by Denis Ryan
Trippy was an atheist. He regarded the concepts of immaculate conception and the resurrection as con artistry put about by Bible bashers. He’d been a Mason, but I don’t think he took that very seriously either. I don’t know how often he attended lodge meetings. He didn’t speak about it. He was more comfortable with a beer in his hand, having a punt on the gee-gees or holding a hot poker hand in a tough school with plenty of dough in the kitty. God only knows what Trippy would have made of the religious service in his honour at the local Anglican church, but he would have smiled at the big crowd who attended.
I led the funeral procession down Deakin Avenue behind the hearse, out in front of a dozen uniform police as the cortege wound its way to the cemetery at Nicholls Point. I kept it together at the cemetery as best I could as Trippy’s coffin was lowered into the ground.
One of the local councillors, who had a big citrus orchard over the river in Curlwaa, put on a wake in his backyard with a barbecue and a barrel. There were a few civilians there and around twenty coppers—some from South Australia, some from New South Wales and the rest of us from Victoria. Barritt didn’t make an appearance. He wouldn’t have been welcome anyway.
We got on the drink, shed a few tears and told a few of Trippy’s stories.
5
POWER WITHOUT GLORY
The Catholic Church keeps going because it has been
repeating the same thing for two thousand years.
JOSEPH GOEBBELS, 1897–1945
It was common knowledge that Monsignor John Day took children away on weekend trips. Day would drive his big, new model American car out of Mildura with a young boy, or sometimes two, sitting alongside him on the long bench seat. He’d been doing it for years.
More often than not, he’d drive the boys down to Melbourne and take them to the Melbourne Cricket Ground to watch a game of Australian Rules football. Afterwards, Day and the boys would travel on to Day’s sister’s house in Williamstown and spend the night there.
Day’s parishioners were full of praise. What a man! What a priest, to devote so much of his time to the service of the children in his flock. More acclaim was extended to Day when he drove down the Calder Highway to Melbourne with a group of girls from Sacred Heart Primary School to see the hit musical The Sound of Music.
Day taught physical education lessons to the boys in grades five and six at Sacred Heart. The PE classes often involved gymnastics training, where the boys would launch off a springboard and vault a pommel horse onto a mat while Day looked on.
Day would hold competitions to see who could vault the best. The prize for the winners was a trip to Melbourne or to some other part of Victoria where Day had business. Sometimes Day and the boys would stay in motels but, when in Melbourne, they always found themselves at his sister’s Williamstown home.
The boys not singled out for their vaulting skills may still have found themselves under Day’s control as altar boys.
In the Catholic community, being an altar boy could add considerable prestige to a boy’s family. Hands would shoot up in the Sacred Heart classrooms when the nuns asked for volunteers. The sisters would screen a few of the more mischievous boys out and the remaining dozen or so would be marched across to Day in the church for his approval. The selection process would often come down to who the prospective altar boys’ parents were. The more devout the parents were, the more trusting they would be about leaving their children in Day’s company.
If selected, the boys would go home to inform their parents, who would beam with pride. It meant the family’s status in the parish had gone up a notch.
In any year, eight or ten altar boys were chosen to perform duties in the church under the supervision of Day, usually in groups of two or three according to a roster prepared by Day. Their duties included laying out prayer books along the pews, lighting candles and helping him prepare for mass and holy communion.
In those days there were four masses on Sundays: at 7 am, 8 am and 10 am, and one evening mass at 5 pm. Every other day of the week there would be just one mass at 7 am.
Some of the altar boys would be at the Mildura church, alone with Day, for hours on end.
Other children, who had missed out on Day’s favour, would be approached to perform tasks around the church. It might be sweeping the tennis court or washing his big American car. Day would often give them money for their efforts.
Over the years Day had carefully contrived to be alone with hundreds of boys and girls in Mildura. And he frequently visited the other parishes in the diocese where he had what he referred to as ‘his boys’—victims he had forced into submission by threatening to have them sent to boys’ homes.
