CAMP CONCENTRATION

Authors Note: This is a semi-autobiographical account (an excerpt from the main unpublished autobiography) of my imprisonment as a 11 year old boy in the West Australian State Government borstal institution, Hillston Farm for Boys (1978 - 1980). With the exception of minor changes, this account is entirely factual, (though not an exhaustive  and comprehensive account of the abuse), including the identities of the Wards and Staff.  

This narrative remains a work in progress. 

Please be aware - I am at best an amateur scribe, at worst an unintelligible scribbler. Therefore I welcome your feedback.

Standard copyright licensing applies to this publication including selected images. 
Contact the Author @ fpanaia@gmail.com for licensing information.

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“Their torture was a comfort to the living.” Mario Puzo

Camp Concentration

SIX HUNDREDS METERS was the length of the driveway from Stoneville Road to the Hillston Farm School for Boys administration block. A driveway that snaked between dense scrub, bordered by blackboy stumps on both sides, its depth into the Australian bush increased the anxiety of the three new arrivals, bringing them it seemed, to a point of no return. The red faced foul mouthed driver, whose one inch nicotine stained incisors stank of decay, pulled up at the front of the Admin building next to two waiting groupworkers.  Toohey slid open the door of the Bedford van, to fire off a traditional snipe, in that sarcastic argot so typical of the British, “Welcome to your new home lads.”

The 600 Metre Driveway to the Main Complex.

Stiff from the one hour journey from the Longmore Assessment Centre, located in the Perth metropolitan, the three passengers poured out from the van to be promptly greeted with commands to stand behind the white line and shut up. One of the two grim faced groupworkers stood behind the line, while the other led the Wards into the cell block. Senior Groupworker John Eric La Puma, a dwarfish five-foot Mediterranean migrant, with a Bonapartist sized ego, stuck his equally massive head out of the staff duty room to welcome the new meat.

“Well what have we got here?” he sneered pointing to Frankie, demanding, “what’s your name?”

“Frankie Panaia,” he said.

“Frankie Paaneeha what?” La Puma countered, typically mispronouncing the surname.

“Frankie Panaia,” then after a provocative pause, added “sir!”

“I can see we are going to have problems with you aren’t we Paaneeha ”

Frankie held his tongue, trying to return the burning glare of the diminutive brute.

“I asked you a question Paaneeha . Now fucking answer me boy!”

“No,” said Frankie.

“No fucking what Paaneeha?”

“No sir.”

“Ill be keeping an eye on you shithead,” promised La Puma, as he shifted onto the next boy.

Satisfied he had instilled a sufficient degree of fear into the new admissions, a welcoming ritual in most male prisons, La Puma dismissed the trio to their cells, with orders to make them up. La Puma, or as he was colloquially  known among the prisoners, The Puma, was the shortest and ironically, the most feared Hillston groupworker. He had been known to drop boys twice his size, with a sharp left hook, or a smashing right backhand. Like a pig in muck, he was in his element, empowered to physically and mentally torment boys at will. Imprisoning naked boys in naked cells, starving them for days and teasing them hourly, by stuffing his maw outside their cell door viewing pane, with biscuits and cakes, afforded him great pleasure. His usual modus operandi was to place a plate of hot food on the cell floor, teasing the pubescent occupant, who had been confined for days, stripped of everything. Under these conditions, the Puma would threaten the ravenous Ward, he would return in an hour, and if the bangers, peas and mash had been so much as whiffed, confinement would be extended for another three days, complemented with a swift backhand. 

So pervasive was the collective fear of The Puma, inmates would try to forecast his shifts, steeling themselves against the Mediterranean despot. Undeniably a repugnant brute, La Puma though, stood apart from the common anglicised sadist, who had wormed their way into turnkey careers, from the mitigating fact, he made no attempt to conceal his tyranny from colleagues and Wards alike. There was, although, one dirty crime the child predator La Puma did manage to hide from his colleagues, the hideous nature of which, would not see the light of day for four decades. La Puma was, in between beating and starving little boys, raping them.

Hillston Veranda and Parade Ground - Post Closure.
Concrete Cell Bars Removed from Cell Exterior.

Paradoxically named after birds of prey, the Falcon, Eagle and Raven, avian avatars of freedom, the three cell blocks fed off the staff duty room. Each of the cell corridors or in Orweillian welfare newspeak, cabin houses, contained twenty cells. Accommodated in Falcon House, Frankie tailed the groupworker down the corridor to his new home for the next year. Along the way to his cell, Frankie heard the familiar cell block din of clanging and cursing. In a voice instantly recognizable to Frankie’s ears, the words, “fuck fuck fuck you fucking maggots fuck you,” emanated from the bottom of the cell corridor. The groupworker ahead of Frankie snapped, “shut ya cake ole Birnie!”

“Fuck you ya poxy dog,” came the reply, and the drone like banging continued.

Groupworker Wigmore muttered what a turd Jamie Birnie is, unbolted Frankie’s cell door, and instructed him to make up the bed. Apart from the bed, the cell contained a cement table and a large unbreakable back wall window, reinforced with brick-sized concrete bars that zigzagged the other side of the window. There being no toilets in the cells, inmates were forced to discipline their bladders for the ten hours each night they were locked down. Those who insisted on demanding toilet access, usually in the small hours of the morning, did so at their own peril, and had to silently slide their towel under the cell door, and patiently wait unto one of the two night shift groupworkers spotted the signal. A days loss of privileges, commonly known by its acronym of L.O.P., was the standard sanction for inconveniencing a night shift groupworker for the privilege of a piddle.

All three corridors were spotlessly clean. Their floorboards shimmering from the countless backbreaking and knee-bruising stripping, sealing and polishing they had enjoyed over the years. Raven house corridor continued on to the ablution block, a perverse construction, where the toilets and showers afforded no privacy whatsoever. Five commodes were lined up alongside the other, all facing the entrance of the ablutions, and as with the shower cubicles, were without privacy panels. Consequently, boys from the ages of nine to eighteen would shower and shit in front of everyone, including Hillston’s two female groupworkers. Evacuating his bowels in front of people would take some getting used to for Frankie, who cherished his privacy above all else.

Adjacent to the ablution block was the dining room and kitchen where many acts of violence took place perpetrated by kids and staff alike. Each of the three sections faced the parade courtyard where the eight musters took place daily. A spotless wide green veranda stretched around the L shaped form of the main block. Running on this veranda incurred a days LOP.

Spread across the ten hectares of land, was the dairy and cow paddock, horse stable, vegetable garden, two school mobiles, wood and metal workshops, swimming pool, gymnasium, staff housing, chapel and a semi-independent housing unit, (Silver City), which accommodated selected and privilaged older inmates  Erected stone by stone, the Anglican chapel was completed by the inmates in the early sixties. This foundation of callous protestant zeal remains standing, along with the gymnasium, in testament to the untold toil and abuse endured by so many. Fifteen years before Frankie’s arrival, when the original institution was the Anglican Farm School, privately superintended by protestant chiliasts, the Victorian workhouse farm prided itself from its slave like conditions, of being largely self-sufficient. In those days, inmates were tasked to maintain,  sustain and fortify their own prison. Alas those were the good old days, when boys could be beaten senseless and worked till they dropped.

Main Courtyard or Parade. Boys as Young as 9 Years 
were Regimentally Paraded Here at Least 8 Times Daily.

The good old days…how many times had Frankie heard and would hear some British brute hark back to the good old days, relishing the permissible brutalities against children. “Years ago”, the poltroons would typically reminisce, “boys who absconded would have their feet and hands tied for a day, and that was after they got a good hiding. Ah the good old days. You boys don’t know how lucky you are,” and saying so, the groupworker would march his adolescent charges up and down the parade ground under the scorching heat of forty two degrees, or have them scrubbing corridor floors or kitchen pots until the flesh of their fingers chapped, or entomb them in absolute darkness in a specially modified punishment cell not much larger than a toilet cubicle, or turn a blind eye, while an older boy punched in to him, or fill his belly with second and third servings in front of boys, malnourished from punishment, or remind them how fucking useless and evil they were, while blessing the achievements of their own sprogs, or ridiculing them for being so piss weak, because they were sick with a temperature of thirty nine, and could not keep up with the other Wards during morning PT.

Staff Car Park and Rear Cell Block Exterior - Post Closure.
Concrete Window Bars Partially Removed

Still shy of his teens, eleven year old Frankie was assigned to the mobile school unit, one hundred metres east of the cell block. Split into junior and senior classes, the two school demountables were positioned on the scrub’s perimeter. Over the following months, Frankie wasted away in this asbestos furnace, with his equally disinterested classmates, killing the monotonous hours by expending their unused intellect to the appropriation of tobacco. One desperate pupil cut up strips of cane and smoked them like any ordinary fag. Steven Predjil missed his nicotine so much, he would shadow the perpetual pipe-smoking teacher Alistair Leonard, sucking up his exhalations, as they went to and from muster.

Hillston School Demountable: 

Teachers A. Leonard Furthermost, K. Griffiths Nearest

A muster was called before and after every meal, including the morning and afternoon teas. Inmates lined up in the middle of the parade ground, dressed in navy blue work fatigues and steel capped boots. Here they would stand to attention, while being counted and cursed by groupworkers. The heat in the Mundaring hills could climb to the mid forties, and it was not uncommon, for the more delicate boys to collapse during the muster, when it was extended from imperfections in form and deference.

Apart from the high security cell block, the major barrier against absconding from Hillston, was its remoteness, with the closest residential area of Mundaring town located six kilometres away. One runner a week, was the Hillston average, usually occurring on the weekends, when the regime was slightly more liberal. Most absconders were recaptured within twenty-four hours, many still on the farm itself. Because Hillston was mostly ringed by bush, the fugitive child invariably made a beeline for the exposed and therefore hazardous route of the six hundred-metre driveway. Punishment for absconding was an excruciating seven days L.O.P., where boys half-starved were expected to carry their weight from the morning physical training, or PT, to the daily chores. It was not uncommon, especially in those 'good old days', for the older boys, usually the agile Aborigines to chase, capture and flog the absconder. Absconding was on everyone’s mind at Hillston, and whenever the boys mustered for a meal, or moved from one section to another, staff strategically encircled them, as cowboys corral cattle on the open plains.

Driveway Hillston Complex.

The prisoner composition of Hillston was much alike Longmore, but without the girls, whose inclusion in any State juvenile institution Frankie observed, assured some level of civility and comfort, and protection against brutality and deprivation. Urbanized Whites and Noongars were evenly divided in number; a population augmented with around a dozen desert full bloods, also known as Blueblacks and Wongis. Wards and staff alike feared the Blueblacks, and consequently institutional life for them, was a great deal easier than for the rest. With many bearing ritual and payback scars, some of who, were unable to understand Australian, the Wongis had a tendency, when riled, to maul their antagonist, regardless of consequences and obstacles. The Puma himself, avoided tormenting the explosive natives, preferring instead the docile whites. Blueblacks though, suffered their own torments. Torn from closely knit tribes, where sleeping in isolation was unheard of, let alone in a tomb like cavity of a cell, they would occasionally rent the deathly silent mornings, with blood-curdling screams from the visitations of Feather Foots and Bone Pointers. Some of the more traditional indigenous boys, after completing the white man’s justice, still had to face the tribal justice of having their thighs and calves speared.

Hillston Chapel: Hand Built by Prisoner Wards.
Chapel Remains - Boarded Up Due to Repeat Vandalism.

Alienated by both Western and traditional Indigenous populations, the part-aboriginal Noongars tended to be the most antisocial and violent of the lot, forever thumping each other, or a whitey. Graham Trevor Walley, Greg Quartermaine, Leon Derschow and Jack Mourish were four angry and displaced 'half-castes' sharing Frankie’s cell block, and delighted in bullying their white neighbours. All four boys would eventually reach prison, with Graham perishing in a Roebourne police cell at the age of twenty-two, reportedly by his own hand, while Greg‘s exhausted and substance abused heart quitting sixteen years later in a Hakea Prison isolation cell. In 2004, Jack Mourish, an aspiring footballer, died by the needle, again in Hakea, formerly Casuarina Prison. Against incredible odds, the notorious Leon James Derschow, survived until 2021, departing at the age of 55.

Leon Derschow 55 (2021)

Jack Mourish 37 Yrs (Hakea Prison) herion overdose 2004.

Disunity was rife among the white Wards, subjecting them not only to the violence of the blacks, but also themselves, a common trend throughout West Australia institutions. An exchange blows usually resulted from a genuine grievance and more frequently a stronger opponent beating up on a weaker one. Physically or mentally weak constituted most institutionalized weaklings. Domenic Sansalone, physically and mentally disadvantaged, in addition to being an 'inferior wog', won the trifecta for the perfect weakling. Consequently, he was the favourite subject of everyone’s derision, bar the resident bitch, Sheba, and if Sheba wasn’t such an indolent obese canine, she likely would have had a bite of him as well.

Earlier that year, Domenic inexplicably set the Bassendean Football Club on fire; an allegation that gained him notoriety for years to come. Morphologically, his body resembled a huge pear, with his head peaking to a point, and his waist, the size of beach ball. His face was pockmarked with deep scars, where pimples had once protruded, before they were diligently extirpated by his razor-sharp fingernails. A most unfortunate boy, Domenic was brain damaged, but not enough to disqualify him from the benefits of borstal life, because like a gormless beast, he could still obey orders and buckle under the force of violence.

Frankie greeted Domenic Salami Sansalone, glad to meet another confessed wog. This ethnic camaraderie soon dissolved, when he was teased for associating with the Salami. Domenic himself would turn on Frankie, whenever he saw the tide turning against him. Years later Frankie, then 17 years of age, met up with Domenic  in the protective yard of Fremantle prison and learned, he was not responsible for the football club arson, but was forced to confess so, by Perth’s 'finest'. Perth finest, New York’s finest and London’s finest, were specious Orwellian phrases, Frankie could never stomach. “Finest of what?” he would demand of his fellow social work students in his second semester several years later. “Yeah,” he continued to the stunned cadets in sycophancy, “necking drunk Abos at every given opportunity and popping every second mentally ill male they come across in the street, is just downright dandy.” 

Leon Derschow (1965 -2021) The Amateur Boxer,
his favourite involuntary sparring partners were white fellas including this Author

Graham Trevor Walley (1966 -1988) 
Graham was the subject of the Royal Commission into Deaths into Custody
which details events  / background leading up to his suicide at 22 years of age

Fifteen years after his prison encounter with The Salami, Frankie spied his unmistakable pear shaped silhouette, in the main Perth City mall, in a pungent haze of alcohol and body odour, accompanied by three wasted itinerants. There he was, changed only in height, with a slightly increased girth, and still wearing trousers around his backside, exposing his pockmarked cheeks to the citizens of Perth. It was refreshing for Frankie to know, he was alive and a perennial burden on the State.

Domenic Sansalone (2016) - 36 Years Post Hillston Admission. 

Mark Truslove, ostracised also by boys and staff alike, was assigned to the farm work detail. Stocky and tall, the anglophile Truslove tolerated little crap from inmates or staff. Renowned for explosive violence, Truslove was elevated alongside the untouchable Blueblacks. This reputation of frenzied violence, is in prison yard and juvenile hall alike, the key to an easier unmolested life, where both Screw and Con share an equal apprehension of the unpredictability of homicidal explosions. Once demonstrated, eternally remembered. A fact Frankie would fully appreciate years later in the raw brutality of prison life. “What you have to do,” counselled Lou Cafaro, a celebrated boxer and car thief, “is smack the crap outta another Crim on the same day you arrive. Doesn’t matter who, what matters is that you smash them, with as much noise and violence possible, in front as many Crims as possible. That way, Crims and Screws, will leave ya alone and respect ya.”  Lou's  pupil in convict culture, nodded his head in deferential comprehension, but internally, Frankie couldn't reconcile the injustice of attacking another person, for the sole reason of making an example of him

Frankie first met Luciano during his second spell in the Longmore institution, where he had first been detained, prior to his transfer to Hillston, and then again, after his release from the same reformatory, and his farcical sojourn into Magna Grecia. 

