The Social Wildlife
After leaving study during a degree in psychology and giving up my career opportunities in the NZ Army and fitness industry, in 2017, I was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for the most significant sports steroid case in New Zealand history. This was a profound and formative experience enabling me to look back on my life, bringing awareness to some of the negative habits and dangerous decisions I was making.
You would think this would be the end, but after being released in 2018 after serving one year, although my perspective had changed dramatically, I would continue to repeat old self-serving cycles of risk-taking behaviour. Recent events, coupled with volatile relationships and negative social circles over the previous ten years, would finally bring me to the point of acceptance that I was the problem and that something drastic needed to change.
In this podcast, I will share my history and experiences openly, covering topics such as taking ownership, criminal behaviour, the prison experience, hostile environments, coping with stress and adversity, toxic relationships and social interactions, emotional triggers and vulnerability, drug use and addiction, anxiety and depression, building self-confidence, health, fitness and wellbeing, and recognising anti-social or harmful behaviour in yourself and others.
My goal is to provide perspective, motivate and encourage positive change while enabling support for anyone struggling with these aspects of life. Although the road to change is never easy, we are all far more capable than we give ourselves credit. Sharing these experiences, perspectives and intimate details of my life will take me out of my comfort zone, and if I can make a positive change, so can you.
Website: www.thesocialwildlife.com
The Social Wildlife on Instagram: thesocialwildlife
Follow Josh Townshend on Instagram: townshendjosh
The Social Wildlife
Finding Freedom in Prison
In this episode, Kevin Ngawhare shares his gripping tale of resilience and transformation. From growing up in a violent neighborhood in Napier, New Zealand, to surviving the intense emotional and physical trials of gang life and prison, Kev's story offers a raw and unflinching look at his turbulent upbringing and inspiring journey of change. These moments ultimately pushed him towards spiritual awakening and personal growth, despite the odds being stacked against him.
Kev recounts the heart-wrenching experiences that shaped his early years, including the devastating loss of a sibling and the subsequent spiral into reckless behaviour and depression. He opens up about the lasting scars left by a near-fatal motorcycle accident and the grueling recovery that tested his mental resilience. Kev also reflects on his friendships, teenage years, and the crucial decisions that eventually led him away from the perilous path of gang involvement towards a passion for motorbikes and a different way of life.
Kev's narrative takes us through the brutal realities of prison life, the internal conflicts of gang warfare, and the emotional toll of betrayal within the gang hierarchy. But beyond the darkness, Kev's story is also one of hope and spiritual transformation. He shares how encounters with mediumship and spiritual mentors helped him combat deep-seated depression and find a new purpose. This episode is a testament to the strength of the human spirit and the possibility of positive change, offering invaluable lessons on the power of resilience, family love, and the impact of spirituality. Join us for a moving and inspirational conversation that will resonate with anyone facing life’s toughest challenges.
Follow The Social Wildlife on Instagram: thesocialwildlife
Follow Josh Townshend on Instagram: townshendjosh
Hey everyone, the story you're about to hear is my story. It's a hard story to tell. It's got a lot of embarrassing moments for me, but I had to tell the truth, otherwise it's not going to be a real story. There's a segment in the story that I talk about betrayal in the gang. I'm not talking about the whole gang. I'm not talking about anybody else in the gang. I'm talking about the crew that I was in charge of that aren't a crew anymore. I've got a lot of love and respect for the brothers that I grew up with and spent a lot of years with, so I don't want to disrespect or upset anybody. It's a positive story. It's not a negative story. It's a story about my life. It's a story about some bad times Depression, suicide, spiritual awakening and adversity. So I hope it helps people that can relate to it and I hope you enjoy it. Thanks everyone.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Social Wildlife. This month we have Kev on the podcast, kev Nafare. Kev is a friend we met recently through a mutual friend. Kev spent the better part of 30 years in a gang in New Zealand. You were quite high up at one point in the gangs in that gang is that right? And so that was in Hawke's Bay and Christchurch. So he exited the gang scene maybe three years ago and has been working on himself since and I thank you for coming on the show. Great, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me, josh. No worries, man, do you want to tell us? Just maybe start by sharing a bit about where you grew up and a little bit about what your early life was like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I grew up and a little bit about like what your early life was like. Yeah, I grew up in, uh, napier. I was born, born in waipaka and central waltz bay, grew up in napier, um, I had a. Well, I had a good family and a good home. Yeah, uh, hard working family. We weren't rich or anything but uh, yeah, I had uh, four sisters and a brother, mostly older, my oldest sister, linda, then I had a brother, martin, who was nine years older than me, eight nine years older than me, then I had another sister, maria, and another sister, sharon, after that and then me and then our younger sister, tania.
Speaker 1:So I had a good, loving family and my father was a heavy drinker and a heavy gambler. So that caused a lot of strife in my parents' life and things like that. My mum looked after us mostly. My father was always either working, but in saying that though he was a good man, he was a good dad, good loving father and that, but he just had a couple of drinking problem and a gambling problem, I see, which caused a lot of stress on my mother and my father's relationship, I think, yep, so there was a lot of fighting and arguing and that as well. Not like once for warriors or anything, but even though I grew up around a lot of that, but not between my mum and dad. It was just a lot of fighting and drunk arguments.
Speaker 2:Right, I remember you saying something about was it your? There was other parents or other families that you knew of, that that kind of stuff was happening, eh, yeah.
Speaker 1:So when I grew up I mean I grew up in Raianui and Napier, so I mean it was quite a big gang presence in that area and my mates who I went to school with they actually ended up most of my mates ended up in the gang as well, and even young at primary school and things like that. My mates who I lived next, my next door neighbours, and my school mates that I hung around with they were like I know, for example, my mate Mike who lived one house away from me. I'd go and play with him. He was quite mischief though, but tough. He was the toughest in our school. Everywhere we went he was the toughest guy, really good sportsman there, but he grew up really hard. So I'd go and play over at his house and his father would come home and he'd get beaten up like a man. He'd get thrown around and I was punched over and his old man was punched over Really and his old man was tough too.
Speaker 2:And you watched that happen. I seen that happen.
Speaker 1:It was very scary when you're a little kid.
Speaker 2:Oh, I bet it was yeah yeah, Talking under 10.
Speaker 1:Right, so you'd see that. But then again he'd get a hell of a hiding. And then the next day he'd be driving his old man, Morris Minor, on his way to school. He was driving as a child, you know, and I go. What are you doing? You're going to get out of the body and he's taking it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is like the day after. So this is probably why he used to get. This is why he used to get beaten in that probably. But I mean the beatings that he got were not. They wouldn't. A man wouldn't be able to take some of these beatings. They were pretty bad, yep, yep, and I had a few mates that were brought up like that. Luckily I wasn't, I was not sort of subject to that sort of family life, but when I was young.
Speaker 2:But I saw a lot of it yeah, yeah, yep, and I guess the world was a different place back then. Eh, yeah, I mean it happens now, don't get me wrong, but I think that there was less in terms of support and coping strategies and all that to do.
