The Matriarch

by Adrian Tame

  But you see, years ago when I was a kid, and not having anyone, I made a vow. When I walked along those air raid tunnels to school, I said to Satan: ‘Give me ten children.’ I didn’t know anything. I read the Bible a lot, we had a great big family Bible, and the thing that stuck in me mind was that wise King Solomon, when he cut the baby in half. I don’t know why I said it, I must have read something about Satan being the evil one, the Prince of Darkness that tried to get God to come down to his kingdom. And I thought he must be more powerful than God, because he was trying to get him down there. I couldn’t get pregnant after ten.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When I’m Asleep It’s Still Open

  KATHY AND DENNIS ARE standing on the stained and litter-strewn concrete floor outside the locked door to a housing commission flat in Wellington Street, Collingwood. It is around 8.30 in the evening of 1 October 1978. It is already dark on the street outside the block of flats and there is a chill in the air. Dennis is drunk and Kathy is angry because of the $300 she has in her hand. It’s money to settle a debt owed by her daughter Vicki to a woman called Kim Nelson. Kathy doesn’t like her family being in debt, least of all to a person like Kim Nelson. Nelson is a thirty-five-year-old prostitute who, eighteen months earlier, had gained considerable notoriety for her behaviour in court while appearing as star witness in the trial of five senior Melbourne policemen on conspiracy charges. For some years Nelson and Kathy have maintained an uneasy form of friendship based on the mutual respect of two tough and uncompromising women. At this moment Nelson is on the other side of the door from Kathy and Dennis. With Nelson is a second woman, Keryn Jean Thompson, aged twenty-three, of Port Melbourne. And a loaded .22 calibre rifle. But Kathy doesn’t know this. Suddenly the stream of abuse and insults coming through the door is drowned by the sharp retort of a firearm. At first Kathy doesn’t feel a thing; then comes a roaring inside her skull, and a warm, sticky trickle down the front of her face. She looks across at Dennis, her vision blurred. Gazing back at her, smeared across the chest of his white T-shirt, is a human eye.

  Kathy’s gradual climb to the highest echelons of the underworld went back to the time as a small child when she ran bets for her great-grandmother in Brunswick. Watching the SP bookies in action with her grandmother Bertha Mason gave her a first glimpse of something excitingly illicit. Little more than a toddler, she was somehow aware the grown-ups were up to something naughty.

  Billy Peirce was the next stage in Kathy’s criminal evolution. Although only a small-time criminal, he had a wide circle of underworld acquaintances and their larrikin behaviour was instantly attractive to Kathy. By the time she was visiting Dennis and Peter in gaols like Pentridge and Beechworth she felt strongly that the adrenalin rush and occasional fear of a life on the wrong side of the tracks was infinitely preferable to the boring expectations of ordinary society. And she rarely missed the opportunity to shine in front of her growing circle of influential criminal acquaintances. She vividly remembers one visiting day in Pentridge where prisoners’ wives and children were gathered around one of the two donated swimming pools inside the gaol grounds.

  ArthurI was there, and he was captured by a policewoman of all things, which we thought was pretty hilarious. He’d shot someone and done a lot of things. Anyway I saw this baby crawling towards the swimming pool. And there was nobody watching it. And it was getting closer and closer, and I said: ‘Arthur, the baby.’ And he got up, and I said: ‘Not now.’ So we waited ‘til the baby falls in and I scream out: ‘Arthur, the baby.’ And he’s dived in, all his clothes on, and got the baby. And he got three months off. I saw it as a good opportunity. Afterwards he was stood up as a hero.

  Another incident involving an unwanted set of weights didn’t do Kathy’s growing reputation any harm. She decided to donate them to the gym at Pentridge but she was unable to lift them. So she worked at it until she was able to hoist them aloft with ease.

  I walked into the gym with them held above my head and the screw said: ‘Have you got permission?’ I said: ‘Yes, I have.’ And he goes to take ’em off me and he drops ’em straight to the ground. Can’t lift ’em.

  Years later in 1988 when convicted murderer Alex Tsakmakis was beaten to death by Russell Street bomber Craig Minogue with the 2.25 kg weights in a sack, Kathy was to wonder whether she had unwittingly supplied the murder weapon.

