oz ex-prisoner
05-28-2004, 01:19 PM
He’s here to help them all that he can
To make them feel wanted he’s a good holy man
Sky pilot, sky pilot, how high can you fly
You’ll never, never, never reach the sky.
The lyrics of Eric Burdon and the Animals echoed a message of hope throughout the 1960s while the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones carried a thundering vibration of social revolution into the streets.
In Australia the social revolution came to a grinding halt with the decision that Ronald Ryan would be another casualty of a legal system that embraced the death penalty. He was hanged in Pentridge Prison on February 3, 1967.
One of the many outspoken critics of the death penalty in relation to Ryan’s execution was Fr John Brosnan, a ‘sky pilot’* who ministered to Ryan during his last hours.
Fr Brosnan was a prison chaplain. A man of the cloth. A sky pilot. And to those who walked the yard in Pentridge he was affectionately known as Broz, the priest with compassion.
His fight against social injustice left a lasting impression inside Pentridge as it did on the streets of Melbourne but those impressions blended with a decade of change that ended in 1969, the year I went to jail for armed robbery.
My reflection of the 1970s was in stark contrast to the previous decade. There was still change and upheaval but the changes were occurring behind the walls of maximum security prisons.
The NSW State Penitentiary at Long Bay, as it was known in those days, was a volatile pressure cooker waiting to explode. Prisons elsewhere had already erupted like festering boils. Attica, Folsom and San Quentin in the US went up in smoke while British prisons at Durham and Parkhurst felt the brunt of the changing revolution behind the walls. The body count rose as the insurrection spread.
Inside Australian prisons the keeper and the kept eyed each other suspiciously waiting for some indication of the other’s intentions. Time became an acid. Slowly dripping away ...
The only calming effect during that turbulent period was the presence of two sky pilots, two nuns dressed in their conventional “penguin suits” who regularly visited Long Bay and radiated a serenity and peace that seemed out of place inside that seething cauldron. They listened to the anger of caged men. And they soothed that anger by simply listening.
The sight of those two nuns ministering to a prison population in tense and strife-torn times was one of the rare spectacles I retained in my memory from the prison carnage of the 1970s.
During the summer of 1971 I was classified as an “intractable” prisoner for attempting to escape and assaulting prison guards. They transferred me to the Alcatraz of the NSW prison system. HM Grafton Jail. At the time I was serving 28 days solitary. Nothing ever changed in solitary at Grafton. Oatmeal mush for breakfast. Oatmeal mush for tea. And silence. Total silence. Punishment for breaching the silence was brutally extreme.
One day the screws (prison guards) opened the solitary confinement cell and a brown paper bag was thrust inside. Just as quickly as the cell door opened it was slammed shut again.
A bag of fruit with a card attached rested against the wall. I looked at the paper bag for what seemed an eternity before I crawled over and read the card. It said: “Merry Christmas from the Sisters of Mercy.” It was Christmas Day 1971. That brown paper bag filled with fruit was one of the most memorable Christmas dinners I have ever eaten.
In the spring of ’75 we were transferred to a brand new super-max prison called Katingal Special Security Unit and once again it was a sky pilot who had a profound effect on the guys confined inside that concrete tomb -
Sr Julianna, a little old nun who was a regular visitor into the Blockhouse and adopted as “her boys” the men a prison system had classified as no-hopers.
Katingal was consigned to the pages of history in 1978 as a Pavlovian experiment gone wrong but the memories of a little old nun who cared still remain.
I was released in 1980 to confront a strange new world outside the walls. But every so often the memories of prison were rekindled by a sky pilot.
Like the time in 1986 when the strained face of Fr Peter Norden appeared outside Pentridge to tell the world that five prisoners had died in a fire in the maximum security block Jika Jika.
Or in 1987 when rioting prisoners inside Boggo Rd Jail refused to negotiate with authorities until they could speak with their sky pilot, Sr Bernice, who climbed a ladder to speak with them as they perched on the roof.
In a matter of minutes Sr Bernice’s negotiation with the prisoners peacefully accomplished what tear gas and the sophisticated weaponry of a prison system had failed to do.
In retrospect, it does seem ironic that those unassuming men and women of the cloth achieved more with their compassion and caring than was ever achieved by the full brutal weight of any prison system. Perhaps that is why poignant memories of the sky pilots linger long after the prisons have gone.