Speaker 1:Oh, and the laws were different back then. Yeah true, If someone reported someone giving their child a hide and the cops turned up, they'd just sort of tear you off.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't think there was any laws against it. No, that's right, unless you killed them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean everyone was doing it, so it was kind of like, yeah, yeah, I remember when we spoke. We've obviously spoken earlier. I mean, you mentioned something about you lost your brother quite early in your life. Could you tell me a bit about that, maybe, and just how it impacted you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was definitely a life changer for me. I just turned 13, and, in saying this, my brother he was when he died. He died five days after his 21st birthday and I had just turned 13, so that was the age difference. My brother always looked out for me, he was my protector, he was the one that taught me about life, that showed things, yep, um. So I absolutely idolized my brother. He'd take me for rides on his motorbike, he'd play, fight with me, he'd protect me.
Speaker 1:When, the when I'd have a fight or get beaten up by kids down at the park or whatever, he'd come and sort of stick up for me and they'd, you know, they'd all run off and or he'd, or he'd fight for me, you know, but they were older kids. Yep, but he had um. So he was always my protector and my mentor and I just loved him so much when my father would come home with parties or my brother, because they would go to pubs and things with my father and that, and they'd come home with a party and I'd think, oh, good party, and I'd get all excited. So I think I'm trying to get in there with them and I mean this is at like age 10, 11, those sort of ages.
Speaker 1:I used to love it when they'd come home with parties. It was exciting for me, so I'd try and get all in amongst it and my father would yell at me and tell me to get to bed and I'd sort of get real sad. I mean just an example of one of the things I'd go to bed and I'd be crying in my bed and then my brother would come in. My brother would come in and sit on the bed next to me and he'd explain stuff to me like bro, it's not your time yet You're going to have your time.
Speaker 1:It's just a bit early, just don't worry about it. Oh, what a good man. Yeah, he was really good. Yeah, he was said. He meant a lot to me, so when he died, it definitely changed my life. When I think back on it, it was a shock for all my family. I wasn't the only one that was devastated. You can imagine parents losing their child. Oh yeah, it'd be devastating. It's something I wouldn't the only one that was devastated. You can imagine parents losing their child.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it'd be devastating.
Speaker 1:It's something I wouldn't wish on anybody. And I remember I was home from school that day and the cops pulled up and two of my sisters were there, Sharon and Maria, and the cops knocked at the door. I answered the door. They said, oh, is your parents here? And I said no. Maria came to the door and then they told us both and I just remember it was just devastating, devastating for my whole family. Everyone was just distraught, Definitely changed all of our lives. I remember everyone came rushing home from work my parents, my older sisters and my brother-in-laws and the whole family was all there. Everyone my older sisters and my brother-in-laws and the whole family was all there. Everyone was just devastated. And I remember standing there. It was like I wasn't there but I was there and I was looking around at everybody and I could see just the devastation of it all and the grief that everyone was going through. Everyone was crying.
Speaker 1:But it was that moment that I felt I didn't realise it at the time but thinking back on it now, I felt really alone. I felt really alone because they went really well. I don't blame my family because they were going through their own grief, but they sort of forgot about me. They thought I was still a bit young, I wouldn't be hurting as much as they were. But in truth of it all, I was actually hurting the most because he was everything to me, like I said, and when we lost him that day, I actually felt unloved that day because I never got hugs. Everyone was hugging each other, but they just forgot about me and I mean, I love my family, I've got good family.
Speaker 1:There was that moment that I realised that I just wanted to die. I missed my brother that much. I wanted to die with him. I had been locked myself in my room for a week. My mother had to come and eat and things like that. I just wasn't hungry. And I remember my mentality I just wanted to die to be with him. I mean, if there was a heaven or wherever he was, wherever he had gone, I wanted to go there, yeah. So I didn't realize this then, but I had gotten abandonment issues right from that. From that moment, from those times, and and it just completely changed me. I was, I got, I was a really shy, bit of a weird kid, but it's really shy like I wouldn't even shit in the house if we had visitors and we had a big house.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's how shy, I was.
Speaker 2:I don't blame you.
Speaker 1:I probably wouldn't either. That's how shy I was and yeah, and so I um, I really had I'd hardly spoke, but yeah, I was. But after that it just completely changed. I mean, I was, I was a good child. I wouldn't even steal like 50 cents out of my mum's purse or anything like that. I wouldn't steal a push bike or nothing like that. But that completely changed me that moment.
Speaker 2:Do you feel like your family knew how much support he provided you?
Speaker 1:No, I don't think they did. I don't think they did. I knew, but I don't think they saw it much because he didn't really announce it to everybody.
Speaker 2:He'd just see it, he'd see it and he'd just come and talk to me. It sounded like he was doing the things that they were forgetting to do sometimes, or just overlooking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's more just being overlooked really because they had their own lives. My older sisters, they all worked. They all worked for me when they were 15, 16.
Speaker 2:You can understand too. Being the youngest, it's like your parents would have probably had a lot of learning experiences with the older ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then as they get older, they get more capable of looking after themselves and as parents we kind of would be like, okay, I haven't got to this age yet, but you can imagine you get to a certain age. You're just kind of like, okay, I can relax a bit, I don't have to put as much energy into parenting and it's like it would be easy to overlook the younger ones?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it was. Well, I wasn't the youngest, I was second youngest.
Speaker 2:Oh, second youngest, Sorry so.
Speaker 1:I think my youngest sister. She was put in that forgotten gap. Oh, I see. But, I wasn't forgotten, forgot. I mean I was looked after.
Speaker 2:I mean I got all the hand-me-downs yeah, yeah, I never looked but uh, I, I yeah misunderstood, I think yeah, yeah yeah, um you mentioned that you um also had a motorcycle accident yeah, that was, um, because my brother died from a motorcycle accident, right.
Speaker 1:So from that moment on, like I said, I wanted to die to be with him. I think, subconsciously, I just started living dangerously and taking risks and not caring if I lived or died. Yeah, so I got a motorbike. This is a year after. Yeah, I think it was only just over a year after.
Speaker 1:So I was 14, going on 15, and I got myself an XR500, and I got drunk Me and my mates got drunk from having a party and I thought I'd go and pick up a friend. So I jumped on this bike and I was going past my other friend's house Kelvin Pratt was his name. I had a lot to do with him growing up as well, because he was rich, his parents were millionaires, right. And so I grew up, we used to go to the rivers on here two RM motorbikes, oh yeah, two strokes. So we used to go down the rivers Saturday and Sunday and that's how I learned how to ride and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yep, and I was actually going past his house and he was loading the bikes up on the trailer and I stopped and I was drunk and stoned, actually, and I pulled up to his place and he said, oh, is this your new bike? And yeah, he goes, let's see how fast it can go, go wrap it down the street. And I'm stupid, mean, right. So I went down the other end of the street, turned around and I just gave it a full tip.
Speaker 1:I think I was doing about, I think I did 165 k's or something I was doing and I forgot all about just past one house, past this place, and I just didn't even think about it, just drunk and stupid. And I went full tip down there and as I went past his house I turned and waved to him. I turned around and I was going off the road up into the driveway on the curb strip, grass strip, and I remember the brakes had really touchy brakes. So I was doing 165 k's but straight towards a tree and I couldn't really use the brakes, I had to just sort of swerve, just miss that tree, went across the footpath straight head on into a power pole. Just go at everything.
Speaker 1:I got just miss that and head on into a big green steel power transformer. So the impact was pretty bad. I tried to fly over the handlebars. On impact, the handlebar went into the top of my thigh, went straight through my leg and ripped right down my leg, just mangled my leg. So yeah, Wow.