Outwardly, he was a pillar of the community, trusted and respected by his parishioners. It was a carefully planned and executed piece of deception. Day had been raping children for years, but he knew how to keep the kids quiet and the parents ignorant or incapable of believing his debauchery.
I knew nothing of this at the time. He was a cautious, calculating man and his authority in the community was absolute. Not even a whisper of his crimes fell on my ears. If there were rumours, they were muttered surreptitiously. And if one parent did look like making a noise, Barritt came to Day’s rescue.
Joe Kearney and Day were also busy perusing the accounts. Money was piling into the church building fund. The old Mildura Church, moved en masse from Lime Avenue to its ultimate home in Eleventh Street in 1922, had outlived its usefulness. It would ultimately be transformed into a redbrick edifice twice its size, largely to help Day’s promotion up the ecclesiastical step ladder.
I knew one of the builders who tendered for the job. Terry Lynch worked for S. J. Weir, a construction company based in Ballarat. Terry was a Catholic and at one point had been a member of Day’s inner circle. I guess he thought he had a rails run for the job but he soon discovered Day was a miser with other people’s money.
Time and time again Terry trudged into the presbytery with the church renovation and extension plans under his arm. Each time Day would peruse the plans and demand cuts to the bottom line.
The money was in the bank. The Church Building Fund was swollen to bursting point with parishioners’ donations. Day’s penny-pinching did not save the parishioners a few bob here and there.
He wanted to pocket any money left over. Those big American cars he drove didn’t come cheap.
In the end Terry threw up his hands and walked away from the job.
A local builder, John Blain, won the contract. God only knows what hoops Day made Blain jump through to get it.
And while this madness went on, the church building fund kept ticking over. It became a vast repository of funds, thanks to the generosity of Mildura’s Catholics and the fraud that Day and Kearney had cooked up.
Day’s sermons, often characterised by outrage and a great wringing of hands over the decline of moral standards in young people, would invariably end with demands for more and more money for the building fund. The collection plate went around the church twice at each mass. The morning mass at ten o’clock each Sunday would have the old church full and fit to burst—standing room only down the back. Parishioners would flip their hard-earned into the plate, often under Jim Barritt’s watchful eye. It didn’t end there. After mass, we’d all walk out of the church, past a stall where religious bric-a-brac and spiritual paraphernalia were on sale—crosses, Bibles, rosary beads, prayer cards. You name it, Day would make a quid out of it.
And then there was the mid-week envelope, often delivered to parishioners’ homes by schoolchildren on the walk home from school. It came attached to a begging letter from Day. Others went out in the mail. Parishioners’ wallets and purses were under constant assault.
Money was obtained by fair means and foul. Kearney, the treasurer, didn’t mind where it came from. If the money was black, the light of the Church would render it clean.
John Lavarnos was a businessman who ran a coffee shop in Deakin Avenue which doubled as an illegal
gaming house. There were no roulette wheels or poker machines. The big money changed hands at the card tables. Lavarnos was a pimp, too, and the gamblers could curtail their betting to spend some time with the prostitutes he had walking the floor.
I knew all about what was going on in Deakin Avenue within a few weeks of arriving in Mildura. Trippy had pulled me up and told me that Barritt protected Lavarnos, and the club was hands off to all other police officers.
I could have gone down and knocked the place over any time but if I did, Barritt would have turned my life upside down with dodgy complaints and disciplinary charges. I knew that. I didn’t want the big oaf all over me. I wasn’t interested in sly groggers or gaming anyway. I was trained to catch serious crooks. Barritt could have the bookies, card sharks and pimps. This was the division of labour Barritt had established with other detectives, and he had the uniform boys bluffed so that any complaint about gaming or sly grogging went straight to him anyway.
The Sacred Heart Peace Memorial Church was due to open its doors in 1969. But what great edifice to the glory of God would be complete without a brand new church organ? The old organ was fine. It could have been wheeled into the new church, but Day was having none of that. He put the word out to his trusted lieutenants, Barritt and Kearney, that a new organ was needed. God would not provide. Some big money was needed from a suitable donor in the earthly dimension.