[*A ‘sky pilot’ is Australian prison slang for a priest, nun or prison chaplain.]
To make them feel wanted he’s a good holy man
Sky pilot, sky pilot, how high can you fly
You’ll never, never, never reach the sky.
The lyrics of Eric Burdon and the Animals echoed a message of hope throughout the 1960s while the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones carried a thundering vibration of social revolution into the streets.
In Australia the social revolution came to a grinding halt with the decision that Ronald Ryan would be another casualty of a legal system that embraced the death penalty. He was hanged in Pentridge Prison on February 3, 1967.
One of the many outspoken critics of the death penalty in relation to Ryan’s execution was Fr John Brosnan, a ‘sky pilot’* who ministered to Ryan during his last hours.
Fr Brosnan was a prison chaplain. A man of the cloth. A sky pilot. And to those who walked the yard in Pentridge he was affectionately known as Broz, the priest with compassion.
His fight against social injustice left a lasting impression inside Pentridge as it did on the streets of Melbourne but those impressions blended with a decade of change that ended in 1969, the year I went to jail for armed robbery.
My reflection of the 1970s was in stark contrast to the previous decade. There was still change and upheaval but the changes were occurring behind the walls of maximum security prisons.
The NSW State Penitentiary at Long Bay, as it was known in those days, was a volatile pressure cooker waiting to explode. Prisons elsewhere had already erupted like festering boils. Attica, Folsom and San Quentin in the US went up in smoke while British prisons at Durham and Parkhurst felt the brunt of the changing revolution behind the walls. The body count rose as the insurrection spread.
Inside Australian prisons the keeper and the kept eyed each other suspiciously waiting for some indication of the other’s intentions. Time became an acid. Slowly dripping away ...
The only calming effect during that turbulent period was the presence of two sky pilots, two nuns dressed in their conventional “penguin suits” who regularly visited Long Bay and radiated a serenity and peace that seemed out of place inside that seething cauldron. They listened to the anger of caged men. And they soothed that anger by simply listening.
The sight of those two nuns ministering to a prison population in tense and strife-torn times was one of the rare spectacles I retained in my memory from the prison carnage of the 1970s.
During the summer of 1971 I was classified as an “intractable” prisoner for attempting to escape and assaulting prison guards. They transferred me to the Alcatraz of the NSW prison system. HM Grafton Jail. At the time I was serving 28 days solitary. Nothing ever changed in solitary at Grafton. Oatmeal mush for breakfast. Oatmeal mush for tea. And silence. Total silence. Punishment for breaching the silence was brutally extreme.
One day the screws (prison guards) opened the solitary confinement cell and a brown paper bag was thrust inside. Just as quickly as the cell door opened it was slammed shut again.
A bag of fruit with a card attached rested against the wall. I looked at the paper bag for what seemed an eternity before I crawled over and read the card. It said: “Merry Christmas from the Sisters of Mercy.” It was Christmas Day 1971. That brown paper bag filled with fruit was one of the most memorable Christmas dinners I have ever eaten.
In the spring of ’75 we were transferred to a brand new super-max prison called Katingal Special Security Unit and once again it was a sky pilot who had a profound effect on the guys confined inside that concrete tomb -
Sr Julianna, a little old nun who was a regular visitor into the Blockhouse and adopted as “her boys” the men a prison system had classified as no-hopers.
Katingal was consigned to the pages of history in 1978 as a Pavlovian experiment gone wrong but the memories of a little old nun who cared still remain.
I was released in 1980 to confront a strange new world outside the walls. But every so often the memories of prison were rekindled by a sky pilot.
Like the time in 1986 when the strained face of Fr Peter Norden appeared outside Pentridge to tell the world that five prisoners had died in a fire in the maximum security block Jika Jika.
Or in 1987 when rioting prisoners inside Boggo Rd Jail refused to negotiate with authorities until they could speak with their sky pilot, Sr Bernice, who climbed a ladder to speak with them as they perched on the roof.
In a matter of minutes Sr Bernice’s negotiation with the prisoners peacefully accomplished what tear gas and the sophisticated weaponry of a prison system had failed to do.
In retrospect, it does seem ironic that those unassuming men and women of the cloth achieved more with their compassion and caring than was ever achieved by the full brutal weight of any prison system. Perhaps that is why poignant memories of the sky pilots linger long after the prisons have gone.
[*A ‘sky pilot’ is Australian prison slang for a priest, nun or prison chaplain.]