Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

A view from a living hell

By Bernie Matthews - posted Friday, 12 May 2006


It’s ironical they started demolishing Katingal Special Security Unit the day before my 57th birthday. Its demolition created a psychological tsunami that flooded my mind with memories from 30 years ago. It was also a poignant reminder of the lyrics Johnny Cash sang when he produced his album in San Quentin in February 1969.

“San Quentin, you’ve been livin’ hell to me.”

Katingal had been living hell to me and every man whoever stepped into the place. As the only man alive to have served the longest time imprisoned inside Katingal I too had seen them come and go and I’d even seen them die. Now, after 18 years' jail time as a bank robbing career criminal, I had finally outlived the nightmare that replaced Grafton tracs. (“Trac” is prison slang for an intractable prisoner or a place where intractable prisoners are housed.)

Advertisement

My journey to Katingal began on December 9, 1971, when they transferred me to Grafton as a trac. The previous day I had attacked two screws (“screw” is slang for a prison guard) during an escape attempt. At the time I was serving 18 years imprisonment for armed robbery and had already notched up two escapes. Prison authorities were determined I wasn’t going to complete the hat trick. They sent me to Grafton for rehabilitation.

Since 1943 Grafton was the Alcatraz of the NSW prison system. It had been used to dissuade prisoners from committing breaches of prison discipline at the risk of being sent there to get flogged and baton-whipped by Grafton screws. The institutionalised violence and indiscriminate brutality had been officially sanctioned by the NSW Department of Corrective Services for 33 years.

Unfortunately the rehabilitation process had a reverse effect upon me. I was returned to Grafton on four separate occasions between 1971 and 1975 for continued breaches of prison discipline ranging from attempt escape to assaulting prison guards. I became a candidate for the new-age Pavlovian concept they called Katingal Special Security Unit.

Fred Harbecke, a lifer and an ex-French Foreign Legionnaire, was the first trac transferred into Katingal. Fred had been involved in attempted escapes from Parramatta and Maitland jails. It was a history that had earned him notoriety as one of the most dangerous men inside the NSW prison system who would stop at nothing in his quest for freedom.

Earl Heatley, another lifer, tried to escape from Goulburn jail with two other prisoners but the trio were caught and transferred to Grafton by plane. During the flight Earl and Dave Barben attacked the screws and tried to hijack the plane. Passengers helped overpower the prisoners and the hijack was thwarted. Four years later Earl joined Harbecke and they tried to go over the wall at Maitland. Earl was the second trac transferred into Katingal.

On November 7, 1975 I became the third trac transferred into the building. It would be two years and eight months before I ever saw daylight again.

Advertisement

My transfer from Grafton was uneventful and I soaked up the sights of freedom flashing past. Freedom takes on a significant meaning when you are shackled in the back of a car travelling to an unknown destination shrouded in secrecy. My gut muscles began to tense at the gates of Long Bay. The anticipation intensified as the car sped along the palm-tree lined drive to my new home.

Katingal sat like a shapeless white spider inside a chain-link web of wire fences topped with barbed wire. Searchlights dotted the compound area as the car drove through two sets of gates. A stainless steel entrance slowly yawned open and screws came spewing out. They all carried batons. The car drove into the gaping hole and the door shut behind it. Disorientation took absolute control.

The sterile, windowless, concrete building housed 40 cells segmented into eight cell-blocks. The cell-blocks were self contained units with a shower cubicle and workshop-recreation area electronically controlled from a central control panel. They were all colour-coded to minimise disorientation for the screws.

The cells were under continuous surveillance from an observation fish-eye in the rear wall. Permanent fixtures were strategically placed to minimise cell space. A stainless steel unit set into the wall served as a toilet with separate buttons for flushing and drinking water. The food hatch at the rear of the cell doubled as a table. A large slab of concrete served as a bed complete with fire-proof blankets and a mattress. My whole world measured 84 square feet.