  Around 1967 Kathy and the family moved to a house in Liberty Parade, West Heidelberg, the site of the 1956 Olympic village. Despite its auspicious origins the village was a hard, tough neighbourhood, not at all a pleasant place to live or grow up in—as the children soon discovered. Kathy, with no other means of support, found work for the next four and a half years as a barmaid at The Sentimental Bloke Hotel in nearby Bulleen, a regular haunt of local police.

  Despite the long hours she worked, she was determined to give the children, Vicki, Victor, Lex, Jamie and Trevor, a loving home and a place where their friends would feel welcome, as well as her two older sons. But the sixteen-year-old Dennis was already showing signs of the violence that would become his trademark.

  The backyard was always full of kids. They had a swimming pool, one of those above ground ones, and a pool table in the bungalow. Of a night I’d sit the kids on the couch and I’d count them, before bathing them, and I’d hear the balls clicking out in the bungalow, and I’d know someone was missing. Dennis and Peter used to come and stay, and one night me boyfriend was there playing with them, teaching them how to bite noses off. Well, Lex has come in, and he’s had a fight, and we all go out. It was a Sunday night, we must have been poor, we only had sausages for tea.

  Well, Dennis bit me boyfriend’s nose off. They all scarpered, right, and the police come, and this bloke’s nose is all dripping blood, and I said: ‘You’re not bringing him in here, I’ve just bought a new fucking carpet.’ Dennis bit off his nose. He was just getting taught how to do it.

  A myth has evolved around this period that Kathy became close to a number of both uniformed and plainclothes police through serving them drinks. One of them has said that Kathy would appeal to her ‘mates’ in the force to let Trevor and Victor off when they began to get into trouble in the village. Kathy hotly denies this, saying she had already formed her negative opinion of the majority of policemen because of the violence inflicted on Billy Peirce. (Besides, she had her own method of inflicting discipline on the boys. Because they could run faster than her, she would wait until bath time when they couldn’t escape, and flog them with a length of garden hose for the day’s misdemeanours.)

  All the police drank for free at The Sentimental Bloke. There was a lady over the road from me with ten children. This day she’s in the lounge at tea time drinking with a copper, while her kids are left at home. And I said to my boss: ‘That woman’s got fucking ten kids at home, and they’re scabbing for a meal. Are you going to give her and that copper a free meal, while her kids go hungry? Because if you do, I’m walking out.’ I could do every job in the joint. I worked the bottle shop, I could do the large bars single-handed, make him quids. He said: ‘No, I’m not.’

  There was another time when there was some do for a superintendent or someone, and they had the function room, and they’d approached the boss, and said: ‘Whatever you do, don’t let Kathy work that night.’ It was a Sunday night and they were all there with their wives. But he let me work, he was funny like that, having a go. And I’d be putting the jugs on the table and smiling saying: ‘Are you having a nice time?’ and you could see them squirm, because I knew all their girlfriends. There was an Ascot Vale crime car squad bloke there, and I introduced him to my girlfriend, and later she broke up with her husband and had a baby to the copper.

  The Sentimental Bloke’s entertainment lounge regularly drew crowds several hundred strong to see stars like Kamahl, Johnny Farnham, Johnny O’Keefe and Warren Mitchell. And occasionally the audience itself included a celebrity, like the night Charmain Biggs, wife of Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, sat at Kathy�
�s table. Kathy formed a quick opinion of the big-name visitors.

  The one I hated the most was Warren Mitchell. He was an utter pig. He was an arrogant pig. It was the way he spoke to you, and he had a fetish for always washing, showering and washing. He was ill-mannered, gruff and said: ‘Who are you?’ and everybody was beneath him.

  But Johnny O’Keefe I’ll never forget. It was about three o’clock in the morning, and I had Victor and Lex at a table. Charmain Biggs and her bloke asked if they could sit at the table, and I said ‘Yes.’ I can always remember Johnny shaking Victor’s hand and Lex’s hand. They were very young. And he said: ‘When you shake a man’s hand, you look him in the eye, and you say: “How ya goin’, mate?”.’

