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Te hardest of the hard

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Crossing paths

Crossing paths

Te open paddocks and relative freedoms of the farm were a dream compared to Goulburn Gaol – from where Dennis had been transferred. ‘It was a scary place, being only 18 years old’. He had been moved there from Long Bay, where he spent his first night in prison thinking to himself, ‘what am I doing here?’ and ‘you’re here, you gotta do the best you can’. It was the first night of a five-year sentence. He’d end up serving three-and-a-half years of it. Like Tom, Dennis felt he lucked out with his cell mate – a Scot who loved to sing.

As Tom said, in the morning when the cell doors opened it was just like bein’ home. How you goin’ Bill? How you goin’ Charlie?

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Oh John, how long you been here? He was safer because of the blokes he knew from the outside. ‘Te blokes I got round with, they were the hardest of the hardest. Neddy Smith. Bobby Chapman ... And really in a way when I look back probably knowin’ them people was a big thing in your favour’. Not that this shielded Dennis from violence, but it spared him being on the receiving end of the worst of it. ‘Te things that went on it there, Emma!’, Dennis would say, shaking his head. He told me distressing stories of blokes sufering at the hands of predators and thugs. ‘You know, I seen all that. I seen all that happen. You used to feel sorry, but what could you do?’ He told me about the time he bashed a man who wanted to stab him over a disagreement about tobacco.

I got wind of it that he was gonna shiv me. He got the pass to go to the toilet and they had two passes so I waited for him to get the pass and then I got the pass to go to the toilet and Ned stood outside and ah then we went into the toilet and I said to him,

What’s your beef? and then just laid into him. And I picked up the tin, the tin where you throw the rubbish and I bashed him with the tin. And I remember I left him laying half in the cubicle and half not.

Nothing came of it. Te disagreement was put to rest and the screws had no evidence it was Dennis who had left the man bloodied on the toilet floor. ‘Tey knew it was me that done it but they couldn’t prove it. So they dismissed the charge and let me out of lock up’. Ned was Neddy Smith, who would go on to become one of Australia’s most notorious criminals. He was known for his vicious temper and brutality. Dennis served time with Neddy Smith and Bobby Chapman in Goulburn Gaol – not the pair’s first time behind bars. In 1968 both men had been jailed for the pack rape of a young mother. Smith was 23 and Chapman was 21. Tis was the first of many times Neddy Smith would make headlines. He became a leading heroin trafcker and was caught up in, and eventually taken down by, the Sydney gang wars in the 1980s. Smith would end up surviving several attempts on his life and serving a life sentence for murder; Chapman would be found murdered at the age of 50. Dennis grew up with them. As teenagers they would hang around together, mucking about and playing pinball. Chappo was the easier going of the two ‘but his tough side came out with Ned’. Dennis knew Neddy Smith was a violent man but he said he had a ‘good side’ most others didn’t see:

I still mixed in the company because we were kids who grew up together, we had good times when we were kids, we had good times. We were still friends but there was sort of code between me and him. He knew where he stood, he knew where I stood, he knew he could squash me any time if he wanted to. Tey ‘had good laughs’ together but Dennis still classed him as one of the two most violent men he ever knew, and he had known a lot of violent men. Dennis told a story about refusing to deal in Neddy Smith’s drug trade: ‘I said I couldn’t go and sell drugs or be involved with anything like that, with people whose mother and father I’ve grown up with, I said I couldn’t be a merchant of death’. Luckily for Dennis growing up together counted for something and Neddy Smith cut

him some slack: ‘He turned around and looked me straight in the eye and he said, Dennis, I’m telling you something: don’t ever say that to me again. We’ll leave it at that’. Violence was normal and familiar to Dennis and Tom both inside and outside of prison. Dennis described it like this:

You’re never by yourself. You’re always in a group. You’d never be caught out by yourself. Te mates who are in your group, you’re always with ‘em. You’re never alone ‘cause once you’re alone you’re very vulnerable. As a young lad Dennis didn’t expect to live past 30. ‘I thought for sure I’d be dead by 30. ‘Cause we were involved with hardened criminals, really hard men’. Tom hadn’t planned on getting old either. Violence was all he knew so it was his answer to everything. ‘If anybody ever did me wrong, I only had three ways of dealin’ with it. Punch ‘em, stab ‘em or shoot ‘em. I had no other knowledge; I was a very violent person’. Tat’s how Tom ended up in prison for a third time serving his longest sentence. He beat one of his friends so badly that he was put in an induced coma. Tom had been arrested for pickpocketing after two of his gang members told the police where they might find him. If someone ‘pushed his buttons’, Tom was in the habit of assaulting first and taking the consequences later. He confronted one of them and they fought: ‘I just kept hitting him and hitting him. Lucky the coppers come along ‘cause if they hadn’t come along I reckon I would have near killed him’. Te guy recovered and Tom was lucky not to end up facing a murder charge. Dennis admitted there were things he’d done that he didn’t talk about. ‘When I look back there’s things I don’t talk about. Bad things’. He had some regrets: when I think back to poor people, innocent people who had just gone into a Greek club to have a game of cards, have a drink of cofee, and like here we are, young, well built, physical, all built

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