Lou Cafaron (R) in his boxing prime

Lou Cafaro - far left

In 1980, Frankie had been intercepted by welfare at Perth International Airport, after returning from Italy, following a spectacular failure in an attempt to reunite Frankie with his ageing Calabrese father. Hillston After-Care Officer, Theo Merrifield, was tasked to restore Frankie into welfare custody on the basis, he remained a “placement problem.” As Merrifield explained during the car ride from the airport: "no-one here in Perth wants you Panaia, so its back to Longmore." A fatigued Frankie protested, pointing out, he hadn't as yet, broken any West Australian laws, as he had just walked off a QANTAS airplane. Merrifield was unmoved, reminding Frankie, he was still a State Ward. The injustice of this arbitrary detention proved to be a watershed moment for Frankie, who silently vowed to have his revenge.

Luciano Cafaro was a typical Neapolitan, carefree, boisterous and unpredictable. At sixteen, his face was already sporting the hall marks of a veteran boxer, with his flattened nose and cauliflower ears. He befriended both Frankie and groupworker Jean Bodden, creating a clique, with the three of them grouping together at every opportunity. As usual, when anyone offered Frankie genuine friendship, he sought to reciprocate a thousand-fold. He idolized Lou, hovering about him like a satellite, making it clear, he would do anything for him, wanting nothing more than to embark on a lifetime of camorra gangsterism together.

Longmore Assessment Courtyard: 
Author Became the Ping Pong Champion

Two months into Frankie’s undetermined sentence, Lou and Frankie completed an unusually quiet breakfast together. Today, Lou was scheduled for release from Longmore. Frankie showed little emotion, and saw his pazan off with a typical jailhouse farewell. “See ya next week Lou,” and “I’ll keep your dining room seat for ya cuz.”

A fortnight later, Lou Cafaro was back in Longmore and the newspaper, accused of a record number of car thefts. Frankie was overjoyed, and greeted him on the veranda with a hug, and forgetting his hostile racist anglophile environment, attempted to kiss him mafia style.

Facing a long term of incarceration, Lou appealed to his greatest fan, and pressed him to aid him in an escape. “Frankie when are you going on this day trip to the city?” he asked.

“Dunno its up to the Senior, why Lou?”

“Listen I have an idea about us making a team.”

Desperately Frankie said, “yeah like what?”

“Well if you go on this day trip, can you do a runner?”

“Sure I think,” and in a burst of comprehension, “why, you want me to bust you out?”

“Shh keep it down man, fuck every-.”

“Sorry Lou, I’m sorry,” he pleaded.

“Okay okay. Now listen how many groupworkers will go with you?”

“I’m not sure Lou, I think only one.”

“Ripper. You know who?”

“Not yet. What do you want me to do?”

“Break me outta this hole.”

“You betcha Lou, but how?”

“You gotta come back to my cabin window and cut the bars.”

Frankie furiously thought about the feasibility of this, and asked, “what about the poxy roof alarms?”

“Maybe that’s bullshit, anyway you should be able see them.”

“But Lou can you fit through the window, its fucking small man?”

“Fuck, of course I can. I’ve gone through smaller holes than that”, boasted the recidivist car thief, the sexual innuendo of his reply, lost on the pubescent accomplice.

“Yeah yeah,” Frankie exclaimed, his excitement intensifying, “but how do I cut the poxy bars Lou?”

“I tell you later,” said Lou, who realised their deep confabulation was arousing the curiosity of others.

The Great Escape Plan - Diagram of Longmore Assessment Division       
 Author (1980). The Sentence "Are U Hungry" was a Ruse
 In Case Staff Confiscated the 'Plan'.

In every Longmore cell, a delinquent proof window panel, not much larger than a rear windscreen of a Fiat 500, reinforced for good measure with a solid iron grill, teasingly separated inmates from imminent freedom. At least ten feet high, the height of this aperture made it unreachable for most juveniles, even when they stood on the desk slab that extended out from the wall beneath the window, reducing the reach by three feet. It was nearly impossible for a boy to break out of his cell without aid, and notwithstanding his own physical handicaps, boys and cells were regularly searched for objects that could be used to facilitate an escape. Only once did a Longmore inmate escape from his cell. James Dickie, a uniquely introverted Noongar, had managed with a spoon, he had smuggled from the kitchen, to excavate an iron rod cemented into the air vent under his bed. With this iron rod that produced the same effect of a carpenter’s hammer, he chipped his egress through the bricks directly below the window. It took him five nights to smash his way through, as he could only hammer, when the piped radio blasted into each cell for one hour. Dickie was lucky, as although his tunnelling through the bricks could be heard in the cell block, it could not be detected in the staff duty room. When patrolling staff did hear the digging, they ignored it, dismissing it as tomfoolery. The day following Dickie’s escape, every cell vent was hermetically sealed.

Frankie never fully understood why, from a muster of 50 Longmore inmates, many of whom were vastly more deserving, from their compliant behaviour, he had been granted the privilege of a day excursion. Jean Bodden said it was because since his return from Italy,  he had not been convicted with any crime, and was thus entitled to special treatment. This explanation seemed plausible, and Frankie gave it no more thought. Had Frankie been cognitively able to analyse this special privilege deeper, he would have realised it was a setup. He was being played by the Longmore management, who rightly predicted, Frankie would abscond and offend, thus revoking his indignant status of an innocent prisoner. His imprisonment sans convictions had provoked some of the more decent groupworkers to openly question the legitimacy of his detention. Unbeknown to Frankie, his incarceration in Longmore was developing into a political issue among the staffing population. This was ironic, given the reality, the majority of staff, including the executive, despised Frankie because of his chronic bellicosity.

The highly anticipated excursion day arrived. Frankie was dressed and ready for his ambitious, though patently absurd adventure. Jean pulled him aside after breakfast, and for the third time that morning, exhorted him to behave, “now my darling you behave with Mrs Robertson today okay.”

“Yep Mrs Bodden.”

“Don’t do anything silly hon.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you adore Lou and listen to everything he says, but remember dear, he is in a lot of trouble now.”
“So what?” he said defensively.

“I just reminding you hon he is older and smarter than you okay.”

“Uh huh.”

“This day leave is a chance to show us how well you can behave and be trusted, so please don’t do anything stupid like running away hon. Because if you do, it will give Longmore a real reason to keep you here.”

Unable to raise his eyes above Jean’s buxom breasts, a popular talking point among numerous male Wards and groupworkers, Frankie mumbled an unconvincing assurance.

In the city, Debra Robertson turned her back on Frankie in the Hay Street Mall to study the latest fashion in shoes, giving him the chance to part company without drama. He tore back up Hay Street towards the first arcade, making a beeline to what was possibly the ugliest bus terminal in the southern hemisphere, soliciting his bus fare from pedestrians along the way. The Northern Suburbs bus dropped him off at Main Street, a stone’s throw from his family's rented house in Osborne Park. Carefully avoiding the house, he strode towards his old high school of a single term, Tuart Hill High.

Perth's Once Most Notorious Car Thieves: the Cafaro Brothers (WA News 1986)

When he was convinced the cleaners had left, Frankie entered the High School grounds, and having never entered the workshops during his brief enrolment, had to conjecture to their location. He soon navigated his way to the metal workshop, fortunately located on ground level. The workshop windows, partly concealed by a hedge inspired further confidence in his undertaking, although he decided to wait for complete darkness, as Lou’s liberty, rather than his, rested on the success of this operation. The window cracked after the second assault, and he carefully picked at the loose shards, before his cautiously stuck his hand in and released the latch. Frankie pulled himself in and promptly stumbled, tripping over tools and machines in the darkness. Having no alternative, he switched on the light and furiously seized the necessary tools; a hammer, screwdriver, chisel and most critical of all, a hacksaw. Of equal importance was a receptacle, and he rushed about the workshop in desperation, anxious his carefully planned mission was to be thwarted for want of a bag. After a few frantic moments, he located a vintage leather medical satchel lying in the corner. He piled the tools inside the bag, and with an effort hauled the bag, equal in its weight to its contents, outside the window. 

Old Doctor's Bag Similar to That Used by Author  

Discomfort and excitement robbed him of any chance of sleep that night, compelling him to begin moving at dawn. At one pm, after several misdirections and detours, he arrived at the Western Australian Institute of Technology, and found what he thought, was a quiet place on the grass to rest and rehearse his plans.

Longmore’s perimeter fence wire was visible from where Frankie rested. He stared intently at the institution, pondering his chances of success. Fatigue eventually overcame him, and he leaned back onto the heavy bag of tools, closing his eyes. He was woken an hour later by a concerned student, who asked if he was okay.

A prostrate Frankie stared up at the stooped form and squinted from the sun, trying to comprehend the situation.

“Oh um er yeah, I’m just waiting for someone,” he replied, and then sat erect determined not to sleep again. He steeled himself for a further wait of what he estimated was another five hours.

Perth City Bus Station 1970s

After what seemed to be the longest and most anxious wait in his life, Frankie stood up ready for action. He slowly made his way towards Longmore’s unguarded boundary fence, certain the later his entry, the safer it would be. At nine pm, his patience utterly depleted, Frankie stowed his bag of tools in a nearby shrub, and recklessly cased the barbed wire fence, searching for an insertion point, unaware groupworker and self-declared karate expert Greg Antonovich, was doing a security check around a corner pole.

“Hey Panaia, stop there, hey!”

Frankie’s exhausted mind considered his options. He began to make a move, when Antonovich, after scaling the fence in an instant, grabbed hold of his collar and declared, “gotcha sonny.” In a way Frankie was relieved he had been caught, bringing an end to a  thirty six-hour ordeal of hunger, anxiety and boredom.

Pan-optic Longmore Remand and Assessment Centre:
Inclusion of Female Wards Dramatically Reduced Abuse Risk from Staff

At Hillston, Mark Truslove knocked on Frankie’s classroom door and asked the teacher if one of the boys could help him haul wheat from the silos situated at the back of school demountables. Leonard looked around the class and asked for a volunteer. Frankie thrust his hand in air, happy at a diversion from the boredom of classroom life.

Frankie was filling the bucket with wheat, when Mark partly covered by a blackboy, unzipped his shorts and said, “Hey Frankie.”

“Yeah what?” Frankie cautiously answered, conscious of Mark’s poofter reputation.

“Come over here.”

“Why?” he asked suspiciously.

“Just come over here I wanna show you something.”

“Show me what?”

“Come over here and I will show you.”

Bucket in hand, Frankie walked towards the blackboy bush hiding Mark’s right hand, which was clasped around his penis.

“Do you want me to give you a head-job?”

Head-job, Frankie thought, what the fuck is a head-job, I hear this all the time on parade, whenever one of those bitch groupworkers is in sight.

“Nah,” he said.

“Aw come on Frankie, no one will know, we’re alone here,” persisted Mark.

“Yeah I know, but I don’t do those things,” he said, still not sure what those things were, then for good measure, explained, “I'm not a poofter because I like girls.”

Truslove desisted in the seduction, when he saw the object of his Hellenic lust, heading back to the school demountable.

Mark Anthony Truslove was still fighting in 2014

Prone to explosive acts of violence himself, Chef Roersma was the unofficial, but indisputable lord of Hillston. In control of the pantry, the goldmine in all borstals where discipline generally centred on tucker, he intimidated everyone. In the good old days, he was known to hurl kitchen utensils at unruly boys and verbal abuse at disagreeable staff. For fifteen years, this cantankerous cook lived on the grounds, with his overweight canine bitch Sheba and bedridden wife Nancy, and from Hillston’s heart, the kitchen, he had seen and done it all.

At ten thirty am, fifty boys and twelve groupworkers filed noisily into the dining room for morning tea. The cacophony of voices was unusually loud today, and Chef Roersma was fast losing the little patience he had. A curt shut up burst from his nicotine-discoloured lips, briefly quelling the racket. “This is my kitchen”, Roersma thought, and “I am not going to put up with this shit. By God I am still boss in here, even though the place is overrun with bleeding heart psychologists and the like”. An aluminium-serving tray was seized, and the Chef smashed it down on the stainless steel surface of the serving counter. The ear-shattering clang effected instant silence. The regnant Roersma looked over the stunned and now silent mass from the throne that was his servery, and declared: “Good, now that I’ve got your attention, shut up! I can’t hear myself think,” and then went back to his duties.

Hillston School Demountable: Since Demolished

Like most observers, Frankie was undecided whether Roersma was mad or bad, although after witnessing the meat hook incident, the latest in a long and unchecked history of violent episodes, he was inclined to the former. It was on a Wednesday afternoon, when Frankie was serving out his week on kitchen roster, a duty abhorred by all inmates, when two boys dared to turn on each other, while Chef Roersma was yarning with the supervising groupworker. Without warning, Roersma grabbed a meat cleaver and flung it towards the combatants, sending the heavy utensil over their heads, missing them by inches. “I’ll ring your necks you cunts. No one fights in my kitchen without my say so,” he explained.

One of the most decent staff members at Hillston was the new superintendent, Philip Bowyer. A slim sixty year old career psychologist, Bowyer was remarkable for his shiny bald forehead and snow white Santa Claus beard. He inherited the position from a protestant predecessor, who was nothing short of a despot, and in trying to humanize the borstal regime, was promptly alienated by Hillston staff, substantially diminishing both his authority and enthusiasm.

Inside Hillston Classroom

A month into his indefinite detention at Hillston, Frankie had figured Bill Ward and Garry Weggelaar, as the only two decent groupworkers in Hillston. Frankie befriended Bill in his first week, nominating him as his caseworker. A stocky Anglo-Australian, with a shock of auburn hair, Ward impressed Frankie by never raising a hand, or uttering an insult in public against the kids. In Frankie’s opinion, he was a kind man, and deserved the best of what he had to offer. The best being his determination not to abuse, mock and bait him as did with the rest of the rubbish.

Senior groupworker Garry Weggelaar, a gruff six foot four Dutchman, sporting a brutal crew cut, was a gentleman at heart. Frankie had seen him in fits of temper half garrotte unruly boys during musters and then, the following day, turn a blind eye to the major offence of attempting to abscond. He was a man of contradictions, clearly undergoing turmoil, having to stomach for years the odious abuses perpetrated around him, by predators such as The Puma. He left the service one year later, unable to deal with the mindless and destructive incarceration of children. Youths, he surmised, would be recycled through the 'unconquerable' system, more damaged and brutalised, with each cycle.

Hillston Chapel Plaque 1961

Frankie’s sentence in Hillston was, from his juvenile perspective, almost a lifetime, by the fact he was "committed to the care of the Director for Child Welfare until 18 years of age". Shanghaied from Longmore, because he had reported a groupworker for assault, he was labelled a placement problem and could technically “remain in care” until the 'problem' was resolved. Several days after his first case conference, Frankie, under the pretext of collecting firewood for the classroom absconded. He instinctively sought shelter in the surrounding scrub, bolting towards the driveway.

Beneath the hanging prickly pines of a blackboy, two hundred meters from the main complex, and several metres from the driveway, Frankie painfully burrowed himself.  Squatting in the brush for the next two hours, he understood from past experience, the pursuit is always at its hottest, immediately following the escape. Within fifteen minutes after concealing himself, he heard the approaching voice of groupworker Neil Schorer, the athletic hockey player, chatting with a colleague, as they scoured the scrub nearby. Frankie wriggled closer to the stump of the blackboy, seconds before they passed him in an arm’s length.  Fuck, he thought, they're all over the place, I'll have to double back and go through the poxy bush to the other side, wherever that side fucking is. 

A little before sunset, he made his move, heading deeper into the scrub, past the dairy, thinking he would not get lost because he would remember the trees he passed. Within twenty minutes he stopped dead in his tracks. It occurred to him, he had just completed a circle, passing the same gum tree. “Oh no I’m fucking lost and I’m going to die out here,” he cried aloud.

Frankie guessed there was ten minutes left of daylight. The fugitive bolted again, desperate now, not to flee, but to see Hillston. More by luck than navigation, he spotted a stock fence, and raced towards it, momentarily forgetting his outlaw status.