  So we’re up at the manager’s office, and Johnny O’Keefe’s trying to get through to his wife at the Southern Cross, and he’s saying, ‘I am Johnny O’Keefe,’ and they’re saying: ‘Oh yeah, we’ve heard that one before.’ And apparently they’d cancelled his concert at Pentridge the next day, so he was getting on to the people, and standing over them, and saying: ‘I am doing the concert.’ Well, he did do the concert. And I couldn’t believe that a man in his position was so determined to do a concert for Pentridge; I thought it was good of him.

  John Farnham was fun. He was only twenty. I was singing ‘Sadie the Cleaning Lady’ and the boss said to me: ‘You love that song, don’t you?’ And I said: ‘Oh, yeah.’ And he said: ‘Well, how about scrubbing?’ I thought: ‘You fucking cunt.’ Here I am out the front with this other sheila scrubbing these white chairs.

  Kamahl was a proper gentleman. When he went on I had to keep the lights out till the drum roll, and they built it up a bit, you know, and I said to him: ‘Listen to me, can you smile, because I can’t see you.’ He just laughed. Well I’ve got his autograph there.

  The head waiter at The Sentimental Bloke was also a part-time choreographer at Channel Nine and talked Kathy into being filmed in her hair curlers and dressing gown for a station promo, dancing in front of the camera as she collected a bottle of early morning milk and the newspaper from her front doorstep. Drinkers at the hotel would mimic her dance steps as they approached the bar to order a drink.

  The strain of the long hours she was working, combined with the trouble her children were beginning to get into, began to tell on Kathy. On one occasion Trevor stole a car and sideswiped two pursuing police vehicles off the road. When Kathy arrived at the police station he was sobbing and complaining bitterly that one of the officers who finally caught him had put a gun to his head. One policeman involved in the chase took Kathy aside and said: ‘Get that kid on a racetrack. He’s a natural.’ Trevor was just eleven years of age.

  The result was that at the age of thirty-six in 1971, Kathy had a heart attack. Peter was at home at the time and probably saved her life by rushing her into intensive care. By the time she had come out of hospital and was well enough to resume her job her boss had been sacked, so Kathy decided to go elsewhere. She began working in the lounge bar of a Heidelberg hotel, but after a few weeks a high profile criminal identity known to Kathy began drinking there.

  The owners of the hotel said to me: ‘What’s more important, him or your job?’ And I said: ‘Well, actually him.’ Because he was a friend and he was paying for his drinks—I wasn’t giving them to him. So I left there. Then I went to the Union Hotel in Ascot Vale part-time. And I knew a girl in a massage parlour down in Park Street, South Melbourne, The Black Rose. And she said, ‘Come down one day.’ So I went down, and she said: ‘Go and do a massage,’ and I didn’t know what a massage was, and I’m bang, bang, bang, chopping down on this bloke’s legs and back. And he gives me $40, and all I did was massage him. So I do another one, and I’ve earned $80. That’s a whole week part-time at the pub. So I thought: ‘Fuck that.’ Later I had sex with some of them for money. It didn’t worry me—not for $1,500 a week. I told the boys at home in High Street, North-cote, where we were living by this time and they didn’t like it. They didn’t approve. But next thing was: ‘Mum, will you bail so and so out? Mum this and that.’ It didn’t bother me, the sex. I used to think of paying the bills.

  I was always faithful to Dennis Ryan, Billy Peirce and Mr Pettingill, when I was with them. But I didn’t have anybody at this time. But the money was there. I never saw so much. I went blank, and you’d get into brandy, that’s what you’ve got to do to stop yourself thinking. The girls get into pills, heroin, anything because they can’t stand what they are doing. Go through the motions, lay there and think of the bills. A lot don’t come in for sex, just companionship. I don’t even remember the first one, it wasn’t a big deal. The second day I was at The Black Rose one of the girls said: ‘Rip it off.’ And I’m thinking: ‘Rip what off?’ She meant: ‘Don’t put the money in the book.’

  So it took me a week to learn how to run a parlour. I used to work ten in the morning till six. Not many drunks, and you didn’t go with ones you didn’t like the look of.

  The bloke who ran the parlour got his car blown up, and lost his appetite for the job. All that was left of his Mustang was a wheel. Next morning I come in, and the next minute I’m slammed down the fucking passage by the South Melbourne jacks [detectives]. ‘And where were you last night at such and such a time?’ And I could see the operator with his arm in a sling. I got thrown from one end of the room to the other. The operator got out and within that week I took over as manageress. There was this bloke called Menzies who owned the building. We used to pay him the rent.