Speaker 1:I got thrown, probably about a house and a half that's how I measured it, A house and a half but I was flying backwards and in slow motion. Everything was frame by frame. It took ages. And when I landed on the ground which was another miracle I sort of landed backwards on the small of my back and then my head flipped back, which was another miracle, because I didn't have the helmet done up and it was really loose. I had no padding around the front, just on the top. So when I flipped my head back, my helmet hit the gutter and come flying off, which I don't even know. I always put it down to centripetal force when I was flying through there.
Speaker 1:It kept it on or someone was looking after me that day, and I actually think more now that someone was looking after me that day. Because obviously that impact would have done some bad damage my friend Kelvin that I was going past his house. He brought the helmet up to a hospital. Once I woke up a few weeks later and showed me the helmet and it was crushed at the back and had a crack right down the middle.
Speaker 2:So that saved my life. It would have been you, yeah.
Speaker 1:And also, I think, the St John ambulance who had moved that day, not that day just at the process of having a new building in Green Meadows. It was rush hour traffic right at that time so it took them a long time to get to where I was.
Speaker 1:It took them 40 minutes to get to where I was Wow that's a long time, yeah, so I'd almost died from loss of blood and that anyway, my I was lying on the ground and I knew something was wrong with my leg because it was numb. I couldn't feel it and I was thinking, saying to myself don't look at your leg, don't look down, don't look down. And I looked down and as soon as I looked, seen it. That's when I felt all the pain come rushing up. I screamed like a it would have been.
Speaker 2:It would have been a long, 40 minutes, yeah.
Speaker 1:It was just. I just remember the pain, because the first thing I saw was my foot was turned around and facing the other way and my shin bone had come up through my knee and was sticking out like probably about that far and my whole thigh was just ripped open like a gutted fish. It was open. I could see inside it. There was no bone. All the bone had been smashed into a thousand pieces. My females and I could see all the veins and the muscles were ripped and torn or hanging out and shaking and they're twitching. And I could see inside my leg and my I could actually see my legs swelling like that. And then, yes, so that was.
Speaker 2:It was pretty, um, traumatic you're lucky it didn't get your femur right oh, yeah, your fem femoral artery.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, the artery. Yeah, that was another miracle of it. It had actually ripped right down my and shattered my whole bone, my whole femur, but the artery that runs through the inside of my leg, it never touched it and if it had severed that I would have been dead in two minutes.
Speaker 2:I think your femoral artery, like if it's big enough you can bleed out in like 20 seconds or something.
Speaker 1:It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:It's like four pumps. That's it, it's all gone.
Speaker 1:No, I was very lucky.
Speaker 2:Very lucky that day.
Speaker 1:I knew then, even running from my head, I thought I was either going to die that day, but I knew I'd never walk again. I'm never going to walk. It was just mangled, it was a mess.
Speaker 2:Does it give you any problems now at all?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's shorter than it is the other way, but I mean I was quite lucky as well. The orthopedic surgeon who worked on me when I went to intensive care. Of course my parents got told look, we're going to have to cut his leg off right at the top. It's too badly damaged and probably can't keep it. But Mr Atkinson was the orthopedic surgeon, brilliant, brilliant doctor. He worked on it for the first operation. He worked on it for 16 hours and saved it. But it was still touch and go. After that he said I could get gangrene at any time. Then they'd have to cut it off anyway.
Speaker 2:Is it just gangrene, just a bacterial infection? Yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I was really open To infection because he said he had to pick out A thousand pieces of bone. He counted them and it also had grass and dirt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the handlebar had been through it. Yeah, the handlebar had been through it.
Speaker 1:So Bits of gene in it denim genes and things like that in it, and so I, oh and plus also I forgot to mention that the power, and so I and plus also I forgot to mention that the power transformer that I hit the bike. I remember being taken away on an ambulance.
Speaker 1:I looked over and the bike was still embedded in the transformer and I knocked out everyone's power in the whole block and the people, the workmen, had come there to fix it even before I left in the ambulance and they were saying they don't know how I didn't get blown up could have electrocuted you on the way through.
Speaker 2:Even the impact. It's kind of like when you light a cigarette off the mains in prison and you blow the powder, everyone's way that pisses everyone off once TVs go off. Oh shit, olds, I'm glad you came through that. Okay, it would have been a long time recovery. I think I was in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. Yeah, oh shit, I'm glad you came through that okay. It would have been a long-time recovery, no doubt. Yeah, I think I was in hospital for eight months Right, eight months. I was in traction for nearly all of those eight months and it was terrible terrible for a teenager because you're on your back and my leg was up in the air. You've got a cage over you with pulleys and ropes and weights and pulling your legs stretched Because I had no femur left so I had to pull my leg constantly. I had pins through the bottom of my leg with strings attached to it and hanging down through pulleys at the end of the bed with weights on it, so it kept the tension on my legs Sounds like a torture device.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pretty much, but it was all just to keep my leg that far apart so that the bone could hopefully heal back together. And the bone actually didn't heal back together. It healed back together in a big knot which is actually stronger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've heard that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was very lucky but very mentally stressful for a teenager to be on my back Because you couldn't turn over and get comfortable. It drove me crazy, it drove me nuts. It would, yeah, and let alone just being in hospital. But not being able to get off the bed or even turn over to get comfortable, not even on your side, All you could do was sit up and yeah, like shitting and pissing in a potty and things like that, and it'd be painful for the first, like you know, few months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I mean, I was in intensive care for a couple of weeks, I think, and then I came out and I was in the orthopedic ward, which was all still. I was on morphine and everything. It was all still a bit fuzzy then and I did have like out of it dreams and woke up trying to get out of the thing. Yeah, true, and wake up with a lot of pain and things like that. But yeah, I got through it and then the rest of it was just healing after that really. But I think it was more the mental part of it.
Speaker 2:Building resilience, eh yeah.
Speaker 1:And just handling that actually being in there without going crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I can understand. That must have been a very, very hard situation to deal with. You mentioned. Did you have consistent friends during this time, or did your friend group evolve, or change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had consistent friends. So once I left school I mean like my mate Mike and my other, like I grew up around a lot of guys and met the school of a lot of guys that ended up in the gang they up like doing big lags so when they left school we all sort of got kicked out of school, left school when we were about 14, you know. Uh, beginning of fourth form, in the third form and and sort of they all my, a lot of my mates went to, went to the gang and I sort of seen them and I thought, well, the gang at that time was really rough, really bad, very unapproachable. And so I seen them doing that and I thought, well, that doesn't look like fun. I didn't want to do that. I sort of hung around with my white mates surfing and hung around at the beach. It was fun.
Speaker 2:Were the gangs at that time more just Maori, yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1:I mean there were a few white people in there, but it was predominantly Māori, yeah and so. But then I like my white friends, my Pākehā friends, we had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun and it was all about, I mean, I turned to a lot of drinking, and that especially after my brother died, which I just drank. So Kilburn was a good mate of mine. He was the one that I had the accident outside his house. Yep, I spent a lot of time with him and Stephen Burns and they were sort of quite. They had rich parents and rich families and that. So I sort of hung around with them. It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Kelvin died a few years ago. He had a car accident. He got killed Right, and also right about that time I started becoming really good friends with my mate Dion. I actually met Dion when I was about 12, and he was really mischief, like he was really. He was a white guy, you know. He already had tattoos and things, though he used to tattoo himself and that.