Police reservist Bill Brodie pulled me aside in the CIB office early one Monday morning. As a reservist, Bill was a sort of clerk around the CIB office, helping out with paperwork. He’d retired from the force after thirty years’ service. A big man in his late fifties, he’d been a police champion heavyweight boxer and had played football for North Melbourne in the Victorian Football League. Barritt had brought him into the office to act as a bulwark between himself and me.
It didn’t work out that way. Bill may have been a devout Catholic and a tireless worker for the parish, but he didn’t much care for Barritt and, in his policeman’s way, he knew what Barritt was up to and pretended not to notice. Bill wouldn’t play Barritt’s game. He was too smart for that. He got on with his duties at the police station and kept out of the politics.
I’d been going to mass at Red Cliffs. I wasn’t up to date with the parish chatter in Mildura. I knew the new church was due to open but that was about it.
‘Do you want to hear something funny?’ Bill asked, with a mug of tea in his hand. He had a mischievous grin on his face and that told me I wanted to hear more.
‘Throughout the service everyone was admiring the new church organ. Brand spanking new. Wonderful sound it makes. Must have cost four large at least,’ Bill said, his grin growing wider.
‘Then Day got up and thanked the Holy Name Sodality for our efforts in raising the money to buy the new organ. I’m on the committee. We don’t have two bob to rub together. Johnny Lavarnos paid for that organ. You know how close Jim is to Lavarnos,’ Bill said, as he walked off, laughing.
Lavarnos was no Catholic. He was a man with a distant relationship to God at best. But he had paid for the new organ. It was the cost of doing business in Mildura. Barritt had encouraged Lavarnos to be more community minded. It must have come as a shock. Barritt’s usual backhander from Lavarnos—probably fifty dollars a week to look the other way—was suddenly jacked up to $3000 out of the blue.
Day wanted a new organ for his new church. No worries. Barritt would get the dough.
Lavarnos made a fortune out of his club but his surreptitious donation to the church would have emptied his wallet. Three grand was a lot of dough in 1969. He never did get to listen to the organ he paid for.
Barritt also stood over every SP bookmaker in town. They knew the cost of doing business, too. It was either a backhander or mail to Barritt, but usually both. One bookie had a particularly strange demand made of him.
‘Monsignor Day will have ten quid on the winner of the last race,’ Barritt told him.
The SP knew exactly what that meant.
It wasn’t gambling. It was a sure thing. Whichever horse won the last race, Day would win whatever it paid. If it was an even money favourite, Day pocketed twenty dollars, but if a roughie got up in the get out of jail stakes, he would walk away with two or three hundred.
The arrangement had been going on for years before the church was built. Some of the SP’s dough was going into the building fund. Some of it went straight into Day’s back pocket, depending on how Kearney viewed the accounts.
Barritt was a one-man extortion racket, while Day and Kearney were scrambling for the money to get the church built.
A couple of interstate truckers living in Mildura who liked to fish in the Murray decided to go halves and buy a tinny. They agreed that one would buy the boat, the other the outboard motor, figuring that was more or less a fifty-fifty deal.
The trucker whose responsibility it was to buy the motor bought one that had fallen off the back of a truck, so to speak. He’d been unloading his truck at a depot in Footscray and a Flash Harry had offered him a deal on an outboard motor— a third off the retail price. The trucker must have known it was hot but he only told his mate that he had picked up a bargain. The trucker who’d purchased the tinny itself didn’t have a clue so when he took the motor in for repairs to the local shop, the motor came up stolen and the police were called in.
Barritt took charge of the investigation. The trucker who had bought the hot motor was dragged into the station. He was told he’d be charged for receiving. The trucker was aghast. He could lose his job over this. Was there nothing that could be done?
