Speaker 2: footpaths phone to go to that cafe, in that restaurant,
Speaker 2: I just park on the footpath, no respect. Just you know,
Speaker 2: your head so far up your ass that you think
Speaker 2: it is and everywhere you go. You know, you got
Speaker 2: the girls, You've got the you know, and you've also
Speaker 2: got the time to train every day. You eat right,
Speaker 2: you train right, You look right, You're dressed right. You're
Speaker 2: wearing the juror you know it used to be. No.
Speaker 2: I've been in the jury industry for forty years, so
Speaker 2: now I was wearing Roylexes persicurefully before anyone even knew
Speaker 2: what they were, you know. I mean I was always
Speaker 2: for the best jewelry and the nicest clothes, and it
Speaker 2: had that that swagger that we'd call it, you know,
Speaker 2: because I just make my money. Really, I work hard. Man,
Speaker 2: I'm seventy and I still work hard. Now. I have
Speaker 2: three companies. I work my ass off, and all our
Speaker 2: companies are helping people. That's what I'm doing now. My
Speaker 2: My whole thing today, Niel is to give, you know,
Speaker 2: and Russell say, I just make sure I give a
Speaker 2: little more than I take you and we'll touch on Russell.
Speaker 2: Now that's my saying. That's actually my saying. You know
Speaker 2: Russell's Yeah, it was a good thief. You know, he's
Speaker 2: a good thief. He stopped everything. You know, God, he
Speaker 2: wasn't a good stick up, but he was a good thief.
Speaker 2: I've never seen anyone who piss frey stick up he's
Speaker 2: ever done. You know. He's so funny, and you know,
Speaker 2: I miss him. I miss him. Towards the end when
Speaker 2: he was just before he died, I was having.
Speaker 1: I think I reached out to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think just I could see it was coming.
Speaker 2: I coul see it was coming. You know. His penis
Speaker 2: was fu on his world and he's ego and he
Speaker 2: wanted to go and hang out with people that I said, mate, yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll change in his attitude and what do they bring
Speaker 2: to your table?
Speaker 1: And the way he some of the like if we're
Speaker 1: going to touch on it, I can see that on
Speaker 1: his stories. You could see that he was he was
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 2: He was on the gear, you see. He was on
Speaker 2: the gear again. Stone, you're scratching, and I think he was.
Speaker 2: He was poly jugging, getting on the coke, then get
Speaker 2: on the hammer, getting on the cake, get on the hammer,
Speaker 2: you know. And that's really so.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he was trying to tell everyone?
Speaker 1: Is this the way before you as you were an
Speaker 1: addict and you tried to hide a start. Do you
Speaker 1: think he was trying to hide it but also keep
Speaker 1: a clean.
Speaker 2: Oh, he was lying to everybody about his addiction going
Speaker 2: back into using. He was like to everybody. He was.
Speaker 2: He was even like to me. The weekend he died,
Speaker 2: he was supposed to be with me and he brushed me.
Speaker 2: It was the first time he's ever brushed me, first
Speaker 2: time he's ever brushed me. And I was coming down
Speaker 2: to Sydney to go to an inn a convention which
Speaker 2: is a Dragon Elko convention, and he knew I was
Speaker 2: coming down to go to the convention and he rang
Speaker 2: me so oh man, I've got this year, like coming
Speaker 2: up from Melbourne. I I'll catch up with you on
Speaker 2: Friday night at the convention. You're sweet to say somewhere
Speaker 2: else because my brother's day, because usually I just land.
Speaker 2: He didither pick him upt the airport or the coups
Speaker 2: that we left the concierge and let the cuss apartment.
Speaker 2: You know, that was the relationship. I just go there
Speaker 2: and his car was downstairs. I just take his car.
Speaker 2: What do you know that was? You know? But in
Speaker 2: the last three months six months, he started to get
Speaker 2: this really incredible self destructive come back, and you start
Speaker 2: to and he started to talk ship on his note
Speaker 2: and started to talk about jail again. What what do
Speaker 2: you want to talk about jail? Yeah, I'm not proud
Speaker 2: of being in jail. That just meant I was fucking
Speaker 2: wasn't good at what I did. People want to talk
Speaker 2: about how long they didn't jail. When people asked me,
Speaker 2: I go like, I really don't want to remember. I
Speaker 2: don't know. People ask you know, how long are you
Speaker 2: do in jail? And I say, mate, one day was
Speaker 2: too long, one day was too long. I don't think
Speaker 2: what's the best jail you ever been in. I said,
Speaker 2: I've never been a good jail. When that asked me,
Speaker 2: I can always answer the worst jail. What was that
Speaker 2: up here? That's the worst jail. When you think I
Speaker 2: can't stop using drugs, I can't stop. I've only ever
Speaker 2: thought about killing myself once in my whole life. And
Speaker 2: all the time that I've been arrested, and all the
Speaker 2: time I've been in really serious charges and had some
Speaker 2: serious ship going down with people are trying to kill
Speaker 2: me and all that stuff, I've never thought about topping
Speaker 2: myself in nine anyone. When I got cleaned the first
Speaker 2: time and I left, I so I got drunk and
Speaker 2: got I got arrested them and I was in the cells.