Speaker 1:But his uncles were all like jailbirds and they said, like white people that are tattooed up and down the heaps of jail. So he sort of. Those were his sort of influences and he sort of had that mentality. But he was funny as in, as he was a hard case. So I met him but I didn't really start hanging around with him until like when Kelvin died, when I was up after hospital, and then, um, so I yeah, sort of my, my friend group sort of changed then after Kelvin died and then I went myself and Dion and Carl Carl Roberts and that. So we hung around a lot together and we got into a lot of mischief. Me and Dion decided we didn't want to be home anymore and we decided should we go and be street kids?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we did we did and we both had good homes, good families. How?
Speaker 2:old, were you at that point?
Speaker 1:I was 15. I think I'd just come out of hospital. Right, might have been before. No, it was after hospital.
Speaker 2:It was after hospital did you have another accident or something after that?
Speaker 1:I did, I did so when I got out of hospital I was in this horrendous big cast. There was two big casts with brackets on the knee and things like that. I had to learn how to walk again. I was on a Zimmer frame and things like that for a while. I I and. So when I finally got my cast off, which would have been a few months later after getting out of hospital, I got drunk again, jumped on my mate's bike and went to go and get a pie at six o'clock in the morning and came off the bike again and broke the same femur, but where it had held. It broke just underneath it, between the knee and the other break. And it got three breaks in the femur, but not where the, where it had healed. It broke just underneath it, between the knee and that and the other break and it got three breaks in the femur there.
Speaker 1:So I had to go into um. They didn't even know it would, if it would actually heal, if calcium would go there, but but it did, so I was back in traction again for about four and a half months. Yeah right, it wasn't even a year later. So so, yeah, I did that and got out again and was the lesson learnt that time no no, no, it was just.
Speaker 1:You know, it was just a bad mixture of alcohol and and just trying to have fun. And we loved motorbikes me, dion and Carl we all had motorbikes and we would cruise around on motorbikes and we'd cruise around pissed and it was just stupid, young, stupid stuff and we were mischief. So we had a couple more little accidents there, but those were two big ones. I learnt from those accidents, though. I learnt how to ride better after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wish I'd had motorbikes like that one we've got. There's one here in the garage. That was my dream to have one of those when I was a kid yeah same, and I just I used to. There was a.
Speaker 2:In Christchurch there was a place called Kiwi 2 Fun Park yeah and it was over at the Kiwi 2 poles right around there, and they had they had a track for real slow so that they'd got walking or jogging speed like max, and it had like stop signs and and you know things, that you had little buildings that you could drive around and pretend that you're on the streets, um.
Speaker 2:But then they had a motorbike track too, which had these blue, uh, yamaha, yamaha, um, little tiny, wee four-stroke bikes and I just honestly, you had to be 12 right to use those and up until I was 12 I was just like I just want to go on those. So bad anyway, the the they were. By the time I was 12 and I managed to get there and go on the one of them, they were about to close the motorbike side of things. It was that they weren't doing it anymore and I went there and they said, oh no, we've closed the track today, no one's using it. And I was 12 and I never got to go to the fun park and I like I couldn't believe I didn't get to go, but they were like, oh, we'll let you go on it, but you'll be on the track with the cars and I was like are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 2:I was like, yes, and so I got to do that and no one ever got to ride the motorbikes on the car track because the was hustling around these city streets, you know, on this motorbike, and everyone else was driving these cars and they couldn't believe it, but I was. I always remember that, um, if I had I mean, I got my first motorbike was a road bike when I was. I must have been 18, 19, maybe 20, um, but if I'd had them as a teenager, I think I would have seriously hurt myself yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 1:Well, that would have been a lot of fun for a kid too.
Speaker 2:I remember that track.
Speaker 1:I think it had closed down by the time I moved to Crossroads. Yeah, yeah, no, I think my father. We used to go on Sunday drives and that with my father when I was a kid and we came across a motocross race and my father stopped and we watched it and I fell in love with bikes. Then I fell in love with them. So I used to go to the Honda shop and that when I was a kid and look at all that, and there was one just like that, but the little Hondas 100s or whatever they are, and I used to always hound my parents can I have a motorbike?
Speaker 2:can I have one of those, can I?
Speaker 1:because I would have loved that was sport too. No, yeah, I mean I was the same dad had a XR250 like a 1979 maybe or early 80s XR250 early A model ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it had a round headlight at the front, I'm pretty sure, and a steel tank.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it had a plastic, he might have put a different tank on it but it had a plastic kind of like ambery tank, I think, but it, um, he used to do wheelies down the drive. Well, not wheelies, but he used to, I used to. I felt like he's getting the front wheel off the ground down the driveway, but he probably wasn't, it was probably just high on the suspension, um, and I just used to be like that's so cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, my, I mean, motorbikes have always been a big part of my life. My brother, my brother, had a. It was a um, uh, it was a uh. I can't remember what it was it was, but it was a 400 trail bike but made for the road Horse trail. Yeah, and I'd come over from school and he'd look over at me and go want to go for a ride. I'd go, yeah, yeah, and I'd get all excited. He'd chuck me on the back and he was really good, he could pull a wheel stand. He'd pull a wheel stand with me on the back of it from one side of Napier to the other. He'd slow down for the lights. He'd slow down for the lights. He'd turn corners, staying on the back wheel, still on the back wheel. He was a bit of an evil Knievel yeah, yeah and I used to.
Speaker 1:It was just the most awesome thing world. You know I loved it and he knew that, so that's why he sort of did that for me. I used to look around when I was on the back like holding on to him looking around for mates to someone that I knew to wave to. But yeah, yeah, never did, never happened like that, but now it was good. Yeah, I love motorbikes, but yeah, yep, yeah.
Speaker 2:I know I definitely would have been the same if I had an older brother that was into them. I would have been just the same. Um, so you mentioned uh earlier to me as well. Well, that there was one turning point in your early life was when you stepped out at the pub. Can you tell me?
Speaker 1:about that? Yeah, I think I would have been about 17, like young, just turned 17 maybe and I had just got in with my girlfriend, Susan, and we were at the pub. We were young, but in those days there was no real strong laws against underage drinking, so it was pretty laid back. So we were in the West Shore pub and a guy that I knew he sort of knew my sisters and my brother and things like that but he was way older, he was probably about 26, something like that. I was playing pool and he just walked up in front of the whole pub and stepped me out, Accused me of stealing his brother's dope plants.
Speaker 1:Well, it wasn't me. I knew nothing about it, I didn't know what he was talking about. So he was stepping me out and I was a bit scared. I was only young and this guy was a lot bigger and badder than me and he was stepping me out and I was going no, I'm not going out. So I sort of I was dropping my nuts, to be honest, and my girlfriend at the time she was going go out with them, go out with them.
Speaker 1:I've seen you fight, you'll beat them. And I was going shut the fuck up. And so I was like I mean to make dropping my nuts. I didn't go outside with him. I woke up the next morning.