Behind the stock fence, he crouched and surveyed the paddock for signs of life. Jill Van der Spill, one of two female groupworkers to be propositioned from a distance for a headjob, by the bigger boys, was stabling a horse. He watched her until she left, and then ran into the stable and rested. Famished from missing two meals, and possibly circumventing the enormous Hillston perimeter twice, he trudged back to the main compound, with no plan in mind, other than to find food. He lurked behind the kitchen until Russel, the other Chef, departed for home. Hoping against the odds, he tried the rear kitchen door and back windows. Nothing gave, not even the corner dining room window, he secretly unlatched earlier in the week. The brisk sound of marching, mixed with excited voices from the direction of the gym, interrupted his frustration. Top Group inmates had just returned from the canteen, located in one of the gymnasium’s lockers. A weekly canteen spend was allowed at Hillston under strict conditions, with a maximum spending limit of thirty cents. Credit was accrued from good behaviour, or, as the boys euphemistically described it, “suckoling.” The notion of that candy lying unguarded in the canteen, gave Frankie new inspiration. Fuck the kitchen, I’ll go for the canteen, he decided.

Kitchen / Dining Room - Rear View

Inspection of the canteen convinced Frankie, he would have to employ violence. The tuck shop, situated at the side of the gym building, could only be accessed through the door, or the window above the door. Well the door will be locked, Frankie assumed, so I’ll have to go through the window, but that’s ten feet off the ground. Seized with hunger, Frankie racked his brains for a solution to overcome this obstacle of height. A ladder! That’s it! A ladder, there’s one in the dairy shed, he remembered. Instantly, he made his way to the shed, and with some difficulty, and a real risk of being bitten by a red-black, found the ladder. He lingered in the gloomy darkness of the shed, contemplating the task ahead.

Strategically the best time for forced entry, he analysed, would be when the afternoon shift knocks off at nine-thirty pm, leaving just two groupworkers for the night shift.  An awful hour of hunger and anxiety finally passed, before he returned to the gym, lugging with him, the heavy rusted-iron ladder. Against the wall, he gently rested the ladder, and went outside to take another look at the duty room on the far side of the parade ground. The chilly night was dead quiet, and in great need of those noisy bough-bending breezes that so often roar through the Australian bush during the sun's celestial repose. Frankie went back inside, mounted the ladder, and tried to force the window.

Hillston Tuck-Shop: Housed in the Gymnasium

“Shit shit shit,” he cursed, when the window refused to budge. He reeled about in the darkness, ten feet in the air, in hungry frustration. He ducked outside again, and tried to imagine the sound of a window smashing, and how loud, it would carry to the duty room. It’s too damn quiet, he reflected, they will hear it, they will. He returned to the canteen, grabbed the ladder and dragged it back to the dairy shed. Now he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either he stick it out in the intolerable cold bush, afflicted with hunger, or surrender to arrogant jailers, and suffer the penalties for absconding. He plodded carelessly towards the cell block security grill, shivering from the cold and his cowardice. Two staff snugly consumed biscuits and coffee in the heated duty room, as the seasoned fugitive approached. Frankie observed the groupworkers a moment longer, drooling over the Arnott’s Chocolate Creams, the favourite of Hillston staff. He tapped on the security grill. Both groupworkers carried on supping, compelling him to knock harder, and in the process, wounding deeper the little dignity he had left.

 Hillston Staff Duty Room
Afforded Pan-Optic Surveillance of all 3 Cell Blocks and Parade Ground.

Except for Frankie, who remained confined in his cell, inmates were turned out at six am for the regimental five basic exercises, commonly known by its acronym 5 BX. At nine am, after missing another meal, he stood to attention, as The Puma peered inside through the unbreakable acrylic panel on the cell door. He unbolted the door and confronted Frankie, grinning fiendishly.

“So you couldn’t hack it in the bush. Scared of the dark are we?”

Frankie said nothing, concerned only about the next rationed meal, his pangs of hunger now twice as keen. Reading his thoughts, La Puma said, “you must be hungry too. When did you have your last feed?”

“Yesterday morning sir.”

“That long ago huh. Diddums, did we forget your breakfast this morning? Seven days L.O.P.,” decreed The Puma, who swung around, throwing the door shut behind him.

By order of the Puma, Frankie was released from isolation an hour before lunch, to polish the corridor floor. Later at lunch, he joined Bottom Group at the far end of the dining room. The Hillston seating arrangement during meals had been structured, like most activities, on a punitive scale. Wards were graded upon their work performance and general conduct of the previous week. Outstanding 'suckoles' were awarded Top Group status, with the remaining Wards subordinated into Second and Bottom Groups. Seated at the head of the dining room, Top Group boys were served first, after the groupworkers, and had first rights to left overs, again after the turnkeys. Remaining scraps that were not gobbled up by these two cohorts, were passed to Second Groupers. Bottom Groupers were forbidden seconds, while the L.O.P. boys, the worst of the lot, were entitled only to the main meal and water. Morning and afternoon teas, along with recreation breaks, were also denied to the same group. By the time Frankie had swallowed his first mouthful in thirty-six hours, he was bitterly regretting his capitulation.

Hillston Gymnasium: Remains Boarded Up due to Repeat Vandalism

The night duty groupworker, Douglas Scott, a paragon of pedantry, banged on Frankie’s cell door after he switched his light on at five the next morning, and said: “Panaia get up boy.” Frankie turned over, forcing his eyes open to comprehend the despicable intrusion into his sacred morning slumber. Scottie, as his colleagues affectionately addressed him, had the door wide open now, and again directed him to rise.

“What’s going on sir?” Frankie asked.

“5 B.X. sunshine.”

“But it’s still pitch black sir.”

“You’re on L.O.P. Panaia, so you get to do an extra round, while the other boys are still sleeping. Now shake a leg and get into your PT uniform Sonny Jim.”

Frankie followed Scott to the deep end of the corridor, half blinded from the powerful fluorescent lights. Doug Scott loved Hillston, as much as Frankie hated it. He enforced the discipline and drudgery of the Hillston program, with a smack head’s fervour, hitting up on every rule he recited and imposed on his charges. A mannequin of flawless dress, from his sparkling ebony shoes, to his oiled hair, squared away like an army kit, the punctilious man devoted hours in investigating and punishing infractions. Months later, he would catch Frankie returning to the cell block with a small bag of candy he had received during an enigmatic visit from his elder sister Maria.

“What’s that you got in your hand Panaia?” he demanded.

“Just some lollies from my visitor sir.”

“You know the rules Panaia. No food or drink in the cabin block.”

“But my sister gave them to me.”

“I don’t care. Rules are rules. What would we have if we didn’t have rules eh? I know what I’ll tell you,” and he stuck his hand out, his fingernails spotless and symmetrically clipped.

“What’s the matter Mr Scott?” asked Senior groupworker Weggelaar, who emerged from the pan-optican  duty room, after observing the tense exchange.

Weggelaar, as Scott well knew, was known to be notoriously lenient towards the Wards. Scott visibly cringed as Weggelaar drew near, and replied, “nothing, I have it under control, thank you Mr Weggelaar.”

“He’s taking my lollies sir. The ones my sister gave me this afternoon,” blubbered Frankie, who loved candy, more than life itself.

“Those are the rules boy. I didn’t make them, now hand them over,” insisted Scott.

Understanding the situation, Weggelaar advanced closer, and said, “Come on Mr Scott they are only sweets. He can have them surely.”

Scottie's mouth dropped open and remained agape for a few seconds, before he could re-establish control of his stunned oral faculties. Never before, had a colleague publicly usurped his penal authority, let alone in defence of an inferior inmate.

Eventually Scott found his tongue to object: “but the rules sir! No boy is allowed to take food into the cabin block.”

“Yes Mr Scott, but just this time. They are from his sister after all.”

“But what sort of message is this sending to the boys? The rules sir, can not be broken.” For a moment it seemed the sadistic pedantry of Scott would prevail, when Weggelaar pulled seniority, and directed him to back down. Frankie gushed undying gratitude to Weggelaar, and raced off to his cell to feast on his candy, a treat all the sweeter, by the victory against Scott. A precious victory never to be repeated, in his entire institutional life.

Keeping a distance of one meter between his prisoner, Scott commanded Frankie through the 5 B.X. for the next twenty minutes, and then locked him in his cell. Ten minutes later, he was released again, and lined up with the main population, to execute the general 5 B.X. in the gymnasium.

Hillston: Main Complex Post-Demolition

Multiple black belt Harry “Gomer” Pywell took the morning physical training in full combat dress of King Gee overalls and steel capped boots. Next to the Puma, Frankie feared the British immigrant Pywell the most, and not because of the many black belts he boasted in mastering. Frankie apprehended something more sinister, and less tangible - a religious fanaticism. A lunatic Christian, Harry Pywell, regarded himself as a crusader of sorts, with a divine mission to save Christian civilization from demonic juveniles, by leading the delinquent devils to the path of righteousness through discipline. If this method failed, then bone-shattering violence, as sanctioned in his bible, was to be invoked. 

About seven months into Frankie’s rehabilitation at Hillston, Pywell stormed down to his cell one Sunday afternoon, to confront him over a dining room transgression. Having missed his favourite dessert of trifle at lunch, Frankie was in no mood for sermons.

“When are you going to learn Panaia?” Pywell preached.

“Learn what and from who...you Gomer, and your useless religion!”

“See that’s your problem isn’t it, no discipline no respect.”

“Kiss my pimply ass ya bible bashing wanker!”

“Apologize for that you vulgar-”

“Make me ya poxy maggot!”

Violently silent, Pywell stared down into Frankie, who remained contemptuously seated on his bed. “You know Panaia, I’m prepared to get into trouble for you,” he declared finally.

“Huh?”

“Delinquent, sinful boys should be corrected at all costs,” he said, the tone of his sanctimony perceptibly maniacal.

“O sit on it Gomer,” countered Frankie, though with diminished bravado.

“At all costs,” Pywell, repeated.

“Ooh I’m really scared now man. What ya gonna do, take off your poxy black-belt and whip me?”

“Panaia I wouldn’t waste my energy, because I know a strapping wont have any effect. What I should do though, is break both your legs.”

Pywell’s sermon, delivered with such biblical conviction, now greatly affected Frankie whose alarm was compounded from the frown of fierce concentration on the orator’s face. Jesus he is really considering his divine duty, he observed before replying with reduced defiance, “Yeah if you do that you will lose your job.”

“This I know Panaia, but perhaps it will be worth it, if it teaches you a lesson.” He then added ominously, “according to the Scriptures, maybe I don’t have a choice.”

In the gymnasium, Gomer Pywell stood god like, in front of the inmates, each one shivering in shorts and t-shirts. They went through the drill, and as usual, when Pywell conducted PT, they were subjected to various calisthenics. “Stick your leg out like this and stand still,” Pywell instructed, as he stuck his own leg out in demonstration, still wearing his heavy boots. Falling over themselves, the boys tried their best to ape the clown in front, with ten years of karate training under his belt. “Come on you useless bunch,” he jeered, as he continued to elevate his leg and boot in the air, gloating in his feat. He put his foot down to the relief of the prisoners, and again rebuked them for their uselessness.

Steam engulfed the ablutions, as boys showered on a tag basis in the six cubicles, which were divided into two opposing rows. As usual whites were last, with Blueblacks and Noongars tagging cousins and 'brothers', regardless of their position in the queue. Graham Wally, a confused part-Aborigine, with a large chip on his shoulder, queued unnecessarily behind Frankie, and said: “Hey wog hey wog.”

Frankie ignored him, hoping against proven tradition, he would stop.

“Hey ding greaseball, I heard you got seven days, ha ha ha.”

Frankie remained unresponsive, and contrary to common belief, in juvenile institutions, this was the worst kind of response.

“Wog! Wog dog,” continued the pre-teen thug, and he flicked Frankie on the tip of his ear. The other boys laughed, spurring on Wally’s offence.

“You think your smart don’t ya wog?”

“Drop him Wal,” said Lionel Hicks, another brother.

“Nah, he’ll just cry like a baby. Wont ya wog?” and he reached over and flicked Frankie's other ear.

“Fuck off Wally! What do you want? I didn’t do nothing to you huh,” protested Frankie.

“Fuck you ding, I just hate poxy wogs. You wait cunt you’re gonna get it.”

“Make im piss cuz,” said a brother enjoying the spectacle, from under a hot shower.

“I’m gonna don’t worry,” promised Graham, and he reached over again, and this time thumped Frankie in the back of the head, causing him to wince in intolerable pain.

“That’s it,” said Frankie, and he swung around and lunged blindly at his tormentor. The ablutions exploded in an uproar of howls and hoots, with the Noongars generating the loudest applause, as the combatants rolled about on the wet floor, grappling each other, seeking the advantage. Staff quickly intervened, separating the two, yanking them apart by their hair.

“You like fighting do you Panaia?” said John Priestly, who had helped separate them.

“He fucking started it,” shouted Frankie, pointing his finger squarely at Wally.

“Fuck you ding wog cunt, your still gonna die,” shouted Wally.

“I think these two need cooling off Mr Priestly,” said Bloxham, who had Graham in a headlock.

“Four walls of cold cement should do the trick Mr Bloxham,” rejoined Priestly, before he shoved Frankie out of the doorway, into Raven House, towards the designated punishment cell. 

View from the Hillston Classroom

Not unlike most penal institutions, Hillston had its traditional notorious hole. Cabin 33, the first cell on the right in Raven House, was crudely, though effectively modified with the wall and door apertures hermetically sealed, and the light globe encased in a wire cage. When the door was shut and the light killed, the cell became a black cement box. Frankie was flung in here completely naked. Initially concerned by the absence of light, he soon overcame this apprehension, when he could still hear the goings on, outside the cell. In the hole, he remained until after lunch, and was then returned to school.

Making an enemy with Graham was bad, as upsetting one indiegnous prisoner, as Frankie painfully discovered, upset most, and a few of the Blueblacks too. From this moment on, many of the Noongars persecuted him, calling his names at every opportunity, hurting him in any way possible.

Frankie was standing on parade a few days after the ablution incident, when an aboriginal inmate behind him in the second row, cleared his sinus with a single violent blast through the nostril.

"Mr Griffith’s and Mr Leonard’s class break off,” commanded the senior groupworker. Frankie automatically responded to the command, and lined up for the march to school.

“Eww,” said Schultz, one of the few Noongars Frankie got along with, “What’s that on your hair?”

“I don’t know. What Schultz?” asked Frankie.

“It looks like a huge snot. Yuk!” 

Frankie brushed the back of his head with his hand, and collected a glob of green snot that had been fired on him during the muster. “Fucking dirty boongs,” he muttered, and he bent down to rub his hand clean in the red dirt of Stoneville.

Rare Image of Populated Hillston Parade Ground 1975

Lesley Schultz was one of the heaviest and jolliest Noongars Frankie had encountered. A grin was permanently fixed on the chubby chops of thirteen-year-old Schultz, who had a penchant for driving Holden Commodores, without the permission of their owners. Poking fun at everything and anything, the jolly giant joked and laughed from dawn to dusk. Frankie liked him a lot. Anyone who can laugh all day, without hurting someone, must be okay, he assessed, as he allowed himself to be drawn into the infectious society of Schultz.

On his seventh and final day of L.O.P. Frankie was busted by Scott for sculling tea from another boy’s cup.

“You have just earned yourself another day Panaia,” said Scott, sitting at the head of bottom group table.

“Why?” asked Frankie angrily.

“Come on Panaia, you know the rules. Boys on L.O.P. are not allowed tea.”

“Fuck you wanker.”

“He he,” snickered Jamie Birnie, a permanent member of Bottom Group.

“What did you say Panaia?”

“What?” said Frankie, aping the indignation of Scott.

“He said fuck you sir,” said Sansalone, another frequent member of Bottom Group.

“Ya poxy dobber Sansalone,” said Frankie.

“You shouldn’t talk to the groupworker like that,” said Sansalone, in his usual damaged way of ingratiating himself to bosses and other oppressive beings.

“Thank you Domenic. And that’s another day for you smart ass,” advised Scott.

“I don’t fucking care.  Shove your L.O.P. up your tight shiny ass!”

“Right that’s three days, and if you say one more word, you’re off to 33.”

Wrecked from three more days of L.O.P. Frankie shouted: “Get fucked cunt dog!” bringing the dining room to a standstill.

“That’s its Panaia. Let’s go,” said Scott, greatly flustered from such a sustained public attack.