Speaker 2: There's a camera. I was pinched at bell Connon and
Speaker 2: I thought that was my first attempt at recovery. And
Speaker 2: I thought, I can't get clean and I can't keep using.
Speaker 2: And it was a real turning point. I thought, if
Speaker 2: this is what my life is, I'm going to kill myself.
Speaker 2: And a girl that I left the rehab with coming
Speaker 2: this is a true story, come and visit me on
Speaker 2: the Saturday. I got two tuning points while she come
Speaker 2: and visited on the Saturday and said to me, I'm pregnant.
Speaker 2: I was going to kill myself the Saturday afternoon. I
Speaker 2: donly planned it. I was going to hang myself on
Speaker 2: this Sat the avenue because Sat Day was when the
Speaker 2: screw was at there the slackest and they watched the footy,
Speaker 2: and I was going to hang myself on the Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 2: She came in the Saturday morning and told me she
Speaker 2: was pregnant. I didn't know that. I endorsed forty three
Speaker 2: years of age from that. That saved my life in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five when I relapsed. This is this is
Speaker 2: the craziest story. I real left in nineoin eighty five
Speaker 2: and my kids were three years of age, and she
Speaker 2: wasn't letting me see them, which is thank god. I'm
Speaker 2: glad she didn't let me see them. Because you know,
Speaker 2: I was on the heroin and I was and I
Speaker 2: was on methadone and I had a dream. This is
Speaker 2: the craziest thing that's ever happened in my whole life.
Speaker 2: I had a dream. This is a true story. I
Speaker 2: dreamt that I died, and because you know, I must
Speaker 2: be our doctors or whatever, I dreamt, I'm going up
Speaker 2: I'm floating somewhere. I'm going somewhere and I know I'm dead.
Speaker 2: I'm going somewhere and I'm going like, fuck, I've got
Speaker 2: to talk me through this day up. And you know
Speaker 2: I got there. There was a guy there, Rode Beard.
Speaker 2: Didn't introduce yourself, you know, you just said to me, Ahi, right,
Speaker 2: I remember the fear, And I said, listen, you know
Speaker 2: everyone I shot was a gangster, as our fucking people
Speaker 2: that were trying to shoot us, you know. And I
Speaker 2: was justifying I said everything I've ever done, you know,
Speaker 2: most of the places I robbed were institutions. And he's
Speaker 2: just smiling the whole time. I'm wrapping off all this stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to put my defense tohead, and he smiled,
Speaker 2: and he just looked at me and he said, you
Speaker 2: don't get it, do you. I just remember the coldness.
Speaker 2: He said, you committed the greatest sin knowing to man,
Speaker 2: and I think I'm not. I'm fucked. He said, you
Speaker 2: wasted the gift of life. And I just fucking went bang.
Speaker 2: I haven't had a drug since. Wow, So that what
Speaker 2: I did, I'd wasted the gift of life. That was
Speaker 2: the greatest crime we can commit. As human beings, waste
Speaker 2: the gift that we've been given, Whoever your higher power is,
Speaker 2: whoever that gave us this what we have. The greatest
Speaker 2: sin we can commit is not to respect that gift
Speaker 2: and not to carry that gift forward. I really believe
Speaker 2: that today. My whole job is today based around helping
Speaker 2: other people trying not to make the same mistake I made.
Speaker 2: And if you make the same mistakes, get up, get
Speaker 2: on with it, you know, because I made I did
Speaker 2: fuck up. Don't get me wrong. I fuck When I
Speaker 2: went back to jail in two thousand and two, I
Speaker 2: hadn't mean to jail since eighty two. It's twenty years.
Speaker 2: The system had change. Its just thing called subi tech,
Speaker 2: you know, subox saying they're all using this shit drug
Speaker 2: called suboxie two dollars tablet nicely, you know, because I'm
Speaker 2: a pretty outspoken sort of person. You know, I'm not
Speaker 2: a tough guy. Made, but I don't really find fucking
Speaker 2: about anybody, you know, because what are you gonna do?
Speaker 2: What are you gonna do? You're gonna kill me. You're
Speaker 2: not going to be first to try it, probably gonna
Speaker 2: be the last. But and now I used to say
Speaker 2: what you got three period and your don Colliane, you're
Speaker 2: fucking idiot and they used to hate it. You know,
Speaker 2: you're fucking sixteen dollars of the pills you want around
Speaker 2: look like a gangster now, fucking you've got your missus
Speaker 2: wringing and give into the jail with a fucking three
Speaker 2: month old kid out there. That's not gangster. You know
Speaker 2: what gangster is putting food on the table, being having
Speaker 2: for fucking nighttime to pucked up your kids in the
Speaker 2: bed and listen and read a book. So do you
Speaker 2: want to know what a gangster isn't? Because my whole
Speaker 2: world had changed, my whole beliefs changes, like all my life,
Speaker 2: I believed I was a gangster. What I was was
Speaker 2: a scared little boy. I was a scared little boy.