Speaker 1:I got really drunk that night, woke up the next morning and I just felt terrible. I had a really bad feeling and I made a vow to myself I'll never do that again. I felt shame. It was just complete shame because it was happening in front of the whole pub, people I knew. I said I made a vow to myself for that moment. I'll never, ever back down to anybody again, even if it kills me. I'll never do that again. And I kept to it and, yeah, so that was another turning point in my life that changed everything. Yeah, so, because I started like fighting, I started fighting back Right after that. Yeah, after that, and a lot of the people that I got stepped out by was in pubs and it was by bigger guys and older guys and things like that. But I just thought, alright, and then I actually, to my surprise, I was winning most of them and I thought, shit, I'm better than I actually thought I was.
Speaker 1:So I sort of started getting a bit of a reputation around my mates and things like that that I was quite a good fighter at that time when I was young.
Speaker 2:Right. Yeah, I can see how that would be a turning point. You kind of see you fall into a space where you're like actually I'm more capable than I thought.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I started not being scared of people and I sort of started building my confidence up, it would yeah.
Speaker 1:Because, like I said, I was quite shy as a child and I sort of got picked on too at school a little bit, you know, which sort of turned me into a bully, sometimes in school as well, to other kids. But yeah, no, when I started realising that I was winning a lot of fights, well then I got my confidence up and then, yeah, I started fighting a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then I got my confidence up and then I started fighting a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even when I was bouncing I didn't have a lot of confidence. I remember that, and it was the army that helped with that. I had to be a bit more confident. But I still now even have way more confidence now than I would have had back when I was younger. If I went back into those jobs now, it'd be very different. And I think that sometimes you need experiences like that to show you that you can be assertive.
Speaker 1:Well, even to not have an ego as well with it, because once you get past that, then you don't really have to prove yourself to people as well, and you'd know that with karate too, martial arts and that the more capable you are, the less you feel you need to prove yourself. Well, I even feel like that now. Anyway, I think just being older and wiser and like I'd laugh more, make a joke of the other person now. It's way better to walk away from a fight than have it, oh, 100%.
Speaker 1:And plus, you don't know what trouble it's going to end up in. You're going to get locked up. Oh, you could kill them. You know just one punch locked up. You're going to kill them, just one punch.
Speaker 2:I talked to my son about it. He has fights with his mates at school. They're not necessarily physical, but they could go that way and it's them. Often they're giving him shit for something and he's really much. He's very much about playing by the rules. He's good at what he does. If they're playing basketball, whatever, he's good at it. But they call fouls and things when it's not a foul and he's like he just wants a ref there but he doesn't have one. So I say to them look, these kids are jealous, because they are often jealous of him and his ability. And I say they don't play basketball as much as you do, they don't practice like you do and of course they're going to have a problem with it, but the a compliment that's right.
Speaker 2:They're not happy with who they are, or they're not happy with how things are going for them. So the way that they can do it is by devaluing you as much as they can. And I said, if you're able to walk away from that, it actually annoys them more, you know, because they those people for long anyway, yeah, well, they need them. Eh, you don't need people like that, no.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No. So what was it that initially like moving on further into your life or it probably wouldn't have been that much further along, but what was it that drew you into the gang lifestyle, or how did you become involved initially?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, like I said, how me and my mate Dion and that, we used to ride around on bikes and drive old Falkens, so we used to get pulled up a lot before we were even old enough to have a licence. So I got pulled over a few times and we got disqualified without even having to go to court. Right, I think the police just did it on the side of the road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Because it must have been the law back in those days, being youth being underage, and that they could disqualify you. So I got disqualified a couple of times, I think. And then, when I actually came of age, I got pulled up for a drunken driving charge and I got disqualified from that. I got through that, did PD and periodic detention and that. And then I got disqualified from that. I got through that, did PD and periodic detention and that. And then I got pulled over again and this time I was quite hard done by because I was disqualified at the time, still from that time, and we were at my mum's house and my sister wanted to get out. My mum's car was behind me. They said can you move the car? I pulled out of the driveway and pulled it up to the side of the road so she could get out and a couple of cops went past and saw me pulling the car out.
Speaker 2:Did they recognise you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, they recognised me. So they pulled over and said, Kevin, you're disqualified. And I said, no, I'm just moving the car so my sister could get out and my sister was at the door.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right and they said it doesn't matter, we don't care, keys are in the ignition and you're on the public road, so you'll be having your driving while disqualified. So that was probably look would have been maybe my third time ever being disqualified. I wasn't drunk and driving, nothing like that. I went to court for it. I just had my first son too. Just had my first son, and he was a baby, and I went to court not thinking much of it and I got 15 months jail and I was like whoa, wow, that was a shock, so I wasn't expecting that.
Speaker 1:I went to jail. I got put in the Mangaroa it had just been built then in Hawke's Bay, right. I got put into my first day in jail. I got chucked into a wing full of gang members and it was high security, it was a high medium and there was no room somewhere else. The screws said but I got chucked into this and it was all of this one gang and just me, and I got chucked in there First day in jail, got taken to my cell, I left there and then everything just went dark and all these big, bad-looking gang members walked in all foul-masked and that and they couldn't even all fit in myself.
Speaker 1:They all just crowded myself and said who are you? And I told them who I was and they said where are you from? And I said not, napier. And they said who are you with? And this is how green I was At the time go, oh no, I just came in by myself.
Speaker 1:And they go no, no, who you with? And I go, no, just me. And the screw came in and I went well, bro, what gang are you with? And I oh no. And I answered this completely wrong. I says I said um, oh, no, I'm not with any gang. But what I should have explained was I knew a lot of the gang, I loved where the gang came from and a lot of my mates were in the gang. But I didn't. I just said no, no, I'm not with any gang.
Speaker 1:And they said well, if you're not one of us, when you come in here you get smashed over, right, oh, awesome. And it was just about to happen. It was just about to happen. I was just about to get a hiding and then the grill opened up, so they stopped and a guy walked past. Another gang member walked past and as he walked past the Marcel door he goes oh, keef hey, bro, what are you up to? And I go and he looked around and he goes oh no, no, this fella's all right, he's from where I'm from, and so that saved my ass that day at the moment. But I was in there for a couple of months in that wing and it was a terrible, terrible time I got beaten up since David picked on.
Speaker 2:Did they give you the opportunity to sign on with them at that point at all?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's where it was going to. That's where it was going to, but I just, I mean not at that stage. Not at that stage. I don't think I was worthy at that stage. They saw it that way. Well, I'm not sure I'm just that's what I thought.
Speaker 1:I probably wasn't worthy at that stage. I was green. I was green stupid day. I was just being used as a. I was just an idiot, just a punching bag yeah, pretty much so, even going up to play touch. These were big musty gang members. As we were playing touch, I think I'm going to get touched and I just bam and get smashed into the side of the wall concrete wall and just lit across the asphalt.
Speaker 1:I remember going back to my cell one day after a game of touch and I was just covered in grazes. My whole body was sore and I just went and closed the door and I was trying not to cry. I was trying, I just wanted to cry, you know, and it was a pretty hard time. But that was my first leg and then I went. I thought all my blessings came at once. The judge came and said I'm being moved up to Napier Hill and Napier Hill was the oldest prison in the country at the time and it only held like 65 inmates. And so I got shipped to Napier Hill and it was awesome from where I came from to there and I knew a lot of people in there and it was just a cosy little prison and it was really good, so I loved it.