“You gonna get it now,” sneered Sansalone.

“Fuck you ya poxy slow-,” and before Frankie could complete his next expletive, groupworkers Farmer and Bloxham, both reeking of cow dung, rushed over from their tables, and immobilised him. Twisting Frankie's arms excruciatingly high behind his back, they frogmarched him out of the dining room towards the cell block, while the other boys howled in excitement.

Cell aka 'Cabin' Block: 1 of 3 Corridors

“Strip,” ordered Bloxham to a cornered Frankie in 33. Bloxham slammed the door shut on the naked child prisoner and switched the light off.

“And if you so much as fart in there wog, I’ll have your guts for garters,” advised Farmer.

His aesthesia reduced to primal functions for the rest of the day, Frankie remained in 33, until the inmates returned to the cell block following dinner. The Wards filed past 33 at eight pm enroute to their final toilet trip.

“Hey wog still alive,” someone jeered.

“Your gonna get it ding cunt when you get out,” called another. Ten minutes later they filed back past the hole, dispatching more taunts and threats, increasing Frankie’s contempt of his fellow Wards. How can they do this, he thought, I am one of them, and they should be helping me, not making it worse. Why? What is wrong with them? Don’t they know who their real enemies are? “It’s not me, it’s the groupworkers you should be stirring,” he said aloud, in answer to his own question.

Perceptive though he was on this point it was in fact his undoing where at personal cost he would struggle endlessly against an insidious enemy that befriended their charges one-day and brutalised them the next.

“When is it you going to sink into your thick skull that you can’t beat the system Panaia?” chants a group worker exonerating himself from the brutalities of institutional life that he serves for reward to administer. A mantra that is held sacred by all regimented societies where every atrocity is committed in the name of the rules. The system, the invisible all encompassing system where both captors and captives are each held hostage to.

Only when the inmates had been locked down, did staff release Frankie from 33, allowing him to return to his furnished cell of a mattress and pillow.

Groupworker Ward excused himself, as he entered Frankie’s classroom two days after the dining room incident, and informed Frankie he had a visitor. Ward dropped Frankie off at the administration building.

“Hello Frankie,” said a smiling Diane Lawlor, who was doing her circuit of institutions, as the roving child psychologist.

“Hello,” growled Frankie, still smarting from her therapeutic antics in Longmore.

“Come in and sit down Frankie, I want to talk you.”

“What for? Nothing changes anyway.”

“I can see you are not happy are you Frankie?”

“Well you wouldn’t be happy if they starved you too?”

“Well sit down and tell me about it,” said Lawlor soothingly. 

The opportunity to bitch to someone, who cared or at least presented as though they did, softened his demeanour. He began ventilating his troubles, and when he got to the part about cell 33, he thought, he detected genuine empathy in Lawlor.

“That should not be allowed,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Frankie, “what good is all this head shrinking stuff and that, if people can lock up boys like a dog huh?” Lawlor offered nothing, as she always did, when he contrasted the magniloquent therapy of psychology, with the brutal and degrading conditions of institutional life.

“I read in one of your dockets you were in a fight with another boy. Tell me about that.”

“Wally started stirring me and that.”

“And how was he stirring you?”

“Calling me names like ding and wog and that.”

“You should try to ignore him, and then perhaps he would stop.”

Assaulting this agnostic matron with a large Freudian tome would have been therapeutic indeed for Frankie at that moment, harmlessly though, he exhaled his exasperation, and explained, “Mrs Lawlor you can’t ignore it here. Its twenty-four hours a day. There's nowhere to hide!” 

“Do you think maybe your own behaviour is provoking the others like Graham and Jack into picking on you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well your own bad behaviour towards the staff may be upsetting them.”

“Oh that’s bullshit. They’re poxy groupworkers and they’re the enemies, the same maggots who lock us up every night. They should be joining me, not fighting me. We’re on the same side God damn it.”

“I see. But maybe the other boys don’t see it that way, and see the groupworkers as their friends, not their enemies.”

“Then they are poxy idiots,” said Frankie hypocritically, which Lawlor picked up immediately.

“So you don’t have friends among the staff?”

“Nope.”

“What about Mr Ward?”

“He’s different.”

“How is he different Frankie?”

How do I explain to her, he thought, that Wardie is different, because there is a kindness in him only I can see. Just like Weggelaar and Bodden, he does not rejoice in the misery of others. He is not an unfeeling robot like that spastic Scott, who would happily watch a kid die from starvation, than bend the rules. He is human, and I have seen his humanness, as I have seen Jean’s, Gary’s and David’s, and I would do anything to please these people. 

“He isn’t nasty to the kids,” he said finally.

“How long have you been here now Frankie?”

“I dunno about seven weeks, and still don’t know why I’m fucking here anyway.”

Ignoring the expletive Lawlor answered, “you’re here because Longmore felt the Hillston program would be good for you.”

“Well it isn’t,” and finding his sense of humour, added, “unless of course it’s to lose weight.”

“Ha ha. Have you met your aftercare officer yet?”

“No who is he?”

“Theo Merrifield.”

“So?” asked Frankie, who was beginning to identify an Orwellian lexicological pattern from the misnomers in welfare jargon; cabin, groupworker and now aftercare officer.

“He is the person, who will be looking for a placement, when you are released from Hillston.”

He shrugged unimpressed.

“Next week is your case conference with Mr Bowyer.”

“So?”

“We will be meeting with your aftercare officer and case worker to discuss your future.”

“Aaah,” Frankie lazily exclaimed, a veteran of case conferences.

“Do you have any ideas about where you want to go Frankie?”

“Outta of this hole.”

“Yes but you must have another place to go.”

“Any bloody where, even the bush.”

“Well you know that’s silly. Anyway I have to see another boy, so I will speak to you again next week. Try to stay out of trouble Frankie.”

“But the problem is, trouble won’t stay away from me,” he replied as he made to leave.

James Birnie, (Younger Brother of Perth Serial Killer, David Birnie), Followed Author
through a Chain of State Institutions Beginning at Age of 5

Aftercare Officer Theo Merrifield pulled Frankie aside a week later from the afternoon-tea parade, and introduced himself. “Tomorrow is your case conference. Did you know?”

“Yeah Mr Ward told me. So you‘re the bloke, who will care for me after?”

“Bully for you, aside from your rotten behaviour, you have a sense of humour too. Now is there anyone you can stay with, anyone at all? The problem is, there is not many places out there, where we can send someone like you to.” 

Frankie thought about this, and then answered, “My grandma in Midland.”

“Your grandmother in Midland. What’s her telephone number?”

“She doesn’t have a phone.”

“Okay what’s her address then?”

“Dunno, all I know is she lives in Midland with a fat old geezer called Joe, and their house is painted blue or something.”

“That’s okay I can find out her address later. If I ask her, whether you can stay with her, what will she say?”

“Dunno, she’s old and dont speak Australian and her husband Joe dont like me.”
“He's not the only one I'm told. Is their anyone else, like an uncle?”

“Nope that’s it,  just me grandmas.”

“Right rejoin the muster. We will meet again tomorrow at your case conference.”

“Ah Mr Panaia” said Bowyer, who stood up to take Frankie’s hand the next afternoon. “I have heard a lot about you, all of it negative.” Chuffed from the insinuation of notoriety, Frankie held his tongue, and sat down between Ward and Lawlor. Merrifield took a chair, sitting alongside Bowyer. The conference concluded twenty minutes later, with the result, Frankie required, at least another two months of the Hillston rehabilitative program. In two months time, he would be conferenced again, and depending on his progress, be transferred to Darlington cottage, Hillston’s halfway house in Parkerville. In the meantime, and again depending on his behaviour, he could go on weekend release to his grandmother's, if she consented to have him.

Back in the asbestos classroom, Leonard queried Frankie to the outcome of his case conference. “Nothing,” replied Frankie leaning back in a chair, tossing a deeply gnawed Bic school edition pen in the air.

“Ha ha Panaia is here for good,” said Predjil, a boy always ready for a laugh at someone else's expense. Frankie ignored him, and looked out of the window, staring into nothing, brooding over everything. Predjil soon brought him back to his dreary reality, with another snipe typical of his rotten character, “jingoes cod you gonner be old and bald, before you get outta ere he he.” Frankie was undecided whether Steven, was a white or black fella with his crude mixture of Australian and Aboriginal slang, and his mass of shag pile sandy brown hair he knew was common among desert blacks. His skin though, was as pale as the next Empire snotrag. Frankie played it safe and let the jibes slide.

Hillston School Report by Ken Griffiths 18 November 1980

Hillston boys were standing in line, waiting for a turn in the shower, when Frankie singled out the chiliast Pywell, now a preferred target, and asked, “hey Gomer what does your bible say about this place?”

“Say about what?” replied Pywell, overlooking the slur for the moment.

“About how you people treat us boys like animals. Is that really Christian?”

“What a dickhead,” someone called from the back of the line.

“Have you heard spare the rod and spoil the child?” asked Pywell.

“No what does that mean?” asked Frankie with real interest.

“It means, boys like you need discipline, because if you are not disciplined, you will be terrible sinners when you grow up.”

“So starving boys, flogging them and locking them up in poxy holes is okay in the bible? Its gonna make us better people?”

“If it means that you’re going to stop sinning, then yes.”

“You’re a spastic man.”

“Don’t push it Panaia.”

“You’re an mental case,” said Frankie, now convinced the only way he could fight back, was to attack with his only weapon of speech.

“That’s a day L.O.P. sport,” advised Pywell.

“Suck shit ya poxy wog,” said a boy busy on the bog.

“Hero!” someone else yelled out.

Fed to his back teeth of L.O.P., Frankie ripped into Pywell and his bible, unleashing a torrent of slurs and blasphemes, until he was again dragged off to 33.

The next morning Frankie was greeted with the boof head and piercing peepers of La Puma. “You’re starting to piss me off,” he declared, as he backed Frankie up against the wall, after clipping him under his ear. La Puma left and returned five minutes later, with a rag at his feet; a piece of fabric he had kicked from the cleaning store to the cell. He commanded his prisoner to pick the rag up and follow him. 

La Puma led Frankie down to Eagle House corridor, and told him to polish the floor until his own image could be reflected in the shine. Hungry from missing breakfast, Frankie went to his hands and knees, launching into a polishing frenzy, desperate to impress The Puma, fearful he would be deprived of lunch too. When he finished two hours later, Frankie's knees were red sore, from the friction of his flesh pressed against the floorboards. He tapped humbly on the duty room door, to inform his overseer, he had finished. The Puma slammed a third biscuit into his gob and followed him back to Eagle House, to inspect his labour.

“This floor should shine like a mirror Panaia,” said La Puma, “is it shinning like a mirror to you?”

Frankie looked down into the wooden boards, desperate to catch his reflection, but saw only a blurred image.

“No sir.”

“Right back to your bin cock.”

The noisy lunchtime muster of 50 hungry bellies on the parade ground, was fifteen minutes away, estimated Frankie. From his punitive experiences in Longmore, he understood isolated inmates received their meals during the muster stage, because a prisoner was tasked from the muster to perform the demeaning chore of delivering food to secluded prisoners. In the hundreds of days Frankie was to hang in isolation, he had studied this prison routine, beginning from the meal’s preparation in the kitchen, to its journey across the prisoner yard, through the cell block, and finally to the door of his cell. 

Frankie could hear the Hillston boys on parade, their boot heels scraping the bitumen gravel. Panic settled in. He listened intently, pressing his ear against the joint of the thick cell door, hoping to hear a lock turn and grill swing on its iron hinges; sounds familiar to all men trapped within a cage of mortar, with nothing, than their next rationed meal to savour.

Hillston Wards had now marched into the dining room. The cell block remained quiet. La Puma had exited earlier, to oversee the lunch muster, leaving behind the sole duty room groupworker. Frankie heard the faint tinkling of cutlery, as the groupworker dealt with his own lunch, destroying any hope of a feed, because he knew the meals of inmates and staff, were always delivered together. He faced the window in private shame. Angry tears streamed down his face.

Keen pangs of hunger wracked Frankie, and he pounded on the unbreakable glass panel, until the inconvenienced groupworker strolled down to his cell door.

“What’s your game Panaia?” he asked, his pinkie deep in his mouth, probing the wisdom teeth for lamb chop gristle.

“Where’s my lunch?” demanded Frankie, through the observation panel.

“Ask Mr La Puma when he gets back, cause its got nothing to do with me, so shut up.”

“Get ripped ya poxy maggot,” roared Frankie, as the groupworker turned around to return to the duty room and his meal. Lifting his knee to his belly, Frankie kicked out and smashed his heel against the heavy solid door. He drew back in pain, thinking he had sprained his ankle, so he switched foot and kicked again, only this time, he used the full surface of the foot to better absorb the impact. 

La Puma returned to the cell block an hour later, and smiled, when his malicious mind comprehended the source of the racket. Here’s another one I’ve rattled, he thought, as he zeroed in on his captive, as a hyena closes on a trapped cub. Through the thick Plexiglas panel, La Puma’s black beady pupils silenced Frankie, with their piercing stare. He unbolted and swung the door open, maintaining his fierce stare on the captive.

“What’s up your arse shithead,” he yelled, his upper lip quivering in rage.

Subdued by the mere presence of La Puma, Frankie meekly inquired to the whereabouts of his lunch.

“You forfeited lunch cock, because of the lousy job you did on the corridor floor.”

“But I already missed my breakfast sir.”

“Someone get me a violin, because you’re breaking my heart. I’ve had shitheads in here for days without food Panaia. You’ve only missed two meals, so think yourself lucky cock. Now if I hear so much, as a squeak out of you dickhead, you’ll lose more than your lunch, you’ll lose your fucking teeth. Understand?”

Too scared to challenge his authority, and yet too angry to yield, Frankie employed passive resistance by refusing to answer. Silence is a response unpalatable to craven thugs who savour the fear and desperation as much as the pain their blows produce.

Stepping closer to increase his intimidation, La Puma barked, “answer me!”

Frankie stood his ground, his belly apparently braver than his heart.

“You really are a slow learner Panaia, aren’t you?” Without waiting for a reply, La Puma clobbered Frankie on the right side of his head, then snatched his thick Grecian hair, and ruthlessly yanked him to 33.

At two pm La Puma handed over the afternoon shift to the relieving Senior Lionel Baker, a transaction, apart from the actual dialogue, which could be heard from the hermetic cavity of 33. Baker, a dull but reasonable man, released Frankie from the punishment cell after the rationed evening meal, he had allowed against the wishes of La Puma, and returned him to his own cell. Frankie promptly jumped into the warm comfort of his bed, regaining his body heat lost from six hours naked in the cold sterility of 33. An hour later, he woke to the rapping on the door viewing panel, by happy inmates mocking him, for both the hardship he had suffered, and the recreation he had missed.

The PYWELL Photograph 1979: British immigrant Harry Pywell, far right,
threatened to break this Author's legs, because biblical scripture
endorsed such medieval violence against "disobedient boys".  
Eddie Dabb  (left) and Russel Miller (right). 
Group Worker  (likely Alan or Andrew) A. Christensen seated 

For the first time in its iniquitous history, Hillston recruited a full time psychologist. Half the age of her roving peer Lawlor, Marian Binnie was a grotesque creature in more ways than just her appearance. Short and stumpy, she had from head to foot enamoured her superficial self, in makeup, rendering her features more artificial than a store mannequin. Her hair was petrified in a rich orange dye, making her easily visible, in spite of her tiny stature, from any point in the compound. When the Hillston Blueblacks learnt the surname of this latest British immigrant, they fell into fits of laughter, chuckling thereafter, whenever she was spotted throughout the institution. Binnie, in one of the hundreds of native tongues, translated into vagina. “Miss Binnie,” the Blueblacks would call out, “show us your Binnie,” and they and the boys in the know around them, would erupt in laughter.

One of the first boys Binnie would interview was Frankie, summoning him two days after his latest visit to 33. “Thank you Mr Taylor,” she said primly, dismissing the escorting groupworker. “Sit down please. My name is Ms Binnie and I am the new psychologist.” Sick of being interviewed by therapists, who provided little more than a brief distraction from the routine drudgery of institutional life, people, who could offer a thousand reasons to justify the brutal conditions of his existence, but never improve them, Frankie slumped in the chair and yawned at a woman, pumped with selfish ambition and racist anglophile arrogance.

 “Tired are we?”  she asked smarmily.

“Yep I’m tired of people like you who talk and do nothing.”

“And what do you expect people like me to do?”

“Well for one thing get me outer of this hole, and another stop these animal groupworkers from treating me like I am one of them – a fucking animal!”

“How do they treat you like an animal?” asked Binnie blandly.

“They lock me up in 33 and starve me. That’s how! Now can you stop that?”
“My business, Mr Panaia is what’s going on inside your head, and not what happens to you on the block.”
“Yeah well my business is what’s not going in my stomach from days of starvation,” riposted Frankie, who then stood up to leave. Binnie sprung from her recliner and shoved her well-fed and pampered torso, between her client and the door, demanding he sit down.

“I don’t wanna, I’m finished with you,” he declared.

“You are not finished until I say so young man, now sit down.”

“You can force me stay here, but you can’t make me talk,” he countered, certain a tactic of silence would achieve an equal effect in conveying the deep scorn he harboured for such parasites. The next fifteen minutes the two engaged in a contest of mute staring, with Bitch Binnie, as Frankie would later call her, backing down, and sending him back to class, with a promise of being called upon very soon.

Harry Pywell  (2014) Perth. Still Spouting Religious Mumbo Jumbo

Next on Binnie’s list was the jolly fat Schultz, whom she had, in consultation with the nurse, put on a radical weight reduction diet. In the first week of his diet, Lesley Schultz was compliant, enjoying the extra attention he received during meal times. The novelty began to wear off in the second week though, and his resolve was finally broken, when Chef Roersma served up extra helpings of bread and butter pudding, with 3 boys on his table doing thirds. Eventually, his jolliness transformed into sourness, and where a healthy grin once illuminated his chubby cheeks, a grim dour expression emerged.

Lunch had come and gone on a Friday, and first, second and bottom group boys were enjoying their twenty minutes of free activities on the parade ground. Boys on  L.O.P. looked on with envy from the dining room benches. Schultz was sent for by Binnie, and five minutes later, he abruptly exited the cell block sobbing, shuffling along the veranda towards the strictly out of bounds area of the staff car park. Behind him, Binnie called for Schultz to return. He ignored her and continued to wail and walk. Three groupworkers soon surrounded Les, who was now approaching the steps to the forbidden staff car park. They jumped him, and attempted to subdue the chunky lad the only way qualified brutes know how.  Les resisted, and tried to break free, while Binnie and the boys looked on in unusual silence.  A groupworker kicked his right leg from under him, and with a sickening thud, sixty kilogram Schultz fell belly first into the veranda concrete. Les screamed in pain and anger, struggled furiously, inviting staff to pin him on the pavement with their knees. A fourth group worker sprinted from where he had been sitting outside the dining room, and grabbed a thrashing leg of Schultz. Now, with a groupworker on each of the boy’s limbs, he was half carried, half dragged along the green veranda, to the cell block and 33. Here he remained for the rest of the day deprived of all clothing.

The Veranda (R) Les Schultz was Body Slammed Against.
Author Stood By Green Steps When He Confronted Marion Binnie
Who Was Stood On The Veranda

Binnie’s machine like brain temporarily shut down in shock. She had not shifted from the safe place by the administration block. Beneath the veranda railing, Frankie, who had witnessed the entire drama, turned to Binnie, and above the ebbing shrieks of Schultz, inquired in a most caustic tone, “tell me again, how your poxy head shrinking helps us boys?”

Marian Binnie (2009) This Vulgar British Immigrant still
'Practices' Clinical Psychology in WA

Graham Butterworth lived in the cell opposite to Frankie’s. He was the only prisoner in the borstal permitted to keep his hair shoulder length, and for a reason Frankie could not as yet ascertain, he would drop his daks, and flash his pale pommy posterior all over Hillston. From classroom to dining room, whenever the occasion allowed for it, Butterworth dropped his underwear. A decade after Hillston had closed, Frankie received a letter from this nascent pervert, who had scribbled in childish hand, how he had, over the years maintained a repressed homosexual crush on him, recalling ‘his happiest moments inside’ were when the two inmates showered in opposite cubicles in the Hillston ablutions. The deviant missive went on to explain, how the author now cross dressed on a daily basis, and that he would like nothing more than to suck the living daylights from his former co-prisoner. Even for the somewhat depraved Frankie, the perversity of the content appalled him, so he sought to hunt the raging faggot down, to personally communicate a reply. He begun with the post office, as the letter provided a post box address for reply correspondence. Postal policy would not allow for the disclosure of the box owner details, so Frankie answered the letter in a most violent manner and left it that.

The two prisoners were tossing socks, rolled up into the shape of a ball, between each other from their cell doorways waiting for the dinner muster. During this exchange, thirteen-year-old Butterworth ducked into his cage, reappearing in the doorway, with his scrotum wrapped over his penis. “Look at me,” he said, “I’m a woman my name is Miss Binnie,” and together they chuckled at the penile parody.

“Panaia!” A groupworker shouted from the top of the corridor. Frankie stuck his head out of his doorway. “Front and centre, the chief wants to see you.”

Work Activity Inmate / Staff Assignment Sheet 1979
Author Assigned to Alistair Leonard (School Teacher)

Meeting Bowyer on his own for the first time and for no apparent reason, except for his chronic and well-documented belligerence, long since considered the norm by inmates and turnkeys alike, Frankie struggled up to the administration block, a little daunted.

“Thank you Jim” said Bowyer, sending his subordinate back to the block.

“Sit down Frankie,” said Bowyer, and then he asked: “Are you nervous?”

“Nope,” he said dishonestly.

“Good because I just want to meet you on our own. You have become quite the celebrity here. The dockets I have on your behaviour! Well, lets just say I need a separate file cabinet just for yours,” he said smiling, drawing his chair closer to Frankie in the middle of the office. Perplexed by the unorthodox manner of this man, and by the appearance of genuine interest in his welfare, Frankie sat stiffly and uncharacteristically quiet in the chair. 

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on Frankie?” he asked, again in conciliatory tone.

“About what sir?” Frankie said, finally finding his tongue, amazed at hearing his christian name spoken by an adult.

“About your behaviour. You must be getting sick of loss of privileges by now. Why you’re on a record.”

“I don’t reckon I should be here anyway.”

“Why?”

“Well they only sent me here, because I complained about a groupworker in Longmore for hitting me.”

“That may be so, but the fact is you’re here now aren’t you?”

“Yeah I know, but why do they have keep locking me up in 33 and starving me?”

“Starving you!” Bowyer exclaimed “you’re exaggerating aren’t you? The discipline program is very clear. Boys confined to cabin must receive meals. Rationed of course.”

“Yeah well why don’t they tell Mr La Puma that, because I have already missed heaps of meals because of him, and when they do give me a meal, half of its gone anyway.”

“Well that’s wrong and cruel-”

“And what about when group workers hit you and lock you up in 33 naked and without light!” Frankie added, in a stream of indignation.

In what appeared to be shame, Bowyer looked down at his shiny Italian slip-ons, before he answered, “Yes I know about 33 and Mr La Puma, and I don’t like it too, but…”

Jesus Christ, thought Frankie, he’s taking my side, the fucking Super is agreeing fuck it, must be some sort of trick, Jesus fucking Christ!

“Listen Frankie, I would like to make a deal with you, just between you and me. Interested?”

Instinctively cautious, Frankie said, “What is it first…sir?”

“You never let your guard down, I reckon you could play a good game of chess. Have you played chess before?”

“Yes sir.”

“OK this is the deal, if you can make it to top group and stay there for two weeks I will allow you to move to Darlington Cottage. You know about Darlington don’t you?”

“Yeah it’s a hostel up in Parkerville.”

“Sort off, it’s more a half-way house than a hostel, run by the cottage parents, who live with their own two children. Mr Priggs and his wife are the house parents. So is it a deal?” 

“Okay.”

“Good you better get back to the cabin block or you will miss the dinner muster, and another meal,” he said smiling. Outside on the veranda, Bowyer watched Frankie, until he reached the cell block grill, where it opened like a huge mouth to swallow a morsel.

The Cow Shed: Hillston's Milk Mainly Sourced from the Farm Cows

An opened envelope was handed to him, as he passed the duty room, his fourth letter since he arrived at Hillston. “Suckole,” David Metcalfe called him, as he walked down the corridor to his cell. There is something fucking weird about that Metcalfe too, Frankie thought, and then turned his attention to his letter. It was from Jean, who had replied to his letter sent two weeks before. He spread out the folded sheets, ready to relish this missive, but would have to wait until after dinner, because just then, the wing groupworker issued the order for line up.

Seated in the doorway of his cell, Frankie turned the letter over in his hands. All the boys were now confined to their respective wings, allowed to read and talk among themselves for an hour before the eight thirty lock up.

“On the personals,” Scottie called from the small storeroom outside the duty room. Immediately a handful of privileged Top Group and Second Group boys queued, waiting to be handed a small wooden box tagged with their surname. This privileged activity involved nothing more, than the temporary release of personal sundry items, boys had accumulated during their imprisonment at Hillston. Old letters, comics, photos and playing cards were all regarded as contraband in the cells, and thus stowed under lock and key. The only item Frankie had in his personal box, was a few stamps he had ripped from the occasional post, he and other inmates received.

It’s been a good day Frankie observed privately, I got a letter, a meeting with the Super and I finished L.O.P. last night. Reading his letter, he was amused at the little difference, between Jean’s written and spoken word.

Hi Hon,

Let’s get one thing straight Hon, I did not betray you about the Mr Lee matter. Hon that was out of my hands and I was as much surprised as you were when I found out you had been sent to Hillston. Anyway Hon what’s done is done and now you have to try to make the most of it. Mr Ward has been telling me about you and how you have been getting into trouble frequently. Well firstly let me say Hon I’m not surprised I mean after all you would not be Frankie if you were not always in trouble. But Hon you’re nearly thirteen years old now, (nearly a man), and, (I know I have told this before), you have to take responsibility for your actions. In other words my darling no one is in control of your behaviour except you, so that means if you make a mistake then you have to take responsibility for that. I know its hard sweetie, but try Hon, if not for yourself then for Mr Ward and me. You know he really likes you and believe it or not watches out for you down there. Be nice to him Hon because he is one of the few friends you have there.

I’m not promising anything Hon but maybe I can come down there next month for a visit, but that depends on how busy I am, there is so much overtime here now and my son Brett is getting ready for university. So anyway if I can’t come and visit I will ring okay. So remember please please Honey be good, try and show them that Frankie Panaia can behave and can turn the other cheek, and can be a mature man. Remember my darling you are responsible for your own actions.

Love Mrs Bodden

Jean Bodden: former Longmore group-worker who befriended the Author. Jean was a typical British immigrant staff member, but atypical in that unlike her many brutish British colleagues, she treated the Wards with dignity and kindness

A few weeks after this letter, Frankie received another from Jean. In this letter Jean explained how, in consultation with After-care Officer Theo Merrfield and Bill Ward, she had permission to seek a temporary placement for Frankie at the notorious Clontarf Boys Home, a stone's throw from the Longmore Detention Centre in metroplitan Perth.  Frankie had already heard numerous tales about the Clontarf home, which he understood was operated by a cloister of Irish Christians. He also knew it was an old institution and was more liberal than the Hillston regime, providing much more freedom of movement. This last quality was sufficient and he now shifted hopes for his liberty, albeit conditional, on the efforts undertaken by Jean Bodden.

Six weeks passed since the private conference with Bowyer, before Frankie fluked a two-week run of Top Group. An achievement made easier, due to a heavy head cold, an afliction, which for Frankie acted as a natural calmative. Bowyer kept his promise and had Frankie transferred to Darlington Cottage on a Monday morning. Cottage parents Gavan and Doris Priggs met Frankie in the stony driveway. “So you’re Frankie Panaia eh?” Gavan Priggs asked with a fat almost incomprehensible Cockney accent.

“Were glid to have you here Frankie,” chirped Mrs Priggs, “and we hope you will be happy here too.” Something false rang in the pair’s greetings; a forced almost contemptuous politeness Frankie had frequently encountered.

“Why don’t you wander around to the back garden and meet the other two residents, while we have a chat with Mr Ward,” suggested a supercilious Gavan Priggs.

Shortly after Ward left, the Priggs summoned Frankie back to the front yard.

“Now you listen boy,” began Gavan Priggs “you were sent here against our wishes, cause we know you’re going to stuff up.  Aren’t you, you little wop? So here is your first and last warning: you stuff up, you will be back up the road so fast, your feet won’t touch the ground. Understand?”

Frankie nodded his head, catching the threatening meaning of the tone, rather than the words.

Priggs continued, “Good now here are the rules; that’s your kennel there,” and saying so he pointed to an asbestos annex adjoined to the spacious double brick house. “Rule number two you don’t talk to, or play with my boys. Rule number three you don’t enter my house without my wife’s, or my permission, and rule number four, you don’t leave the grounds for any reason. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes Mr Piggs er Priggs.”

Priggs' oldest boy, ten-year-old Gary ran wailing to the house door the following day. “Daddy Daddy that new Hillston boy broke my bike.”

“What Gary?” Priggs asked from the prohibited sanctum of the house. Gary ran into the house sniveling, and Priggs stormed out seconds later shouting.

“Git over ere Panaia!”

Frankie presented himself, angrily confident he could extricate himself from the childish mess caused by the negligent actions of Priggs' spoiled sprog.

“What did I tell you yesterday?” he frothed.

“I didn’t do anything,” he yelled back trying to match Priggs' vicious demeanour.

“You were told, were you not, not to speak with my boys and not to touch their things?” 

“I did not touch their poxy things.”

“Bollocks don’t lie to me you delinquent sod, you couldn’t lie straight in bed you friggin eyetie tosser.”

This time Frankie had to ask Priggs to repeat his Cockney babble, as its was swirling so fast, even Frankie’s ears, long accustomed to the numerous gutter accents of Britain, could not comprehend. Pavlov's dog and its demonstration of paired stimuli fascinated Frankie a decade later, as he sat unusually attentive in the Psych 101 lecture. Ring the bell and the dog salivated, lubricating its jaws for an anticipated feed. That’s why, Frankie deduced, my body stiffens and bile assaults my taste, whenever I hear the unmistakable and unbearable brogue of one of Her Majesty’s minions.

Priggs obliged an uncomprehending Frankie, “open your earole wop. You’re a lying shite. You buggered my son’s bike, didn’t yer?”

“No I didn’t, he fucking broke the pedal, cause he hit the fence.”

“You lying wop. Bollocks! My son doesn’t lie.”

“Yes he does and fucking is.”

Priggs moved closer, ready to administer a clip under the ear to the wop, when Mrs Priggs emerged from the house.

“Don’t you swear at me, you greasy wop shite,” returned Mr Priggs, whose final volley, was backed with a vulgar unintelligible mutter from Mrs Priggs.

Turning his back on the Priggs, Frankie concluded the exchange with a favourite Hillston boy salutation of 'get fucked wanker'. The Priggs stormed into the house and to the telephone.

“Goodness Frankie twenty four hours.” remarked a bewildered Bowyer.

“They hated me, they didn’t give me a chance sir.”

“But one day Frankie, come on really.”

 “Ah what’s the use, you won’t believe me anyway.”

“ Try me.”

“Well for starters he hated me because I’m a ding, and then he blamed me for his son’s bike, which he broke, not me!”

 “Hmm Mr Priggs tells a different story. You verbally abused him and his wife. Is that true?”

“Yeah, but that was after he accused me of breaking his son’s poxy bike”

“Okay okay, lets leave it for now, as there is no chance of you going back.”

“Good, cause I wouldn’t go back even if you paid me.”

Bowyer brought out the chessboard and invited Frankie to play. “You move first,” he said. Frankie advanced a pawn, with Bowyer responding likewise. Several moves later, Frankie checkmated a seemingly stunned Bowyer. “I’m impressed Frankie, no one has ever beaten me that quickly.” Frankie positively glowed from the compliment. A little later, when his ego had deflated somewhat, he suspected Bowyer had outmaneuvered him in a different battle of psychology, by orchestrating the victory.

“Listen,” said Bowyer after he cleared away the chessboard, “how would you like to meet me each week for a game of chess?” Frankie pondered at length about this unheard, although irresistible offer.

“Well?” 

“But what about the other kids sir? You know maybe they will think I’m getting special treatment or something.”

“The other kids and the groupworkers for that matter, don’t have to know. It will be our private thing.”

All of Hillston, it seemed, sniggered at Frankie’s speedy ejection from Darlington Cottage, confirming to many, he was the hopeless habitual delinquent he had long been labelled.

Merrifield approached Frankie on the parade ground four weeks after his record-breaking placement, and explained how Jean Bodden had miraculously secured a temporary bed for him at a Christian boarding school in South Perth. In addition to this, Jean had simultaneously and single-handedly, convinced the Department to transfer him on a trial basis.

Renowned for its austerity, and then perversity, Clontarf Boys’ Town had a grim history, stretching back to Federation. Hundreds, if not thousands of testy urchins, had been entered into the monastic like institution, which had been a principality unto itself, beholden to no one, but Him. The fraternity of stiff Irish Christian Brothers never had it so good for so long; free to handle a phallanx of orphaned and abducted young males in any manner they so desired. Fortunately for Frankie, by ninteen eighty, the Order’s grip on its phallic dominion, had slackened to a limp. By then, most of the Brothers, many of whom had savoured decades of passionate sacrifice, their Theoginis appetites satiated, had departed to a higher paradise, leaving behind an impotent mixture of ancients and neophytes to preserve the tradition. A hopeless endeavour, where a new and hard generation of cocksure youths sought to emasculate the authority of their robed masters, by reciprocating the violence.

Clontarf Admin: 12 yr Author Pinched Winfield Blues Cigarettes from the Admin Area and was Promptly Ejected.

Into this morbid and moribund atmosphere, Frankie was thrust several years before the institution was finally closed in a spurt of scandal that ejaculated from the stimulus of profane revelations. Discipline and order had all but collapsed, and for the first time in his institutional life, Frankie felt more intimated by the kept, than the keepers. Adrift in time and tradition, the dwindling Order, diminished of religious and devoid of secular power, was flaccid against the currents of change breaking on all sides of their holy grounds. Modernity and its turbine of capitalism had beat a path to the gate, and the hounds of secular bureacracy were baying out front.

Cut from the same limestone deposit buried beneath McCall Centre, Clontarf, even during daylight was disquieting. At night, in the seventy year old dormitories, where so many tears were shed and wounds had bled, it was especially ghastly. Everything, the doors, floorboards, ceilings and window frames groaned. Pain and despair soaked the very foundations of the grim institution, and Frankie was having none of it. Two other boys now remained in his seven bed dormitory, and on the weekends, they would disappear for leave, leaving Frankie alone with the phantoms of past. After lights out, Frankie flickered like a dying globe, between drowsiness and alertness, starting at every noise, the source of which, became more diabolical as the Stygian nights advanced. In the mornings, he wearily sought out his dorm brother, and begged to be moved to a more populated dormitory. Brother Ferguson, an insomniac, who spent the nights in the car park tinkering with an antique Austin, rejected his pleas, claiming his fears were nothing more, than figments of a heathen imagination.

Every type of infraction had been perpetrated a thousand times before Frankie’s arrival at Clontarf. Nothing, it seemed, could top the event, he witnessed on the afternoon of his admission, when a Brother retreating from the dairy, charged past Frankie, nursing a bloodied nose. This incident shook Frankie’s ego, undermining his self-esteem, which had so far been cultivated from a history of unparalleled intractability. Over the next five days he moped about in this wild environment, dumbfounded as to how to perform without the traditional muzzle of panoptic supervsion.  Unrestricted in his movements during daylight, he eventually gravitated to the prohibited administration block to discover a booty of staff personal effects, including Winfield Blues, his favourite tobacco brand.

With bibilical irony and symmetry, on the eighth-day of Frankie's residence, the Clontarf brethren cast out their latest lodger for breaking the eighth commandment. Frankie was duly restored to Hillston.

"Winnie Blues": Pre-Teen Author's Preferred Brand of 'Fags'

Several weeks following his distatsrous excursion at the Clontarf institution, Frankie was approached by his After-care Officer during morning-tea break in the Hillston dining room. “Good news Panaia, your grandmother has agreed to have you for weekend leave,” announced Merrifield.

“Ripper, when can I go?”

“As soon as you make Top Group again for two weeks. Can you do that?”

Such conditions amused Frankie, as much as they frustrated him. Given the right incentive, he could roll over and beg like the rest of them. “Sucking up” he said to Merrifield, “I can suck up, if I have to.”

A dull month of boredom ensued, punctuated with frequent visits to 33, before Frankie yielded and sucked his way to Top Group. Nine months had come and gone since Frankie first arrived for a Dickensian dose of brutalisation and now, dressed in his ill-fitting civvies, he was marched back to the same spot, he first disembarked to be transported with three other boys to a weekend of genuine freedom. Toohey, his temperament and gob just as odious as they were nine months ago, freighted his passengers to Midland train station carpark, the designated drop off and pick up point for boys residing north of the Swan River. It was three thirty pm on a Friday afternoon, when Frankie began the one kilometre walk to his grandma’s house in West Midland.

“Remember,” warned Toohey, to the two boys who were still in earshot in the carpark, “Sunday four pm sharp! If you’re late, you will be reported AWOL.”

Frankie rapped on the front flyscreen door that was locked whenever Joe and grandma were at the back veranda. No one answered, so he shouted Joe’s name, drawing him from his veranda lounge, where he was wading through his second pouch of Drum tobacco for the day. Frankie’s arrival disrupted their afternoon routine of sitting in the Perth city mall in front of the Coles New World Variety store. So regular was their weekday routine, the pair had become part of the mall itself. Years later, when both were too invalid to maintain this routine, the Hay Street mall for Frankie, was incomplete, as if it had lost a landmark. Over a decade, the old couple congregated at the store front of Coles New World, becoming well known to other street mall squatters, seeing off the lonely bitter remains of life, in the numbing bustle of city life.

Armed with a walking stick, employed more as a defensive, rather than an walking aid, Joe Cavallaro  parked his huge behind on one of the many street mall concrete benches, legacies of the seventies vulgar architecture, when concrete was rediscovered. He ploughed through his tobacco, and was content it seems, to sit in silence and watch the people of Perth swagger past. They mostly strutted, the pedestrians, moving from shop to shop and office to office. Men suited up pounded the sidewalk, arrogantly convincing bystanders and perhaps themselves, of their executive status. Errant juveniles roamed aggressively, searching for delinquent distractions to their vacuous existences, while skinheads stomped about in their steel capped boots, searching for ethnic heads to kick.

Another thuggish progeny of that imperial paddock Skinheads frequented the Mall more than the old couple. Fresh from fetid Liverpudian slums, the scousers would coalesce like a pungent odour in the centre of the mall. Exhibiting typical limey courage, they intimidated and extorted passers-by, male and female, young and old, pursuing those, who dared to retaliate or resist along the mall, wielding a metal bin basket or any other Perth City Council utility, not bolted down. Most Saturday nights, these same Skinheads battled against their arch-enemy, the Rocks. Mainly comprised of Italian Australians, the sole charter of the Rocks, was to seek out and engage Skinheads. By the late eighties, Skinheads had largely disappeared from the urban landscape, with many former members absorbed into the larger and more profitable gangs of the police and prison industries.

Rare Photo of  Giuseppe (Joe) in his Beloved Hay Street Mall.

When Coles New World rolled its doors shut at five thirty pm, signalling the end of trade for the day, Joe would rise in earnest, grasping his bus timetable and pensioner concession card, exhorting his Calabrese spouse, to andiamo.  Weary from the day’s activities, and burdened with groceries, the duo would then negotiate the two hundred-meter walk to the Irwin street bus stop, to board the 306 to Midland. On one unforgettable occasion, Giuseppe misplaced his concession card, compelling him to pay full fare. His card was later found, between the swollen buckled cushions on the back veranda couch, but the damage had been done. The temporary loss, had cost Joe an extra forty cents, infuriating him for days after. “Minkia minkia, he cursed in Calabrese dialect, appalled at his unforgivable lapse in vigilance.

When the old boy realised he had a visitor, he raced towards the front flyscreen door, saying ello repeatedly, one of the few words in his repertoire of Australian, he had mastered since his emigration fifteen years earlier. Seated in her chair, Rosa Badalota waited for her grandson to greet her. Her index finger deep in her snout, up pass the first joint, she managed an, “Ow oo arr?”  in salutation.

“Bene bene grandma. Coca Cola, do you have Coke?” Frankie enjoined, immediately exploiting his weekend of liberty, remembering she always kept a stock of goodies for the visits she received from her fifteen grandchildren.

“Ey?” she said.

“Coke, drink,” he said.

“Si friz.”

“Friz?”
“Yesoo friz friz”, she said, and then blurted incomprehensible dialect to Joe, who bolted up from the sofa, and rushed into the kitchen.

“Oh you mean fridge!” said Frankie, as he watched Joe open the fridge through the back fly-screen door.

“Friz yesso friz”, she said, as Joe handed over a cold can of coke. Joe had decided that the “friz” was off limits, which meant whenever Frankie sought, or was offered refrigerated sustenance, he would have to beat Frankie to the fridge. Joe’s stinginess, and the lengths he went to avoid expense and loss, derided by the entire family, was comical. Frankie suspected that during the decade, the couple had lived in Byers road, their traditional back yard dunny had never been blessed with a new roll of toilet tissue. He further deduced, the pair had remained unwashed during the same period, because he had never witnessed either of them, during his many Byers road sojourns, bathe beyond splashing their faces and hands in the morning.

Frankie sunk his first soda, slaking a long and unbearable soft drink thirst. He exhaled a burp, then requested a smoke, which Joe duly obliged him, by offering his pouch of Drum. After lighting the clumsily rolled cigarette, he took a deep dangerous draw, sending him into an instant coughing fit. He persisted with the smoke, until he suffocated his lungs into submission.

Joe shifted his huge pasta fed bulk off the twenty-year-old couch, its coils breaking through the padding, and headed for his vegetable garden. A bountiful garden, stretching some eighty metres in length, it yielded it seemed, every kind of vegetable and fruit Joe’s insatiable palate desired. The rich thick soil, envied by all of Frankie’s uncles, cultured over the years by utilising any organic waste, yielded grapes, figs, mandarins, tomatoes, lettuces, beans, peas and tea. Joe had also cultivated a bamboo plantation in the traditional Italian chook yard, at the furthest end of the long narrow garden. Bamboo poles were then harvested for his tomato vines and other fruit bearing crops.

As dusk descended that evening, it was grandma’s turn to shift into action. After tossing a soggy matchstick into the yard, an oral hygiene tool employed by Rosa for the last hour, to excavate the remnants of lunch from her rotten molars, she waddled into the kitchen to prepare dinner. 

Dinner was customly Southern Italian, insignificant in size and variety, unlike the main course of the day - lunch. Rosa served up two fried eggs floating in a pool of olive oil, inviting Frankie to mop the plate dry with heavy chunks of Italian bread. Joe was typically presented with the pasta left-overs from lunch, and he too saw it off with bread chunks, washed down with two mugs of home made vino. Following dinner, Rosa rehearsed a refrain of indignation of home duty sacrifices, before clearing the table. From the kitchen, the trio migrated to the TV room, which was adjacent to the master bedroom. Frankie swooped on the new colour TV, flicking through the three stations. It was barely eight-thirty pm, when Joe began yawning ominously in the background, communicating his intention to retire the household. “Dormire dormire,” insisted Joe abruptly, and then he switched off the TV. Frankie beseeched him, promising to mute the volume, so as not to disturb his sleep. Joe was unmoved, pointing to his antique watch. He then terminated the exchange by switching off the room light too. Noise was not Joe’s concern, as Frankie eventually realised, it was the consumption of metered electric power.

Joe seated on his Ancient Couch - Back Veranda

An unfulfilled Frankie sat on his bed in the spare room adjoining the kitchen. He had heard stories about this room, where it was rumoured a relative of Joe’s passed away on the same bed, and had since haunted the room. Was it his first wife? Frankie wondered. Listening intensely for signs of waking life though, Frankie heard only the deep rattle of snoring from Joe’s bedroom and the surreptitious scurrying of mice in his room, which also doubled as a storeroom for groceries and garden produce. He ventured out, and tip toed to the TV room door turning the squealing brass doorknob excruciatingly slow. Joe’s bulk shifted loudly in bed, the springs pinging, but his engine like snoring continued. Frankie switched the TV on, and plonked himself arm’s length from the screen. His mesmerisation was interrupted ten minutes later, when Joe, alerted somehow to the unlawful use of the power utility, rumbled in, his huge gut heaving from the exertion. Frankie cursed at both Joe’s and his own luck, and retreated to his bed, abandoning all hope of outwitting the old man.

The routine continued for the remaining two days at grandma's. In the morning everyone sat at the back veranda, winding themselves up for the day, and the heavy pasta lunch. Lunch was then followed by smokes in the TV room. During this activity, Joe and grandma often dosed in their recliners, with Joe managing to keep one eye open enough to keep the juvenile guest under surveillance. Around two pm Joe would rise in a panic and pull out from his trouser pocket a train timetable and earnestly announce the schedule of the next train to Perth City. By two thirty pm all three were stood at the West Midland station waiting for a train to take them to the city or less frequently Fremantle. The afternoon would then be spent by bitching at a relative’s house, meandering through a park, and finally maintaining a vigil at the storefront of Coles New World.

Toohey rolled up at four pm on Sunday, stopping in front of the two waiting boys. “Where’s Wally?” he shouted through the window, the sot’s face turning a deeper shade of red.

“AWOL,” Kaycinski answered with delight. Richard Kaycinski’s gall amazed Frankie. A Polish Australian, with a surname no one in the institution could correctly pronounce, he was one of the most vocal bigots, among Hillston’s white population.

“You can’t talk you fucking Polish...Polish cunt,” Frankie once countered to Kaycinski during an exchange of ethnic insults.

“At least I’m not a grease ball wog cunt,” Kaycinski effortlessly rejoined.

Frankie thought desperately for a moment, before reciprocating, perpetuating a trade, typically leading to fisticuffs, “get fucked you poxy Polish.... You.... ah fuck!”

 “Stupid cock,” decreed Toohey and then said, “get in.”

The absence of the fourth boy kept the boys in an excited state on the journey back, each speculating the fate of the latest fugitive.

Theo Merrifield met Frankie later that same week, outlining another proposal for conditional freedom. “How would you like to move to the Hillston House?” he asked referring to one of the three staff houses, along the driveway entrance, constructions that were partially erected from the sweat of past Hillston boys. Only two houses were now occupied. Chef Roersma occupied the furthest, and Bowyer the nearest. Hillston House, positioned between the two, and surrounded by bush, was still a three hundred-meter walk from the Admin block and main borstal complex.  In the morning, the Hillston House residents, escorted by the sole House groupworker, would walk to the parade ground and join the mainstream program until late afternoon. There was only one other resident at the time, a “Blueblack,” who understood a smattering of Australian. Serving time for sexual offences, Edward Wunuburra bore multiple payback spear scars over his calves and thighs. Edward was a repeat offender.

“Yep sure Mr Merrifield.”

On the same afternoon, a bewildered Frankie was transferred to Hillston House, just in time to eat dinner with Edward and Groupworker Neil Schorer. When Frankie realised there was only one other resident, he understood the extraordinary urgency of his relocation, which he had never before experienced in his favour.

Later that evening, Schorer pulled Frankie aside and explained, “just a word of warning Panaia, Wunuburra’s a bit superstitious about feather foots.”

“Huh?”

“You know, witch doctors pointing the bone and other blueblack hocus pocus.”

“Oh I see, and so?”

“So if you hear any mumbo jumbo at night, you know what’s it about.”

“Okay.”

“You’re not scared are you?”

“Nah.”

“Anyway now that he’s got company, he might settle down.”

“Maybe.”