The cell ventilation relied upon air flowing through a small gap under the door or through the food hatch. Waste air was sucked out through a ventilation shaft in the toilet. Theoretically the principle worked. It failed in reality because the stale air remained in the cells and induced continual headaches or nausea. The confined airless space also increased body heat that caused perspiration to soak through the foam mattresses and create pools of water underneath. It gave a whole new meaning to the concept of water beds.

Life in Katingal was comparable to living inside a submarine or an atomic bomb shelter. The longest distance anyone could walk in a continuous straight line was 19 paces along the gallery walkway. All light was artificial. Rays of sunlight that did manage to squeeze through a canopy of steel bars over two elevated exercise yards at the end of each cell complex were experienced for one hour each day during our daily exercise periods. The two exercise yards were hidden behind high concrete walls that obscured any views of the outside world.

Katingal’s population expanded during 1976 when deranged thrill-killer Archie “Mad Dog” McCafferty led a fresh intake from Grafton. Billy Baldry and Terry Hailey, ringleaders in the 1974 Bathurst riot, followed with bank robbing escapees Dick Lynott, Steve Dowd, Harry Visser, Steve Blair and Jimmy (The Irishman) Murray.

Ray Denning and Warrick James earned admission after an escape attempt from Parramatta Jail resulted in the death of prison guard Willy Faber. The August 1975 shootout inside Long Bay Jail resulted with Russell Cox, Alan McDougal and Marco Motric, also joining the Katingal crew. Jockey Smith, Peter Schneidas, Tony Lanigan and the Dickenson brothers followed in quick succession. John Lewthwaite and Owen Martin, two kid killers placed on protective custody, joined the rest of the dogs (a dog is prison jargon for an informer) and rock spiders (a rock spider is prison jargon for a child molester or child rapist: child killers also fall into this category) in Lower Yellow.

As more prisoners came into Katingal a suffocating tension began to emerge. Time inside Katingal became a dripping acid. It slowly destroyed any concept of a world outside the building. It was like a festering boil waiting for eruption. The installation of a new superintendent during 1977 became the catalyst for that eruption.

“Lantern Jaw” was a power-crazed martinet who exerted his authority indiscriminately. He took control of Katingal by sanctioning restrictions on visits, mail and exercise periods. His appointment coincided with a mass escape from Maitland Jail resulting in the return of Ray Denning and Dick Lynott to Katingal. Steve Shipley, Roy “The Red Rat” Pollitt, Terry Humphries, Freddy Owens and William “Billy the Kid” Sutton followed shortly afterwards.

The Maitland crew plotted to cut their way out of the prison van en route to court. A hacksaw was required to accomplish the feat.

Despite Katingal’s strict security it was possible to smuggle clandestine messages out of the building. The high concentration of uric acid produced by the body overnight created a unique way to write secret messages. Once the urine soaked into the paper the writing was invisible to the naked eye. The application of heat by the letter’s recipient produced the hidden message. Within weeks a hacksaw blade securely wrapped in carbon paper to foil the metal detectors came into Katingal. Russell Cox received half the blade.

As the Maitland crew made preparation for their escape Russell Cox began cutting the bars over the exercise yard in preparation for his escape.

November 4, 1977 Cox duped a screw to open the security door on a pretext of retrieving his joggers from the exercise yard. The screw was distracted and Cox seized the moment to jam a paddle tennis bat into a crevice in the wall and shimmied up to the cut bars. He squeezed through the caged ceiling of the exercise yard and climbed from the roof. Cox was spotted scaling the two 4.5 metre perimeter fences surrounding Katingal but it was too late. He had already created history. Russell Cox had defeated the escape-proof Katingal.

The screws retaliated with a campaign of harassment. They restricted air-flow to the cells by shutting the food hatches. “Lantern Jaw” compounded their actions by confining everyone to the cellblocks and banned access to the exercise yards. The simmering tension was again aggravated on December 29, 1977 when men in the Upper Red and Yellow cell-blocks nearly suffocated after malfunctions to the air conditioning system stopped all air-flow into Katingal.