Speaker 2:Bit of a holiday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, from where I came from, that was the Hilton, you know. And so I was there three days and then 10 people had to be shipped out because the jail, they needed to make room. And I was there three days and then 10 people had to be shipped out because they needed to make room, and I was one of them, one of the names picked out, so they shipped me off to. I went to Rangipo Central and there was a full-on prison For a young fellow like me. Just come from a shit place then to a good place and then got to a worse place, even worse than the first one, worse than the first one, but I wasn't so enclosed. No, the first one there was probably like 10 of us and all the rest of the gang the same gang, yeah, but these guys were all doing life. 10 years, 14 years, they weren't no small time.
Speaker 2:By the time you got to that third place did you have your wits about you a little bit more?
Speaker 1:No, no, I mean, I was still green, I still didn't want to be there.
Speaker 1:I was still sort of getting used to it and plus, I was hating where I was for the first two months but then I loved where I was the next time but still didn't want to be there. And then we got shipped to this place. This place was worse than the first place. There was 85 cells in each wing. There was two wings and 85 cells and most of them they were just about all double cells. Oh wow, I mean, do the math. One wing was Munger Mob Mob wing and the other wing was Black Power and all these guys. This was central North Island, so these guys come from like Parry Albany all over.
Speaker 1:It's coming off their big legs and doing their last couple of years at this place. So it wasn't. Even though it was a minimum security low, medium, high medium it wasn't no easy place to be at and you just felt the tension when you come Because the Black Power ran one wing and the Mangamob ran the other wing, so if you were in one wing you weren't allowed to go to the it was all segregated.
Speaker 2:They'd keep them completely segregated. Yeah, completely.
Speaker 1:Well, the inmates made it that way, right, like if you were from this wing and you walked into that wing, could you go into the other wing. No, no, no, no, you'd get attacked, you'd get attacked stabbed. But I mean, would the screws let you go to the stage? So did you share a yard? Yeah, it was one big yard.
Speaker 2:It was huge, probably about two football fields and was it unlocked all day?
Speaker 1:Yeah, unlocked all day. Yeah, both wings are unlocked all day. You can move about, but it was a working unit as well, so it was winter. It was winter, it was brutally cold. This was in Rangipo.
Speaker 2:Central Plateau. Is it around there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, by the desert road, on the desert road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I lived in Wauru for three months. It was cold.
Speaker 1:Yeah, freezing cold, but not much oxygen there either. No, no, so I mean, and the windows, like slate windows, they didn't have any, it was just bars, so it was just blizzardly oh really Open windows. Yeah, they didn't have any, it was just bars. Oh really Open windows. Yeah, blizzardly cold, and they had the old grey blankets and that, but yeah, it was really cold and snowing so you had to go to work in the snow and low pruning and doing things like that I was lucky, because of my injury, I ended up getting off that and I got a job in the yard and if you didn't work well, then you were locked up till lunchtime anyway.
Speaker 1:But this was a very, very violent jail. I'd seen a lot of violence in that jail. I got I got beaten up for it was just nothing. I mean it was. I didn't actually do anything wrong and I just got beaten up because I got picked on by this gang member and got my arm broken and things like that. So I didn't say anything, I just didn't turn up to dinner one night I saw guys get stabbed. I saw a guy get stabbed through the throat through one side with a chisel and came right out the other side. He nearly died. I seen another guy get stabbed like probably 20 times. I saw another guy, another guy, this big Islander guy get stabbed like 200 times with sharpened up toothbrushes. Did he survive?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, he survived, fuck, but he had a lot of holes in him, yeah wow, like you just think when you hear someone say that, oh, he was stabbed in the hundreds of times you wouldn't ever think someone would live through that it was sharpened up toothbrushes sharpened to a point he got stabbed probably about five guys stabbing him up and he lived lucky. It was just shallow stabs and the intention was to kill him, obviously well, just teach him a lesson, I suppose.
Speaker 2:I always remember going from a medium security unit to a minimum security and getting metal cutlery.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, You're thinking you give this to everyone, Like what the fuck.
Speaker 2:Or even the gym equipment you know full, like lat pull-down bars, yeah.
Speaker 1:Or you know the bars for cables and things. Yeah, big heavy steel weights, everything Dumbbells. You sure it's like a pull cue? Yeah, I saw it. Sorry, I had a mate that attacked another guy in the carving yard in Napier Hill from behind with a dumbbell and turned him into a vegetable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, didn't. Who was it? There's a movie that was someone was killed with gym equipment. There's a movie made about them.
Speaker 1:Was it an Australian Ruby? Was it Carl Williams? I don't know. You got cool gym equipment, yeah it was a.
Speaker 2:There's a in the movie. He gets beaten. He gets beaten. His head is basically he caved in with a dumbbell, I'm pretty sure. Um, yeah, and I think the screws were in on it. They knew that, that guy that was the intention behind it anyway, but I think, yeah, obviously, when I was in the medium security unit, it was broomsticks and water bottles was what they trained with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all they have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and a guy sitting on your shoulders while you're doing squats yeah, doing squats or they're pulling your heels back for hamstring kills and things yeah, it's a different world yeah, some of those, some of those exercises were getting a bit gay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going. Oh, I don't know if I want that, because on the back of my neck yeah, that's right yeah but it's you go, you do it, bro, that's not going to be the worst.
Speaker 2:It'll be fucking bad yeah but yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:So I mean this is still my first leg and it was a very intense jail, very intense prison. I got beaten up by one of the gang members for not sharing a joint that I had, I think, and so I got my arm broken. I didn't say anything, but I didn't turn up to dinner, did?
Speaker 2:you know it was broken? No, no, I just saw. I saw all over my face. Was out here a dinner. So did you know it was broken? Like no, no, I just saw. I saw all over my face.
Speaker 1:It was out here because everyone had steel caps. It was a working unit, so I got my face kicked in by steel caps and things like that. So I was in a bit of a mess but I and I didn't feel like going to dinner no, fair enough so screws came to see why, because they must have checked where I was.
Speaker 1:And then, when they seen me, they went oh, and I said no, no, no, they went. Who was it? They were trying to get me to say who it was. I wouldn't say anything, so they chucked me in the pound. They threw me in the pound For not saying. Yeah, for both things for not saying and for my own protection. But I didn't do that. So they put me on protective segregation for my own good, but anyway. But it ended up working out good for me, because I was in the pound for a week, which was shit. And I was in the pound for a week and then the unit manager came in, had a look at me and said send them back to Napier. So I ended up going back to Napier.
Speaker 2:So it all worked out right.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're sweet, but by then I ended up. I went back to Mangaroa prison and was back with the gang again and, to make a long story short, by the time I got out of prison I was in the gang, you were in that gang and did you feel at that point that it was a?
Speaker 2:Had it become a lifestyle for you at that point, or was it? Did you feel like it was a good decision?
Speaker 1:No, no, I didn't. I didn't really want to, but I sort of had no choice, right. Yeah Well, I sort of did, but at the time I was too scared to say no. At the time, I mean, I was still only young. But I ended up coming out. But when I did make this decision, I did know then or you make this decision, that's it. It's long term.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know you're in there for good. You're stuck there, so don't just get out of jail and then do the runner and when you, when you were in jail, did you maintain connections with family? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you were in jail, did you maintain connections with family? Yeah, yeah, I still was part of my family. I had another child by then as well. My children grew up, but I always kept the gang away from my family.