Speaker 2: And fearful people are the most dangerous. The scareder you are,
Speaker 2: the more dangerous you are. The less self worth you have,
Speaker 2: the less you have to lose, the less you have
Speaker 2: to lose. It's the less you care. And I say
Speaker 2: it about every relationship. The one who cares the least
Speaker 2: has the most power, you know. And I didn't care.
Speaker 2: I wanted to die. I wanted you to kill me
Speaker 2: because you put me out of my misery because I
Speaker 2: was living such hell, and my hell was in my head.
Speaker 2: And so I don't have that hell, you know, because
Speaker 2: today I realize that everything I do is my choice.
Speaker 2: Whether I feel good or airs my choice. You can't
Speaker 2: make me feel anything. You can't make me feel anything.
Speaker 2: You really can't. You know, you can't make me feel anything.
Speaker 2: What I choose to do is what you do to
Speaker 2: me is how I feel. No one can my wife
Speaker 2: can leave me. I'll be heartbroken, but I'll get over
Speaker 2: human nature. We are human beings first, We're men second,
Speaker 2: and I'm an addict third. For many years, I just
Speaker 2: thought I was an addict. I'm not just an addict.
Speaker 2: When I was talking to my brother today is a
Speaker 2: guy I usually grew up, not real brothers. But we've
Speaker 2: been together for forty five years, and we're both playing.
Speaker 2: We're both successful in our lives, both the beautiful families.
Speaker 2: You know. I'm laying his seven million dollar waterfront mansion.
Speaker 2: This morning, we're having said he's having to smoke. I
Speaker 2: don't smoke. He's having a smoke and I went bagging
Speaker 2: each other and he said, you know, fucking forty five
Speaker 2: years ago, we were steal on TV's in Bondou Beach.
Speaker 2: He said, you know, the choices we made them were
Speaker 2: really bad. He said, the choices we make today are
Speaker 2: pretty good. He said, what changed? I said, maybe we
Speaker 2: grew up? He said, said you're still a fucking kid.
Speaker 2: When because I act pretty stupid sometimes, he said, I'll
Speaker 2: tell you what change made. He said, we start to
Speaker 2: like ourselves. He said, we start to like ourselves. You know,
Speaker 2: he's been clean longer than me. He's actually one who
Speaker 2: used to come up the cross and say to me
Speaker 2: all the time he had enough when I relapsed in
Speaker 2: eighty five and he was devastated. His only guy I
Speaker 2: used with that got clean. He'd come up in his
Speaker 2: states when he had the New States, when all that,
Speaker 2: you know, and he pull up. He had enough yet, mate,
Speaker 2: You say see you next week. He drive away. Then
Speaker 2: some junk you'd run down the back street of Caller
Speaker 2: Street or somewhere you may have that flash cars up
Speaker 2: the fucking main street looking for you. And I go
Speaker 2: up there and you say, ye had enough yet, mate,
Speaker 2: and go no, you say you drive away. Then he
Speaker 2: said he's done the six weeks train. He come out
Speaker 2: in the six week he said, you had nothing to do.
Speaker 2: He said, get your tell you to detox. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean for six weeks you backed up every week you
Speaker 2: had enough? Yet brother, Wow, say no, you say see
Speaker 2: you ladda. You never tried to force it on me never,
Speaker 2: you know. And they're the things that kept me alive.
Speaker 2: They are the things that I grew up in his
Speaker 2: mom's house. Mum's ninety eight. That's one of those. I
Speaker 2: come down this weekend too. When you said this week
Speaker 2: and I said, yeah, it gave me excuse to come
Speaker 2: down and see your mom. She's ninety eight. His father
Speaker 2: worked two jobs. And I start to learn what being
Speaker 2: your father was, what being a son was, what being
Speaker 2: a brother was. Then I learned how to be a
Speaker 2: dad because I love my kids. I really I've a
Speaker 2: nine year old and five year old. You know, I remarried.
Speaker 2: My wife's a couple of months younger than me. And yeah,
Speaker 2: when I say it all the time, it's hard being
Speaker 2: a trophy husband, it's really you know, Like, mate, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm blessed. I really am blessed, and I believe it's
Speaker 2: because of what I do, not what I've done.
Speaker 1: That wraps apart one of my interviews with Runnisher. With
Speaker 1: next week we hear more underworld stories and what he
Speaker 1: is doing to help people
Speaker 2: M