Separated from the main complex and its powerful perimeter lights, Hillston House was engulfed in darkness in the moonless night, evoking shameful fears of the dark in Frankie, who now missed the reassuring lights of the cell block. An external extension to the original house, where Schorer slept, the dormitory had a total of five beds. 

Two beds across from Wunuburra, Frankie, tired from the day’s events, flopped down belly first, instantly shutting his eyes in an attempt to cheat the black night of its terrifying aspect. Wrestling with their own culturally produced demons, both boys tossed and turned at length, before drifting into uneasy sleep.

“Eeeeeeeeeeyaaaaaaaaaah eeeeeeeeeeeyaaaaaaaaah” exploded all over the annex several minutes into the witching hour. So thunderous loud, the room louvres rattled. More demented “eeeeeeeeeeyaaaahs” rolled unabated, impossibly increasing in volume and terror. Wunuburra launched into the air from his mattress, landed on the floorboards, then catapulted out of the room to the front steps. Nothing could be discerned of his terrified form, except for the flashes of his brilliant white teeth, as he screamed his way out of a nightmare and the room. Instantly, Frankie was on the heels of Wunuburra, fleeing from whatever was haunting Wunuburra. Outside on the steps, Schorer flicked on the veranda light and flew out. “What’s going on? What happened?” Wunuburra was wildly jerking about, sputtering, making ready to take further flight. Frankie was dazed, his heart banging violently, his face pasty with the infectious terror of Wunuburra. “What happened?” shouted Schorer, “Panaia what happened?”

“I don’t... I don’t know.”

“Ayunda Ayunda,” shrieked Wunuburra, and then bolted towards the road.

“Wunuburra! Wait Wunuburra, its okay, its okay,” said Schorer, finally grasping the situation. Schorer quickly caught up with Wunuburra and led him back to the dormitory.

All three were still shaking five minutes after the event, as Schorer reassured the boys and perhaps himself, it was just a nightmare.

“Fuck that was no nightmare Mr Schorer. Jesus fucking Christ. Fuck he fucking jumped six feet in the fucking air sir!”

“Well you know, I warned you, didn’t I. These tribal fellas really believe in feather foots, don’t ya Eddie?”

Wunuburra mouthed two of the several key words, he had absorbed at Hillston, in order to demonstrate submissive respect, “storry thir.”

“Bugger Eddie, I’m sure they heard you screaming all the way to Kalgoorlie.”

“What if he does it again?” asked Frankie unamused, “I mean how am I gonna sleep, if he keeps yelling like that?”

“Don’t know and don’t really care, as long as you both stay inside the dorm. Got that Eddie? No more running around outside.”

“Thir.”

“Right I’m going back to bed. See you two in the morning.”

Try as he did, Frankie could not sleep that night, or the following three nights where his somnambulate vigil was persistently shattered by Wunuburra’s feather foots. On the fifth day, a delirious Frankie demanded release from the Dantesque Inferno of nightmares, and was mercifiully returned to the block, and the sanity of isolation in a cell. There was nothing divine, nor comedic, about this latest chapter into Frankie's rehabilitation. 

Mail was bellowed out from the top of the cell corridor and Frankie, certain there would be none for him, spitefully ignored this sacred institutional activity.

“Panaia!”

A stunned Frankie marched up to the groupworker and was jolted again, when two envelopes were thrust at him. One was from Jean, and the other postmarked Italy, from his sister. He sat in his doorway, ignoring Butterworth’s queer taunts and genital flashes, and mentally prepared himself to decipher Maria’s typical morose prose.

Dear Frankie,

Arrividicci from Roma! Well brother I made it. I arrived in Italia a week ago and I just love it. It is so cultured and sophisticated....

After re-reading the letter in making sure he was not mistaken in the offer of travel and ultimately freedom, Frankie jumped up and let out a squeal of joy.

“Hey Butterworth guess what?”

“You’re dog snot and I’m not.”

“Nah serious.”

“Yeah what?”

“I’m outta here man. I’m going to Italy.”

“Huh?”

“I’m going man, I’m going to Italy.”

“Where...to wop country!”

“Panaia’s going to ding land,” said Lee Furey two cells along. Lee was a puerile shit Frankie had come to blows with on numerous occasions.

“Ha ha ha, what the hell ya gonna do in wog land? Munch on spaghetti,” said Butterworth.

“Ah fuck you and you too Furey, ya poxy cocksucker! You’ll still be here tugging yourselves, while I’m living it up in Rome.”

“Panaia, Butterworth, keep it down,” said John Henderson from the the top end of the corridor.

As far as groupworkers went, the popular John “Hendo” Henderson came across as an inoffensive eccentric. A hairline receding to his nape, he was the oldest and baldest member of Hillston staff. He was well-liked by everyone, including the resident dog Sheba.  Inmates knew, whenever Hendo supervised their work detail, or cell block, life would be pleasant and sweet from the tobacco and biscuits he occasionally disbursed. He indulged the inmates with extraordinary patience, content to recline in a corner and study them with his shifty eagle eyes, as they horse played around. During ablutions, he seemed especially tolerant, permitting his pubescent prisoners deliciously long steaming showers during the cold winter months. Anticipating the permanent closure of Hillston in 1984, Hendo, along with several of his colleagues, transferred to Riverbank in 1982. It was in Riverbank, Frankie observed, how during showers, Hendo, in spite of his age, always perched himself on the highest point, allowing him an interrupted view of the open shower cubicles. Many years passed since Frankie’s discharge as a Ward, before he understood Henderson’s indulgence in the shower block, was really a disguise for his paedophilic voyeurism. 

At Hillston, Hendo’s personal life was immersed in gossip. It was rumoured, after his wife’s death, he had shacked up with a hot eighteen-year-old Oriental girl. It was also speculated, he had moved out of his house to live in a caravan. This, as it turns out, was true, as a mobile home was spotted for weeks parked in Hillston’s staff car park, though, there was never any sign of the famed Oriental nymph.

Frankie sat down and skimmed over the letter again noting this time, the unusual light style of his sister’s composition. She had been writing to him on a monthly basis since his first admission to Longmore, ironically nurturing a sibling bond that never existed in freedom. Up until then, all her letters had been pessimistic ramblings of the grimness of her life, punctuated with sombre stanzas, sliced from a poet she was currently enraptured with. Along with bits and pieces from Ezra Pound, Coleridge’s Cristobel often featured in these literary dirges, conveying as much meaning to the romance deficient Frankie, as a plate of hors d’oeuvre to the dog Sheba.

He studied his father’s letter and could not get past the opening salutation, “Caro Frankie, filio mio.” The small floral print fluttered to the ground, as he flapped the envelope wildly in search for it. “Dad must really love me” he mused, “it’s just like that Cinderella fairy-tale with that cunt of a mother. Sooner or later I gonna be rescued.”

“How long will I have to wait before I can go to Italy sir?” asked Frankie, during his weekly chess match with the superintendent.

“I’m not sure, but it could be a while yet. There is a lot of paper work to be processed, for example, we need to get you a passport first, and we also need the permission of your legal guardian, the Director of Community Welfare Mr Maine”

“Oh damn. That’ll take for ever, and what if he says no anyway?”

“I’m confident he will say yes.”

“Oh yeah why?”

“Let’s just say that Mr Maine, the Director, and a lot of his staff will be very happy...ah pleased for you.”

“You mean they will be happy to get rid of me?” said a smirking Frankie.

“Well they won’t be unhappy,” countered Bowyer diplomatically.

“But that could take ages, I mean I don’t know how long I can last here sir. I’m sick of Hillston and I’m sick of the boys. I mean I shouldn’t have ever of come here anyway. I didn’t do anything in the first place.”

“Frankie how long have you been here?”

“Dunno, nearly a year I think.”

“Well you have been here a year, so why cant you hold out a few more weeks, hmmm? With luck you might be on a jumbo jet within the month.”

“Another month! I can’t take another day here.”

“Oh seriously now, every Friday you have weekend leave, correct?”

“Yeah that’s only if I stay in Top Group.”

“So stay in Top Group.”

“Easier said than done sir,” said Frankie, invoking his idiom of the week.

Hillston Cell (aka Cabin) Interior:
 Concrete Bars behind the Window are Removed.

Every Thursday a select group of inmates were bussed to the Mundaring Town public library, an exercise in futility, as most boys, were either illiterate or uninterested. In any case, borrowing from the library was prohibited, as books, except the Gideon's, the spiritual fodder of all western prisons, were contraband in the cell block. These excursions were opportunities for boys to savour a few moments of freedom, mingling with inoffensive adults, who did not shout them down every ten minutes. The jaunt was also used as an opportunity for flight, where boys legged it, either on the approach to, or departure from the library entrance. Once inside the library, absconding was impossible, as staff guarded the one and only exit. Thus the short march from bus to library and back, was an excellent opportunity to abscond, as boys understood groupworkers were reluctant to abandon the multitude, in pursuit of the individual.

The wheels of welfare bureaucracy turned slowly, and following a frantic and fruitless wait for news of his discharge, Frankie took flight on a Thursday afternoon, two weeks after his last meeting with Bowyer. He was undecided in his plans, when he boarded the Hillston bus en-route to the library fifteen minutes earlier, but the on board scuffle with Geoffrey  Rosenthal made up his mind.

“Fucking ding,” said Geoff, without cause.

“Oh fuck you too man,” countered Frankie, as the bus rumbled along Stoneville Road.

“Nah you fuck off you ding dog. You wait cunt, you are dead.”

Something broke inside Frankie, as he recalled the first occasion Geoff racially abused him in the McCall Centre.

“It never stops, never! he said under his breath. 

“What was that greaseball?”

“I said this!” snapped Frankie, who lunged at Geoff, jabbing at his face three times with his elbow. Geoff was stunned momentarily, shocked, as was the attacker, with the rare display of ferocity.  Geoff struck back sending Frankie into the aisle, crashing against legs and boots. Frankie tried to quickly raise himself, aware of his vulnerable position, but was immediately floored again by the boots of jeering boys. David Coutts, the tallest groupworker Frankie had ever encountered, pulled him to safety, and returned him to his seat next to Geoff. “Both of you have just won yourselves three day’s L.O.P.,” said the gigantic Coutts. Three day’s L.O.P. automatically divested Frankie of the right to weekend leave, as he was also plunged back to Bottom Group for seven days.

Most Wards had never been brave enough to challenge the seven-foot tall Coutts, whose massive cranium projected the mindless hardness of a boulder. As far as Frankie knew, the crazy Blueblack Chris Edwards was the only boy to have physically confronted David Coutts. A week before Frankie’s departure to Italy, Coutts and Edwards sat together at the bottom group table at lunch. Coutts’ Frankenstein’s monster like torso necessitated multiple servings and Edwards, with seven other boys, watched with envious hunger, as he devoured serving after serving. Edwards, who was on L.O.P., whispered to another boy violating the rule of silence.

“Did you just say something Edwards?” Coutts demanded, without interrupting his chomping cycle. 

Edwards stared blankly at Coutts.

“Well?”

Edward’s pupils dilated, as he maintained an unblinking savage stare.

“I’m speaking to you sport, so answer me!”

In a flash, Edwards whipped his plastic chair from under him, and swung it high aiming for Coutts gargantuan head. Amazingly the ogre sized Coutts reacted just as fast, raising his own chair in time to intercept the strike. Groupworkers from every table rushed Edwards, violently pinning him to the ground. He was frogmarched to 33, and then transported within the hour, to the infamous Riverbank institution.

“You’re dead cunt, you are dead,” muttered a still disaffected Geoff. Ironically, Geoffrey David Rosenthal himself, would be dead before his twenty first birthday, from 'misadventure' on a train track.

“He’s off," someone remarked from the ranks, as Frankie fled, kicking up copper coloured stones in his wake. Much to his relief, no one gave chase, and he tempered his wild pace a few moments later. Great Eastern Highway, the direct route to Midland, was a stone’s throw from Mundaring Town. Frankie crouched in the loose scrub lining both sides of the highway. Ill give it thirty minutes, he thought, and then thumb a lift.  Phil Bowyer in the meantime had been alerted about the latest fugitive, and made plans to personally track him down. He raced to his Landrover, and roared down the driveway, ignoring the speed bumps along the way, confident he could anticipate Frankie’s next move.

Frankie jogged a further one kilometre along the highway, before he felt safe enough to stick out his thumb. Another kilometre was covered, before a male motorist swung over erratically. Frankie approached the car with caution.

“Where ya going matey?” the stocky balding driver asked, with an intensity not unnoticed by Frankie.

“Where you going first?” replied Frankie.

“Anywhere you’re going cobber.”

Frankie became more suspicious of the bloke.

“Uh no its okay thanks, I’ll walk.”

Greasy beads of sweat appeared on the driver’s pockmarked cheeks. He repeated his offer, his voice sounding desperate.

“Nah thanks,” Frankie said, again from the front passenger window.

“Ah come on. What’s the matter, you’ll be okay matey,” and as he said this, he stretched over towards Frankie. Frankie studied the thick hairy hand hanging on the seat headrest. Something about his hand, as it closed into a fat ugly fist, unnerved him. He was sure the anglophile motorist was another 'poxy poofter' out to molest him. One of those sick pale skinned fags, he recalled, who accosted him every time he ventured into a sordid Perth public toilet, pungent with urine, excrement and homosexuality. He turned away from the car and walked on. The driver tailed him for a minute, and then drove off.

“Well I can’t fucking walk all the way,” Frankie said, thinking out loud. Then he spotted the solution to his dilemma. A Charlie Carters supermarket lay ahead of him like a desert oasis. Frankie sauntered in and approached the first housewife he encountered.

“Excuse me Missus, I’ve lost my bus money, can you lend me twenty cents?”

She looked him up and down; unsure what to make of his navy blue shorts, shirt and steel capped work boots. A fat dribbling baby squirmed in the trolley’s baby basket.

“Sure,” she said, and she reached for her bulging purse. “Oh bother, I’ve no change! Here you go, take this and change it at the check-out.” Reluctantly Frankie accepted the attractive red twenty-dollar bill, uncertain whether he would be able to control a delinquent urge to immediately bolt with the loot. He returned a few moments later, and returned the change. One good deed deserves another, he thought. He thanked the shopper deeply, and then headed to the nearest bus shelter.

Old 20 Dollar Bill

A Charlie Carters store

Ugly green concrete bus shelters were unique to Perth where the working classes rotted in wait.  cursing, spitting, vilifying and urinating until a green bus arrived to engorge and then regurgitate them at some merry-go-round destination. He ducked into one of these shelters just in time to catch sight of Bowyer’s Landover through the porthole, barreling along Great Eastern Highway towards his position. Bowyer whipped by, just missing his chance of checkmating Frankie.

“Whoa just in time. Fuck!” exclaimed Frankie. He peered around the wall to see the receding back of Bowyer’s vehicle. He waited. Only triple 0 buses thundered along for the next twenty minutes. And he waited. He stuck his head out again and caught sight of Bowyer’s Landrover racing along in the opposite direction. “The bloke’s going around in circles, fuck he means business,” moaned Frankie.

Finally the bus arrived. Frankie boarded the vehicle greatly relieved.

“And where would ye be going laddie?” inquired the driver.

Before answering, Frankie looked into the bus, which had a passenger capacity of sixty-nine persons, and was dismayed to see it was empty, “I’m going to Midland why?”

“Oh ay to Midland, ye be very young now laddie.”

Why can’t this dumb poxy Scotsman shut his gob and do his job, he cursed mentally. “I’m old enough to ride buses and here’s me money! Twenty cents to Midland right?”

“Aye tweenty cents it is.” The driver rolled off a ticket.  Frankie seated himself at the back of bus, thinking the driver had eyed him in a similar fashion as the poofter who pulled over to offer him a lift. 

Perth Metropolitan Bus 1970s and 80s

“Damn they must have taken the six o’clock.”

The 306 pulled away, having expelled three forlorn looking passengers in front of the urine pungent 19th century public bar, the Railway Hotel, on the corner of Great Eastern Highway and Morrison Road. Joe and grandma disembarked from the following bus forty minutes later, trying their best to reciprocrate salutations to the familiar bus driver. As Frankie anticpated, the old couple was suspicious of his unexpected presence. He tried to reassure them by claiming he was released a day early for outstanding behaviour at Hillston. Joe pointed to his clothes.

