My friendship with Helen grew slowly. We often hung out together as mates. I was friends with quite a few of the amazing women from church, but as time moved on it was Helen who I became best mates with. I really enjoyed her company, but I was scared that I would get it wrong again. Things started to change when Helen moved from the house with four other girls into a unit by herself. I found myself visiting the girls’ house less often and dropping in on Helen’s place more. Something really attracted me to Helen, not in a romantic way immediately. She had a deep relationship with God and a well of inner strength. I respected her.

One night I had an unusual dream. I dreamed I was back in Ballarat, in the house full of drug users and I was dealing again. A homeless guy turned up at the door and I invited him in. He was totally derelict. We could see he was destitute and in pain. We offered him a shower and some clean clothes, and shared our food with him. He asked for drugs and I told him I could give him drugs, but it was only a band-aid for the pain he felt.

With day after day of long and lonely strict routine I believe what they say, ‘A change is as good as a holiday.’ Within a few months that change happened when I was moved to Barwon prison, a newly built complex near Geelong. This was completely different from Pentridge—clean, spacious and no rats, not ones with tails anyhow. I spent my days playing table tennis and working in the metal fabrication shop.

I had walked through a door that I did not even realise I’d been searching for. That door was Jesus and walking through that door I discovered something I had never known before. This something met me in my lost place and embraced me just as I was. It was a love that did not care what I had or hadn’t done. It was a love that knew me and accepted me. Over the next few days I felt completely enveloped in this new type of love—God’s love.

Our house was guarded by three mongrel dogs. Sly was a huge black Rottweiler pup, big paws and playful, yet fearsome because of his size. Sly was a harmless sook who slept on Simon’s bed. Then there was Darius, a muscular mix of bull terrier and Rhodesian ridgeback. Darius was rusty brown and huge, like a canine wombat. He was both untrainable and unkillable.

I woke up as usual on the day of my release, only to be quickly overcome by nerves. It was October 1987, I was twenty-four and it felt like I was just starting out. There was so much unknown about living a life of freedom once again. After three years of maximum-security prison I was to be released. I made my way through the necessary procedure on the way out of prison.

Lock up was four pm. That’s sixteen hours of self-time. Everything slowed down once again, but this time it was not chemical, rather just the long slow hours with limited ways to fill the time. Reading, writing, television and sleeping were common activities. The tedium of boredom was never far from sight.

I had little around me to give me hope for anything more than the ongoing purposeless life that I had, day in, day out. As the months rolled by the inner despair set in. Every night the unrelenting nagging of the voices in my head continued. It was always the same thing that I heard—‘Kill yourself!’ so I could join ‘them’ on the other side. I knew I had to resist.

My case came to trial after three long months on remand. The evidence against me was pretty much watertight, so I figured the best thing I could do was plead guilty, try to be co-operative and hope the judge would go easy on me. A guilty plea meant no real trial, and no jury. The arguments from prosecution and defence were over the severity of the sentence.

Hard drugs were difficult to get in Perth. We were poorly connected and without a regular supply, so we used whatever drugs we could score. When we couldn’t get speed we would smoke dope, and when dope was short we drank whatever alcohol took our fancy. We went through a lot of alcohol.

The decision to skip bail and head interstate was a pretty easy one to make. Simon and I chose to part company for a while; Rick and I were drawn together by a driving fear. We considered lots of places to go. Something deep inside me just wanted to get as far away as I could. I just wanted to run.

Prison at night once again brought with it the ritual of the tent of filth covering the nearby bed. I found it hard to sleep with regular interruptions of sounds that would stir my fears. I didn’t wish to become a victim of some sort of weird prison behaviour.

My heart was pounding. My eyes narrowed in on the knot in the timber table in front of me. My knuckles turned white as I made a clenched fist. I tried to suppress the genuine fear that this was going to end badly. I looked up as I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans and tried to read the almost bored look on the magistrate’s face.

I was one of thirty green recruits at Kapooka, the Army Recruit Training Centre, near the inland city of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. All of us were inexperienced, probably more inexperienced than we could have realised, and all eager to get past the indignity of basic training in order to become soldiers.

Freedom at last,’ I announced to no one in particular, as I jumped out of the warm, modest four-door sedan and took off. The drive to Ocean Grove from Ballarat was just a little over an hour. I was grateful to escape out of the car into the fresh salt air.

The windows of the stolen ute were down just enough to let our cigarette smoke escape. We sped away from where we had been stranded in Collingwood—the rough end of inner Melbourne.