Emergency maintenance personnel came into Katingal at midnight but were unable to repair the system. Electric fans were issued to circulate air until the system was repaired. Temporary repairs lasted until January 3, 1978 when the second major breakdown occurred and cut off air supply to every cell block. For three days during that summer of 1978 we lived in an airless sauna. It happened again May 3, 1978 but Katingal exploded the next day for a different reason.

Barrie Levy broke his ankle and lay in agony inside the airless cellblock. Prison medical staff refused to treat him. They had walked off the job in sympathy with striking Long Bay prison warders. Katingal erupted. It was a riot with a single demand - immediate medical attention for Levy.

We barricaded ourselves in the cell blocks and smashed everything that was smashable. Years of frustration and tension spewed out of the cell blocks like a tidal wave. Once our anger was spent we prepared for the inevitable retaliatory onslaught. Prison guards and the NSW Special Weapons and Tactical Response Group had already surrounded Katingal and cordoned off the building.

After 36 hours the insurrection ended peacefully when Levy was transferred to Prince Henry Hospital. X-rays showed his leg and ankle broken in three places and he underwent immediate surgery.

The riot resulted with another unexpected surprise. “Lantern Jaw” was replaced as superintendent effective from 5pm that day. Deputy Craig became acting superintendent in the wake of his transfer and a relative calm was restored to the building.

Katingal’s fate was finally sealed on May 31, 1978.

It was 3am when Jimmy “The Irishman” Murray knocked on my cell wall and whispered under the door, “They’re here!”

I looked out my Judas window and saw the cascade of sparks showering into the exercise yard. Two shadowy figures had scaled the perimeter fences and hauled oxyacetylene equipment onto Katingal’s roof. As the oxy sliced through the caged canopy over the exercise yard everyone in Yellow and Green cellblocks watched with adrenalin pumping anticipation. Freedom was only minutes away.

As the security doors into the cell blocks were being attacked a noise alerted the night watch screw and he walked onto the gallery. He spotted the shower of sparks from oxyacetylene torches and raised the alarm. The mass escape from Katingal had been thwarted. I went back to bed and waited for the repercussions that would eventuate.

The break-in finally forced the NSW Government to close Katingal. The Pavlovian experiment in behaviour modification and sensory deprivation ended on June 3, 1978. I felt the exhilaration of an astronaut’s orbital re-entry as the early morning security convoys transferred us to new homes at Parramatta and Maitland jails. For two years and eight months I had been on another planet inside the NSW prison system. I finally saw daylight again.

Despite its 1978 closure Katingal continued to create controversy.

In 1993 the former NSW Commissioner for Corrective Services, Dr Tony Vinson, was required to give evidence at the trial of Russell Cox concerning his 1977 escape. Dr Vinson’s testimony provided a crucial link to the startling revelation that Katingal Special Security Unit had never officially existed.

“Prison systems operate on the basis that you can’t have an excuse for escaping from them,” Dr Vinson explained. “The law must be upheld, but on the other hand this was not escape from a lawful place of custody, but an unlawful place of custody. That was the theme of my evidence.” 

Dr Vinson explained how his testimony during the Cox trial created the historical legal precedent.

“The only way the court was rescued from an impossible dilemma was the last minute discovery that Katingal had never been proclaimed as a prison,” he said. “Therefore Mr Cox could not be charged with having escaped from a lawful place of custody.”

The demolition of Katingal concludes the final chapter of the prison that never was. And in the immortal words of Johnny Cash - may it burn and rot in hell.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. All

First published inthe Sydney Sun-Herald March 26, 2006.



Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

65 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Bernie Matthews is a convicted bank robber and prison escapee who has served time for armed robbery and prison escapes in NSW (1969-1980) and Queensland (1996-2000). He is now a journalist. He is the author of Intractable published by Pan Macmillan in November 2006.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Bernie Matthews

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Photo of Bernie Matthews
Article Tools
Comment 65 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy