PRISON JOURNAL OF A HIGHWAYMAN

Friday, 25th November 2005
Written by Stuart Highway
whilst incarcerated at Berrimah Prison, N.T.

The guy in the cell next door said his name’s ----- and was brought up here from M Block for fighting, though he wasn’t the aggressor. He said that he was loath to defend himself as he didn’t want to get more time to serve. He said that he wanted a cell over in the other wing, meaning that section where I’ve been, I think. (I hope that I’ll be back there after tonight!) I told him my story. We agreed that M
Block’s no good.

I was going to post this letter but I changed my mind. It’d be a waste if it didn’t make it out, destroyed or lost in the system because somebody didn’t like what I’d written.

Just then I thought I heard a sound like a door being unlocked but when I looked outside there was nobody there. Joe Toscano did suggest keeping a daily journal in here, but before I thought I don’t have time to do that because I’m too busy writing letters. (I’ve written about 65 so far.)

Gaz said over the phone the other day that it’d be good to just keep writing, that that would keep me sane. Yeah, I had been depressed about some of my letters not making it out of the prison, being stopped. It’s frustrating being censored. Why CAN’T I write what I think? The prison has no right to censor prisoners. What are they afraid of? What are they hiding and covering up? The murder of Douglas Scott in 1985 for a start!

Anyway, what else can I do in this cell but write? There’s not exactly a huge range of activities to choose from! Anyway... I've just been brought my tea, and now there’s another guard outside (not the one who brought the meal) talking to the prisoner next door.

Yes, it’s a good idea to keep a prison journal. Especially in this cell, if only to retain my sanity! Whether these words one day end up on the internet, in a book, or unpublished just as my private record, or whether prison officers find them and destroy them, doesn’t really matter at this moment. Just keep writing. This is reality happening now!

I know that at least some of my letters have been getting out. That’s encouraging. It’s a trial and error process. Finding out what you can get away with and what you can’t. I don’t mind censoring myself a LITTLE bit. Leaving a few things unsaid, that’s OK. You can’t just write, or say, anything that comes into your head. You have to think first. Is that really worth writing, or saying? Will it hurt someone unnecessarily? Will it reflect badly on me? Is that a stupid thing to think or write? Will it bring trouble on someone?

However, I don’t like censoring myself to any GREAT degree, just because something might offend the prison censor or go against prison policy.

I’m applying for approval to write to another prisoner: Wayne Langtree in Alice Springs. I posted him a letter, that a few other blokes put their names to, but it came back marked No Permission to write. So I’ve filled in the Application For Approval form and plan to submit it tomorrow morning.

It’s evening, getting dark. I guess the time as 7pm. Finished my tea a while ago. I’m alone with my thoughts. What to do now? Exercise! Walk back and forth across the cell, diagonally, from one corner to the other, then sometimes around the perimeter, close to the wall, first in one direction, then in the other. Now I’ve stopped that and started writing again. Funny, this cell is better in some ways than my cell in the other wing. More room to move around. Less cluttered without a desk, shelves and the chair. The light’s brighter, and I didn’t have to ask the officer to leave it on. Maybe they’ll leave it on all night so that they can see me with their camera.

I reckon I’ll ring N---- tomorrow morning, as soon as I can. I’ll ask to borrow a library book too. I hope it’ll be library day!

One guard just came in to have a look at us. I didn’t think they’d bother coming in to check on us, given the camera in the corner.

Bugger, the light’s just been turned down, though not off. The officer asked whether we were all right, or something like that, then marched out again.

Officers came in to check on us on their rounds periodically through the night, just as they do in the other wing. Why do they bother? They can see me with the camera in the corner of the cell.

Sat. 26 Nov.

The 7 am siren just sounded. “Attention. Attention. It’s 7 o’clock. Time to get up, make your bed, tidy your cell and prepare for unlock.” They say that every morning. Except for one morning when I was in M Block. There was no siren or announcement. Maybe someone forgot. Good, they’re fallible. I hate that siren. It reminds you where you are, horribly, intrusively.

Perhaps the real reason they put me in this cell is not that I’ve pissed off the officers with my general ‘bad attitude’ or have annoyed them in little ways, but because of what I wrote in those 2 letters, one to P----, M------- and L--- R----, the other to Joe Toscano. I remember that I wrote, among plenty of things that they wouldn’t have liked, something saying that they could hang me in here just as they hanged Douglas Scott in 1985. Of course that wouldn’t have gone down well, and that’s the most likely reason for this form I got about those 2 letters, stating that they were removed from the mail pending legal advice.

Particularly since one of the officers involved in that 1985 incident apparently still works here. Stands to reason they’d want me singled out for special punishment.

You can still hear the birds from within this cell. I heard a gecko before. It’s not that cut off from outside. I knew from the sound of the birds that dawn was approaching. Saw a mosquito at the washbasin before. I wanted to get it, squash it, but it disappeared. I was amazed it got into this cell. There might be swarms of them around, with all the rain we’ve had.

That toilet bowl a metre from where I’m sitting (on the end of the bed) is pretty sturdy, the stainless steel bowl encased in concrete. But still, someone’s managed to bash in the front of it with something. Some people must get pretty wild and angry in here. I’m placid. I’m lucky I’ve got so many great friends supporting me. I hope I can help to change things in here.

It’s ridiculous when you think of it, all this thick concrete and metal designed to punish people harshly and destroy the human spirit. But they can never succeed completely, though they try their damnedest to break people.

When one of the officers came in to check on us during his rounds overnight I asked him the time. He said 3 o’clock. The sound of the door being unlocked woke me a few times and I got up to have a look. It wasn’t always the same officer. In fact, there might have been a few different ones. There must be HUNDREDS of officers working here. I keep seeing ones I’ve never seen before.

The door to the yard is of a type I’ve never seen before. The top half of it is a sort of grilled cage reaching into the yard. Presumably so that the officer can see the whole of the yard before opening the door, in case there’s a prisoner hiding beside the door right up against the wall, waiting to attack the officer when he enters.

OK, I shaved, and after a while I got unlocked. I thought I was going back over. I got to walk around the yard for a bit.

Christ, what am I writing this for? The screws might read it and make life even more miserable for me, the sick sadistic bastards. They expect to be considered as nice people, normal human beings, yet what they do to people is just horrible beyond belief.

Yet, I WILL have my say. I WILL not censor myself. What have I ever done to deserve this? I have to keep writing or I’ll go insane. All I did was write, in a PRIVATE letter, that we prisoners are at their mercy, that they can do what they want to us, that they could hang me, as Douglas Scott was murdered in this prison in 1985. They told me today that I’d written things that weren’t true, that they would never do that, they would never come into my cell at night. Well, I hope they wouldn’t! I’m sorry if I hurt their feelings, but I’m just stating a fact. What I meant was, and I’ll still say it, was that they have power over us, behind the forbidding walls of this prison.

Gracey said before that I wouldn’t be sent ‘down the back,’ because it was my first offence. Then he said that I’d go in the dorm for just one night, so that the paint would dry in my cell. [Another prisoner and I had painted my cell that day, as ordered by the senior officer Gracey. It was to be left empty, with the door left open overnight, to allow the paint job to dry.] That was yesterday morning. Then in the afternoon, he’d changed his mind. I was to be put in one of the punishment cells instead of the dorm, BECAUSE I WAS A NON-SMOKER. OK, I was even willing to accept that. But now, I'M IN THE PUNISHMENT BLOCK FOR A SECOND NIGHT. The other block supervisor, who was on today instead of Gracey, Mr Schroeder I think his name is, expects me to be grateful that he’s putting me down here just for tonight, rather than tomorrow night as well. When BEFORE, Gracey had told me that I wasn’t even going to be put down here at all! Gracey, you evil, sadistic bastard. I suppose if you read this as well, you’re going to take offence again. You might as well keep me down here for the remaining 51 days of my sentence.

I wouldn’t take offence at something you’d written in a private letter to a friend, something about me, because I would’ve had no business knowing what you said in the first place. Another prisoner told me today that in another prison he knew of, the staff never even bothered to read the letters the prisoners wrote, the outgoing mail, only the incoming. So is it really necessary that they read our PRIVATE letters here?

Why have I got this rash on my forearms? I feel feverish…