“Oh that um er, my private clothes are dirty.”

Grandma was anxious to get home, so she ended Joe’s interrogation with a brutal, “shut up and walk.”

Railway Hotel (formerly Midland Inn) Morrison Road Midland

Content to follow the retired couple’s droll routine, Frankie passed the days pleasantly until Monday morning, when he was forced to leave, because his hosts refused to be bluffed with more claims of excellent borstal behaviour and extended leave. With the intent on returning later in the day, he unlocked the storeroom window and then bade the owners a hearty and convincing farewell. 

Later that morning he strode with purpose through the Hay Street Mall. Piccadilly Arcade was his target, as he remembered from his last city trip, the arcade hosted a small stamp collectors’ shop, attended only by a dopey looking blonde. Two large stamp albums sat on the front counter just beneath the heavy breasts of the clerk. The Australian mint vintage stamps were sealed inside sheaths of plastic, making it difficult to filch them individually. Frankie flicked through the sheets, searching for the most valuable. The blonde studied her nails, while cradling the phone. “Bruce came around again last night and..., can I help you there?”

“Nah thanks just looking.”

He waited a few moments, giving the blonde time to re-immerse herself into a bi-dimensional feminine world of balls and malls. The ring binders opened easier than expected. He pulled three sheets, lowered them behind the counter, and then softly clamped the rings closed. His next move, to exit the bathroom size shop with three sheets of premium collectors’ stamps, was trickier. If only I had a bag, he winced privately, thinking how stupid he was to have come so unprepared. He glanced up at the clerk’s face, still cradling the phone, trying to detect vigilance from it. Nothing, she suspects nothing, he assessed. Hugging the loot against his own breast, he swung around and walked out, listening for a pause in her telephone conversation. A few minutes later, he clumped noisily through the main shopping aisle of Coles New World, determined to replace his heavy boots with lighter running shoes. How ironic, he mused, while trying on a bright new pair of Jimboots, to be busted and chased for pinching running shoes. Bolting was not necessary, as no one grabbed for his shoulder, as he exited the store, wearing his new shoes.

Grandmas and Joe's House West Midland, where Author was Occasionally
Released to on "Weekend Leave" from Hillston

Later that afternoon, Frankie was back at Byers road at three pm. He snuck down the narrow side path of the house and easily scaled the four-foot gate into the rear yard. He had to struggle with the window, as it had not been opened for some time. After vainly rifling through the many musty closets and cupboards for money, he sneezed his way to the TV room, and for the rest of the afternoon, divided his attention between the box and the street-side window. By five thirty pm, an anxious Frankie killed the TV and stood in the dreary greyness of the room, watching for the arrival of the house owners. Dusk, the eternal death of one more day, how it depressed him, began to descend. Through the window, Joe, with his partner lagging behind him, appeared in view. Frankie ducked behind one of the three sofa chairs, as Joe unlocked the front door. Grandma arrived a few minutes later, wheezing between her grumbling about the oppressiveness of walking. Within the hour, the couple dealt with their evening repast, and then relocated to the TV room. Joe switched on the light and the TV, forcing Frankie to squeeze deeper into the recess behind the chair. Across the room, the hide of Joe’s massive rump barely met the sofa seat, when he spied a bright white Jimboot heel. He raced over shouting, and rapped the intruder sharply on his head, with his fat knuckles.

“Ow! Why ya do that?” complained Frankie, flushed with shame.

“Che sta ve jend huh,  Rosa Rosa”

“I’m sorry Joe, I got nowhere to sleep.”

“Rosa Rosa vene ca!,” shouted Joe.

“Gessu Christo Santo Dio,” cried Rose, when she realised the cause of the commotion. Joe took the intrusion more seriously, than Frankie bargained for, hustling off to the neighbours, to phone for the police. Cursing his bad luck again, Frankie left, walking off into the night, clutching his philatelic loot.

Joe's Backyard Vegetable Garden West Midland

“Oi oi rise and shine sleeping beauty.”

Then Frankie heard, “kick him in the ass that will wake the little sod.”

Two constables were standing over a curled up Frankie on a train station bench.

Nursing a swollen lip compliments of Midland police, Frankie was back in 33, just in time to whiff the aroma of morning tea scones emanating from the duty room. Marion Binnie summoned for him two days later, releasing him from his repulsive cleaning duties, where La Puma had him scrubbing the ablution commodes with a toothbrush. Such demeaning chores really tickled La Puma, who occasionally neglected his management duties, to humiliate his solitary prisoner.

“After you finish the bowls, you can start on the kitchen veranda stairs, while everyone has lunch.”

“Yes sir,” answered Frankie, understanding the sadistic sting of the task, when forty boys and their appetites, would muster on the courtyard and then file by, dishing out insults to a kneeling Frankie, as he scoured the hard to reach places of the dining room steps.

 MISSING CONTINUITY

“What da ya want?”

“Sit down” demanded Binnie.

“Tell me what ya want first?”

“Sit down young man!”

Frankie considered his options, undecided which was worse: scrubbing toilet bowls or massaging Binnie’s ego. Both were equally repugnant.

“Where did these come from?”

“What?”

Binnie picked up the three sheets of stamps from among the psychology clutter on her desk.

“These.”

He sat down.

“They’re mine,” he riposte

“Really? They’re very expensive aren’t they?”

“So?”

“So back to you.”

“They’re mine from my collection. Everyone knows I collect stamps.”

“Yes I know that, but tell me then, how does a twelve year old boy afford stamps, which Mr Sleeth, who by the way collect stamps himself, has priced over thousand dollars?”

“None of your goddamn business. Who do you think you are, a cop or something?”

“You stole them, didn’t you?”

“No I didn’t.”

“Frankie you stole them, when you were on the run.”

“Prove it.”

“I don’t have to Mr Panaia, because I can confiscate the stamps regardless.”

“No you cant.”

“Oh yes I can and will, because you and I both know they’re stolen.”

She badgered him for another forty-five minutes, applying all her head shrinking claptrap. He capitulated, when she promised immediate pardon from his seven day sentence of L.O.P. and reinstatement of weekend leave, in exchange for a full confession, including a commitment to personally restore the property to its owner.

West Australia Police Headquarters & Lockup
Some of the worst criminals operated from within this stalinist building

The following day, Binnie led a morally intoxicated and apologetic Frankie back to the stamp shop. The owner, unaware of the theft, received the stamps with dazed indignation. On Binnie’s bidding, the philatelist agreed not to involve the police.

It was no real surprise for Frankie later that day, when The Puma on discovering Binnie’s bargain, rescinded it, reinstating his L.O.P. penalty. “She’s just the headshrink and nothing more cock,” he explained to a distressed boy, who had been banking on a full lunch. La Puma continued, “there is only one boss on the cabin block, and that’s the Senior. Not some namby pamby tart.” The real blame for this catastrophe lay according to Frankie, not with La Puma, but with Binnie and himself. She should have known better than to make stupid promises she couldn’t keep, and I should have known better in believing the poxy pom bitch, he analysed bitterly. Everything, he concluded, was lost; the stamps and worse, his bellicose reputation, rarely compromised, forfeited in a weak moment of moralisation. This was a watershed moment for him, and he vowed as bitter tears soaked his cheeks, to never again trust another adult. 

Following his rationed lunch, the more distasteful from his recent psychological defeat, he launched a verbal assault on the nearest groupworker, discharging venom, until he was removed to 33.

“Put your clothes back on Panaia,” Merrifield said, a good three hours later, two of which had been devoted to noisy kicking of the door. A subdued Frankie jumped into his clothes, relieved to regain dignity and warmth.

“We need to take a mugshot of you for your passport, and we can’t take one in 33 now can we.”

“So I’m going then sir?”

“Looks like it.”

On the eve of his departure, Frankie lay in a restless silence on his bed, unconvinced he was actually leaving, anxious it was a cruel hoax contrived by the likes of La Puma. The next day he was relieved to discover The Puma was not even on shift, and when he was sent back to the block after breakfast, to strip and clean his cell, a pre-release ceremony practiced in prisons the world over, he finally allowed himself to openly rejoice in his impending freedom.

All of Hillston’s inhabitants had something to say in the days leading up to his release. The Noongars and whites stirred him endlessly, thrilled he was returning to wog land, to feed on greasy pasta and meatballs. Worse still, a number of groupworkers requested he send back postcards of bella Roma. The more deluded of these groupworkers went so far, as to suggest, he leave a gift in appreciation of Hillston’s hospitality. This remark, chorused also by Bill Ward, appalled him more than all the racist taunts combined. Frankie demanded of Ward why, if he had anything in the first place to give, he should give a present to anyone in Hillston.

“Fair go Curly, it hasn’t been that bad,” explained his closest Hillston ally.

“Nah your right Mr Ward, it’s been a holiday camp. I’m such an ungrateful wanker.”

“So they want a present do they?”

“Make sure you sweep and mop right under that bed Panaia.”

“Yeah.”

“What Panaia?”

“Yes Mr Scott.”

“Watch it sonny boy," cautioned Scott,  "you’re still on Hillston time.”

“Yes sir.”

“That’s better. Now when you have finished and changed into your civvies, report to the duty room.”

“Yes Mr Scott.”

Frankie peeled off a thick work sock, and in one foul movement deposited the sum total of his appreciation for Hillston‘s hospitality. “Here’s my present you poxy maggots,” he rasped, as he flung the laden sock under the steel bed base, which he had so often battered with his hands and feet during the unbearable periods of solitary confinement.

An hour into the QANTAS flight, Frankie was negotiating his third bag of complimentary nuts between delicious sips of coke. He marvelled at how it was only yesterday, he was sitting in the cold comfort of cell 33, and today he was reclining in the cool comfort of window seat 21 A. Perhaps his one and only regret was, he would never again get to enjoy the infectious laughter of Lesley Schultz. That blackfeller was so funny, he could laugh in a plane crash, he reflected.

The Jovial and Jolly Lesley Schultz (2017)

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* Chapter One of the Autobiography can be viewed here 

http://myownmother.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/battering-child-to-near-death.html

* Other child institutions detailed in unpublished autobiography include:

• St Vincent's Foundling Home (Subiaco)
• Bridgewater Care and Assessment Centre
• McCall Centre
• Longmore Remand and Assessment Centre
• Mt Lawley Reception Home or Walcott
• Riverbank

More institutional images can be located  at this LINK

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KEITH ANDREW MAINE: FORMER DIRECTOR  DEPT COMMUNITY WELFARE

The Director of the Department for Community Welfare  (Keith Andrew Maine)  who had oversight of the statutory children's institutions during the 1970s in WA, died in 2018. I recall meeting this individual on one occasion, most likely at the Hillston institution. 

Keith Maine was ultimately responsible for the physical, psychological and sexual violence perpetrated by groupworkers, both male and female, throughout the 1970s; depraved abuse, which wrecked so many young lives. As with many of his aging vile colleagues and collaborators, he exited comfortably in a nursing home at the ripe age of 88 years. His life of leisure and longevity, was in stark contrast to the many State Wards, who perished at much earlier ages, typically in their late teens and twenties.  

In a grievously  unjust and dickensian society such as West Australia,  there will  never be legal justice or adequate redress, commensurate to the ghastly abuses inflicted against children as young as 5.  It is thus incumbent on us Survivors, to seize justice, not only for Ourselves, but critically, for so many State Wards, who lie buried  beneath the West Australian dirt, unavenged and unknown.

Remember: A little revenge is more human than none (Friedrich Nietzsche).

JOHN ERIC LA PUMA: HILLSTON GROUPWORKER & SERIAL RAPIST

John  Eric La Puma (Senior Groupworker), was possibly the most vicious, feared and loathed staff member in Hillston's sordid and sad History. This exemplary "maggot" died in 2015, several weeks before the Perth Child Exploitation squad were set to arrest La Puma for multiple historic child rape offences. This Author was interviewed by the same police who explained how they had planned to apprehend La Puma, only to realise he had died 6 weeks before the issuance of his arrest warrant.

La Puma bashed, raped and tortured  State Wards during his long 'and satisfying  'Child Welfare' Career.

La Puma's favourite form of torment was teasing half-starved pre-teen boys  (including the Author) stripped naked  in cell confinement  and who had not been  'fed' during their confinement.  

La Puma's trademark torment was placing a plate of hot food in the  cell of  a ravenous and cold Ward and threaten  additional severe  'punishment' (typically the extension of cell confinement by days and or physical violence) should the famished child so much as whiff the plate of hot food.

La Puma was  indeed a twisted piece  of excreta or as the Ancient  Romans once described such human filth - corpus vile.

La Puma was never  prosecuted for his countless crimes against little boys.  He was 'symbolically 'questioned' at least once by the West Australian Police  in 1991 due  to  a complaint  made by the Author  (see other posts).

Typically, La Puma denied everything....

Beady eye La Puma was  an especially  hideous looking creature. His dwarf like torso,  (165 cm) was 'crowned'  with a massive head grossly disproportionate to his diminutive stature. He must of felt like a 'big man' when he belted and tortured  boys as young as 9 years old.

Raping State Wards
*************************
A former Hillston Ward has since disclosed to this Author, La Puma repeatedly raped the Ward by removing the Ward from Hillston grounds under the pretext of an 'excursion'. This  was a common modus operandi of the  pederast group-worker,  as sexual abuse of boys was  in the main, not tolerated by staff in the confines of the panoptic institution. Alternatively, a group-worker could beat a child to an inch of their life,  while  his witnessing colleagues would not so much as blink.

NB: An unsolicited and bona-fide email detailing La Puma raping a State Ward is pasted further along below. Identifying information in the email has been redacted.

Hoaxing the Wards
************************
Another 'hobby' of La Puma was orchestrating horrible hoaxes against the Wards. Hoaxes included telling a boy he was going to be discharged; he was allowed weekend leave; his punishment had been cancelled; he was going to be rewarded with extra food and so on.

La Puma pulled one of his hoaxes against this Author, claiming at one time the Author was going to be released. La Puma took much delight in setting boys up with false promises of reward or relief to then snigger with vile laughter, (his face contorted with risus sardonicus), when the child finally understood he had been hoaxed.

This Author became so cautious against La Pumas hoaxes that when the 12 year old Author was actually scheduled for release and departure for Italy in 1979, (to reunite with his father), this Author refused to believe his imminent  release compelling Hillston staff to almost eject him from the institution. Up until the very morning of his discharge, this Author hounded other groupworkers, demanding to know whether he was being hoaxed by Senior Group Worker John La Puma.

In spite of the fact La Puma was not even on shift on the same morning of the Authors departure, the loathsome influence of La Puma was so pervasive, he was feared just as much in his absence as he was in person and on duty.

VERBATIM  EMAIL RECORD OF CHILD RAPE PERPETRATED BY JOHN LA PUMA 

From: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Sent: Friday, 31 May 2013 4:00 PM
To: fpanaia
Subject: Re: Hillston?

Hi Frankie

Thank you so much for writing back to me mate, I really appreciate it.

Staff wise from hillston..obviously mr lapuma, mr Kimberly (cunt..) mr Moss, I see you already named mr Scott. Most of the other staff were ok?

I spent 15 days straight in ctc..yea confined to cabin.

Unfortunately I was at Castledare! I like yourself spent time at mt Lawley reception centre but thankfully had no issues with anyone there. I have been to long more but it was overnight. Thankfully I never got to riverbank, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have come out of there.. I don't know how you survived being there.

I have quite a few mr lapuma stories but this one may be of interest to you! One day he came to me & said I was being released & we went & got my street clothes & got dressed. We drove all the way to my house in balga, pulled in the drive way & pulled straight out again. He stopped around the corner & lit up his pipe & said this is the power I have over you, I of course was pretty upset by now. We then drove back towards hillston & half way up the greenmount hill he pulled into a street & into a bush track where he sodomised me, this was the beginning of a reign of terror which didn't let up.

Yes I have seen the videos you have put up frankie & can't praise you enough in your bravery.

I have only in the last few months told some people what happened to me.

I'm waiting to be interviewed by the royal commission into child abuse. I want the opportunity to tell my story so people may know I existed!
END_____________________________________