As it turned out, there was. The church building fund was in need of cash. If the trucker agreed to put some money in— a couple of grand in today’s money—Barritt could guarantee he would avoid a conviction. It seemed like a pretty sweet deal to the trucker. He made a statement acknowledging that he had realised the motor was hot when he bought it.
Meanwhile, Barritt headed out to the trucker’s mate’s place and started heavying him. The motor was stolen and he too would be charged, Barritt told him. The poor bloke was innocent, but that didn’t matter. Barritt ordered him to report to the police station to make a statement. The bloke maintained his innocence, so Barritt told him to go home and stay there while the investigation continued.
The following morning, the guilty trucker appeared at Mildura Court bright and early. The clerk of the courts, Kearney, made sure the trucker came up first before the magistrate, Joe Hayes, and on the basis of a glowing character reference from Barritt, the man was given a six-month good behaviour bond. At Barritt’s request he was required to attend the police station on his way home. The fellow was relieved that he had avoided a conviction and thanked Barritt for his kind words in the court.
‘You don’t have to thank me,’ Barritt said. ‘Make a donation to the church building fund. And make it a big one.’
The abashed trucker babbled out that he would do as he was told.
‘And your mate,’ Barritt growled. ‘He has to put his hand in his pocket for the building fund, too.’
The two truckers met later that day. They knew they were being extorted and they weren’t happy about it. They knew also that Barritt would make life unbearable for them if they didn’t pony up to Monsignor John Day’s building fund. Barritt would put them on the hit list with the mobile traffic boys, and they’d be pulled over every time they drove down the highway. Reluctantly, they got out their cheque books. They paid a hundred dollars each in cheques made payable to the Sacred Heart building fund and dropped them off directly at the church.
That was just one rort. I only found out about it later, when there was an investigation into Barritt. There wasn’t an SP bookie or sly grogger in Mildura that Barritt hadn’t shaken down for money to build this new edifice for the glory of God.
Barritt had no visible signs of wealth, no opulent cars or other affectations of the wealthy. He had no children and lived comfortably in a modest house. He was a punter and a big o
ne, but the way he stood over the SPs around town meant he was betting with their money, not his.
The money went straight into the hands of Kearney and Day. Day did have expensive habits. Big cars. Fine wines. And most expensive of all, his building projects.
It is a dirty little secret not much talked about by the people of Mildura. The Sacred Heart Peace Memorial Church, consecrated in August 1969, owed its existence at least in part to dirty money, corruptly obtained. From the church organ to the very bricks and mortar, black money built and furnished this edifice to the glory of God.
Day’s promotion to dean in 1967 enhanced his authority in the Mildura parish, and his power grew beyond it. As dean he had the right to examine all Church records within his own parish as well as a number of neighbouring parishes within the Ballarat diocese. He had additional pastoral duties to all priests within the diocese and was responsible for their well-being, both spiritual and mortal.
Day was a lover of pageantry and costume, the trappings of the Church. He wore the black cassock of a priest, the black signifying death and resurrection; the collar, a sign of obedience; the sash or cincture around his waist, a sign of his chastity. At the big Italian weddings in Mildura, Day was resplendent in his white vestments, which he also wore on Christmas and Easter Sunday and for christenings. Come Advent and Lent, Day was decked out in purple. On Good Friday it was red to signify the blood of Christ. On any ordinary Sunday not combined with some church festival, Day would stand proudly, dressed in his emerald green vestments.
He was always immaculately attired and his vestments were redolent of dry-cleaning fluids. He always looked like he’d just stepped out of a glass case in some liturgical museum. Day observed the pomp and ceremony of the Church more than other priests. It was part of his conceit, standing in front of the congregation as if he was their monarch, their ruler, their tyrant.
The vestments and the ceremonies are deeply arcane, immersed in the rituals of the Church. The intricacies are beyond the understanding of most Catholics, including me. So how could it be that I found myself wearing Day’s vestments? It is some sort of rich irony that would see me wearing Father Day’s priestly clothes in public.