  Those were interesting days in the parlours. We had speciality girls that would help out with the men that used to come in wheelchairs. I don’t know what they used to do in the rooms, it was none of my business. But they used to be looked after. The girls were kind to them.

  In another parlour at the back, I can’t remember the name, there was this big fat girl, and she had a bloke about eighty, and she comes running over, and she says: ‘He’s dead!’ So we ring South Melbourne police, and they were very good. They dressed him and they put him down the lane, so it didn’t look like he died in the parlour. So they get in touch with his relations, and they say: ‘What’s Dad doing over in that part of town?’ He was supposed to be at some old people’s home, playing cards or something. But I bet he died with a smile on his face.

  There was this girl, she was an Australian, and I’m walking past the door and I hear her sing in some sort of language, and I thought, ‘What’s she bloody well up to?’ And she said to me later on: ‘I do that to annoy them, so they’ll go quick.’ It was to give the clients the shits and hurry up and get out.

  In 1978, after Kathy was released from Fairlea, the family moved from High Street, Northcote, to another place in Ross Street, not far away. Before long they were surprised to find the street in a virtual state of siege, with residents operating under a self-imposed curfew and rarely venturing out after 9 p.m. Houses wore ‘For Sale’ signs everywhere, and Kathy still couldn’t work out why.

  Well, I happened to be up in Sydney. I got a phone call, there’d been a shoot-out in Ross Street. Russell [Russell Cox, one of Victoria’s most notoriously successful armed robbers, was a close friend of the family and a one-time lover of Kathy’s] and Tommy Wraith, who was on with me daughter Vicki, had come to pick her up to take her to a motel down in Rosebud on the Mornington Peninsula. Vicki’s standing on the pavement talking to them, and the next minute a police car’s there, and there’s shots fired. Tom’s swung the wheel and drove into the brick wall, and he’s knocked himself out. Russell gets away across the Merri Creek. Tom’s pinched, and Vicki’s up at the Northcote Police Station, and I’m in Sydney getting all this in me ear. So Vicki’s up there, and they went to hit her with the typewriter, and she says: ‘If you think for one minute that you’ve got trouble with my mother and her boys, well I’m her only daughter.’ They said: ‘Oh, fuck, get her out.’ That shootout started it all with the neighbours.

  A famous party Kathy held in Ross Street didn’t help.

 
We had this Christmas party. I sat up all night and I set up the tables and chairs and I had a present for everyone. We had a tree inside and everything. I had prostitutes, criminals, anyone who didn’t have anywhere to go.

  After The Black Rose Kathy took over another parlour in West Melbourne known as Vampirella’s. A friend in Beechworth gaol made a sign, complete with vampires, for the front door. The next parlour was on Victoria Street, East Melbourne.

  And all my friends used to come there on the Sundays, and we’d all get in the big sauna. We’d get blind drunk, and the Crown Lager was as hot as anything, right? So they’re listening in on the intercom this day, and there’s this beautiful girl there, and this bloke says to her: ‘I’ll give you $20 to whip you.’ And one of my friends went out and said: ‘I’ll give her $20 not to get whipped.’ Oh God there was a lot of funny things went on. I’ll tell you now, they were all Australians wanted whipping. One time I worked for a Jewish woman. She only did enemas, to blokes who’d been to the private schools.

  Kathy’s experiences in the seamy world of prostitution and massage parlours led her deeper into the underworld. Her sons regarded her newfound wealth as the means to bail out their friends, and this widened Kathy’s circle still further. During the period she was managing a number of establishments, Melbourne’s parlour scene was being run by four main operators. Fabulously rich men with wildly expensive imported sports cars, these four overlords ruled their empires ruthlessly and often violently. Stories of cars and even parlours being blown up in the middle of the night were commonplace.

  Life for the girls, with few exceptions, was miserable. This was before heroin became the standard method of forgetting the grime and grind of daily existence, and alcoholism was rampant. A regime of petty fines imposed by the owners—$10 for more than two butts in an ashtray was an example Kathy remembers— ensured the owners profited further from the girls’ labours.