Speaker 2:Because it does get. For a lot of families. It gets heavily integrated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so where I came from, most of that gang was born into the gang anyway. Right, you're either born into it or you lived it, so it was actually a lifestyle. A lot of people didn't really have a choice they were born into it.
Speaker 1:It's their family values, yeah but I was the only person in my family even not my immediate family, my cousins and that I was the only person in my family even not my immediate family, my cousins and that I was the only one that ever joined the gang. Right, but yeah, so that happened and I was in a gang, but my mates always used to try and get me to join the gang anyway, the mates that I used to go to school with. I was really good. I had a good mate who I went to school with and he ended up being sergeant of arms of this gang and he'd pull over on his Harley and say that oh, you know, we want you to jump on with us, because at that stage, once I came out of jail I mean I believe every man should do a little bit of jail I've always thought, because it wakes you up, it would, I know yeah, I mean it wakes you up to life Because it wakes you up, it would I know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wakes you up to life. It shows you what you've got to lose that's right and how bad it can get.
Speaker 1:I reckon just even a few months, just go in there for a few months and you're either never able to go to jail again or you do.
Speaker 2:I almost agree. I agree with you because I used to say that about the military. I think for most men it would be good for them to do three months a year. Even a year in the military would be great for most everyone. But if everyone did a bit of jail it would certainly change a lot of people.
Speaker 1:It would definitely change a lot of people. It would definitely wake a lot of people up. You have to adjust overnight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you start to appreciate the simple things.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's right and the simple things are what you miss. Yeah, that's right. And after I got out of hospital I went in. It was the second time me and my mate Dion went and jumped on the scheme because we were bored, had nothing to do. It was a YMCA scheme and so at the end of that Dion got into too much mischief. He got sent to CT corrective training at the time back then and so I was sort of all alone and we finished doing the course and the guys that were running the course said you should jump on this thing.
Speaker 1:There was a pilot course coming up and it was run by the army and it was called the Napier Kerea Academy. So I went oh yeah, I'll give it a go. I had nothing else to do. So I went and gave it a go and after my accident I'd never ran. I still had a bad limp and things and this was out in Estale at a place called Beck House. So I got taken out there and you lived there, you lived in. It was like going to the army. It was the cadet course, yep, and it was for sort of youth that were sort of on their way to being bad or trying to save them and things like that, and it was all about discipline and all that. So I didn't know what I'd got myself into right.
Speaker 1:Uh, we got there and we were in dormitories and and that and um went to bed and they had dinner and it went to bed and and weird was like I think there was four of us in the room in a dormitory and so about 4 30 in the morning, the alarm, the fire alarm goes off and we'll get up and I'm wondering what's going on.
Speaker 1:We go oh, we all have to line up outside. So we all line up outside and we're actually standing in a group and out of the dark you just hear this voice screaming get the fuck out of this fucking bed, you fucking lazy cunts. And it was really and we're like what the fuck's going on here? And Sergeant Smith was the name and he was a, he was a hard man and he come and just yelling and screaming and we were all just in line, lined up in our squad and then and we were off for a run. We were off for a run, a 7k run. The first one was I hadn't run, but being yelled and screamed at. It was a slow cadence anyway.
Speaker 2:How was your leg at that point.
Speaker 1:Well, it wasn't good, but I didn't even think I could run. I'd never tried to run because I knew I had that injury. But being yelled and screamed at, I ran just with everybody else.
Speaker 1:And actually at the end of the. It was a six week course, the first pilot course, and it was all fitness. It was all fitness. We had to run everywhere. We had confidence courses in the afternoon or sport like touch rugby or basketball. Then there was education and then there was marching. You'd be taught to march on the parade ground and things like that, and I just did everything. I didn't even think about it and the runs were quite slow at first, in cadence.
Speaker 2:They're always generally like a manageable pace for a long period.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and then until we had to wear packs with rocks in them and things like that and do stretcher carries and confidence courses and things like that, that was pretty. Then it got hard. You would have come out pretty fit, very, very fit, very fit. And actually on our mark shout day at the end of the six weeks we had a parade and we were all in tuxedos and things like that and we had a formal dinner and speeches and things like that and I got asked to do a speech. So I did a speech and as I was walking up to do the speech, sergeant Smith got up and said oh, this guy has had a really bad accident with his leg, and that Because he mentioned in his speech how many kilometres we had run in that whole six weeks. And he said this guy ran the whole so many hundreds.
Speaker 1:He acknowledged you for that. Yeah, so yeah, and I didn't really think much, I just knew I had to.
Speaker 2:He yelled and screamed You're just doing what everyone's doing. I was just doing what everyone was doing, exactly that's right that's right.
Speaker 1:So I actually got promoted after that and I had a chance to stay, so I ended up staying on there. I stayed there for three years Cool Three years. I was staying there and ended up becoming staff and then I was teaching the. Oh, that would have been good. Yeah, I ended up making it to a regimental. No, this is cadet ranks. I'm a regimental sergeant major so I got to the highest rank you can get to and I was teaching marching and playgrounds and taking courses and things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really miss the army. I remember it as being good times, but it was also definitely hard. It's hard fucking work and a lot of being cold and miserable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was good. We had to go do some Bible courses in the bush and things like that for a week and go have a ration pack. We were eating goats and all sorts of bloody things. It was good. It was good to go through that. I'm glad. Very character building. Oh, definitely, definitely. It taught me some discipline and structure and routine and that as well.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, you can see the value in it. Eh, definitely yeah.
Speaker 1:I wish I had. I was actually going to join the army afterwards, but I got into trouble. That's when I got into trouble. I ended up with PD. I was driving my motorcycle up on that. Pd went to jail.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so that was military days over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and then yeah. So it was that.
Speaker 2:Can you describe the moment, or was there an event or anything like that, that made you realise, with the whole gang lifestyle, that you were in pretty deep or that you got in pretty deep?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, I knew I was in pretty deep as soon as I said yes, as soon as I joined, yeah, and so I knew my life was going to be very much different then, and I remember saying to myself you know, because you said yes, because you joined, that's you now you know, you've got to stick at it and keep loyal. So I did, I did. And when you say getting in pretty deep, well, you soon realise that when you go into war, and you're actually being shot at and you're shooting back at people and things like that.
Speaker 1:So it was a pretty intense time. So I forgot to mention as well my mate Dion, who I grew up with. We became really good mates, we became brothers you know, he was like the brother that I had. Well, we became brothers. We were very close. We did everything together. He ended up joining the gang as well, right, so we were in the gang together as well, and I remember there was this time where we were at war and everything was. Everyone was on edge and very intense time.
Speaker 2:So what does at war mean?
Speaker 1:We were warring with another gang, so is it?
Speaker 2:like a state that's declared. So basically, a situation had happened.
Speaker 1:Like when a situation happens, then everyone comes and gets you.
Speaker 2:I remember being in prison that they said you know something could happen either in prison or outside of prison. That then meant there was like attack on site orders issued and all that kind of thing. So like suddenly it's like oh, I don't want to do this, bro, but I'm sorry, but I have to yeah.
Speaker 1:It just goes without saying and that's yeah. That's the thing with the gangs. You've got to back it up.
Speaker 2:And you're answerable to the higher calling, the bigger structure that's there.
Speaker 1:So there was this time, I remember, where everything was really intense and everyone was on their toes and wars happen because a situation happens where maybe one side had been attacked or got shot or something has happened. So the rest of the chapter all backs it up and it becomes tit for tat, yep. Then this minute bullets start flying and you know. So yeah, there was a time like that Wrapped the pad and I never really thought much of being scared or anything, until you're actually time to be scared. So the build-up was probably just as bad as anything.
Speaker 1:So me and my mate Dion well, he was a character anyway, he was a hard case guy we were cracking jokes, we were laughing and cracking jokes and everyone else was really intense, so we didn't really take it too seriously. We knew how serious it was but we just didn't act serious Until actually we were getting shot at then time to be serious. So those times like that you realise how deep we are. But still, I knew when I made the decision to join the gang that I had to take the bad with the good. But I wanted to keep my bad with the good. Yeah, but I wanted to keep my kids out of it and my family out of it. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, never take her home. No, no, and I didn't.
Speaker 2:So, throughout your time in the gang, what were some of the biggest challenges or conflicts that you faced internally?
Speaker 1:There's a lot of times I didn't feel like I belonged in the gang. There's a lot of times I didn't feel like I belonged in the gang, right, I didn't feel I was that person. I mean I couldn't really bully people if they had done nothing wrong. I mean I got into a bit of almost got into a few fights sometimes with some of the other gang members because they'd say, oh, you have to do this, you have to be like this, you have to be like that. And I go, no, I don't, I just want to be me. So I can only be me. If I'm not me, I'm not happy. I don't want to be you, because then I'm not me, and so why should I have to try and pretend to be somebody else?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:So that was a lot of things that I'd conflicted, that was conflicted. Plus, I didn't realise that at the time as well. A lot of my thinking that I realised things later on in life that I think I had anxiety. I used to get anxiety at the time I didn't know what anxiety was and sometimes I didn't want to be around all these guys I mean one-on-one. I had a few real good close mates, a few close brothers that I'd spent a lot of time with and that we knew each other really well and I could just be myself with them, but sometimes we were in big groups. You know it was quite overwhelming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I bet it would be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, especially this gang, and the numbers are pretty high, like in terms of there's thousands of them, eh Like thousands of people in those gangs, thousands of them, yeah, and a lot of them are the baddest people I've ever met. They're the craziest psycho, staunchest, baddest guys yeah.
Speaker 2:I remember thinking at times when I was up to no good, just being a little bit oblivious to the types of people that are out there being like, oh, if they come around, if someone comes around and does that, I don't think they'd do that. Or I don't think they'd do that. My mates would be like, bro, these guys out there, they wouldn't care if there was police in your driveway, they're still going to kick your door.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we used to be like that as well. It wouldn't stop us, it wouldn't stop people. I'll tell you one thing about the gang that I was with was quite staunch, like very angry, very staunch people, and if you, if you didn't measure up to to anything or you sort of showed weakness, you'd just get picked on. You'd get picked on by whether you're a patch member or not, you know you'd get, you know, that sort of attitude. But so you had that sort of attitude, so you had to sort of not show any weakness pretty much. And it was a very intimidating gang, even though these were your brothers still very intimidating and a lot of drinking. There was a lot of drinking and parties and a lot of that. There's a lot of times they got out of hand and people got beaten up just for the hell of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I guess when you throw substances in there, you start people's personalities change and you know, someone who might be your brother most of the time suddenly has a bone to pick with you over something.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I was going to say earlier as well, sorry. When I checked, what I noticed early in the gang when I was prospecting was my other mates some of my mates that were prospecting as well. Once they got their patch, they changed. I saw people change and they put the patch on the next minute. Their walk changed. They were like fuck, did you grow muscles overnight? Yeah, and then their attitude would change and then they were suddenly better than you and it was like I thought that was embarrassing.
Speaker 2:I'll never be like that and I wasn't.
Speaker 1:I never was so when I got, even when I became president, I used to say when I patched a member up I'd say the man makes the patch, the patch doesn't make the man the patch doesn't make the man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good way to look at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought it was embarrassing. Don't embarrass yourself, because I saw it so many times. A piece of a jacket doesn't change somebody.
Speaker 2:Nah, but I guess for them it's a sense of belonging, but also they would have seen people wearing it. It's like in the army when you get your uniform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when we got out of basic training, four or five of us went to the mall and just wore our uniform, honestly, because you couldn't wait to show it off. You couldn't wait to be like I can wear this in public. This is actually what I do and you were proud of it. You're proud because you've just been through three months of basic training, plus six weeks for me of core training, which was combat training. It was tough you get beasted. It was physical. You get beasted.
Speaker 2:It was physical, it was very physical and very mentally and emotionally exhausting yeah but I was going to ask did you, were there times where you were watching young fellas, where you found it hard, did you? Did you feel I guess was there, because there'd be times where there'd be people that you'd have empathy for that? You're like fuck, I don't want to see this guy get a hiding. He's going to get a hiding.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, every time, yeah, every single time. It was like oh, that would have hit oh shit yeah. I've seen mates get knocked out in some big hits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's kind of like in the military. Again, it's my only real experience with that kind of thing. But there was back different too, really different. Wasn't easy back then. No, I can imagine. Yeah, so betrayal can be a powerful turning point. Could you discuss a time where you may have felt betrayed and how that would have impacted your view on loyalty?
Speaker 1:About the time that I left. I knew I wanted to leave. There was a couple of reasons. I had become president. I was president probably about four or five years of a chapter and I started a chapter up down here down in South Island as well, and I ran my chapter a lot more like a family. I loved my boys and tried to teach them the right way and tried to do things better, because I didn't want to be president. When I got made president, I didn't want the responsibility of it. But then I got told you do things your own way. No one can tell you what to do, it's your way and you do it the way you want. Pick your own members, and that that didn't actually happen. I got sent a lot of members from up north that I didn't really want.
Speaker 1:But so that was all right. But I tried to do the right thing. I tried to teach them. I had a lot of rules. I wouldn't let them go out bullying people, standing over people home and page nothing. They weren't allowed to do anything like that. Yeah, I tried to get them into business. I tried to get them into training like to EIT and got them jobs. Yeah, but then they didn't really want to do it that way. They wanted to be bullies.
Speaker 2:They were there to cause trouble.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were all young. They were all in their 20s, young 20s and that.
Speaker 2:Trying to live the dream.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they just wanted to be gangsters? Yeah, but I was trying to teach them a different way. You know, when you, you all want bikes, you all want nice cars and that, what about? When you get them? How are you going to keep them? Because the cops just take them off you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, they live in the out of your means or proceeds of crime or whatever, yeah, it's so easier, it's so much easier now sorry for the need a reason no, and they can, even the proceeds of crime. Stuff's changed to the point where I think they can, even if you register it under someone else's name they can still take it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I went through a bit of that, but so I tried to teach them that what your goal should be is, every one of you should end up owning your own business. Right, and we'll all get there together, right? I says, if I'm going to be a millionaire, I'll bring yeah, right, and we'll all get there together, right. Yeah, I says, if I'm going to be a millionaire, I'll bring yous all up, we'll all be millionaires. Yeah, but it was harder than it sounded. It was really hard to keep. They'd get sack on purpose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because they don't really want that job all day.
Speaker 1:You're really trying to change the culture. Eh, yeah, yeah. And I wanted to change the way people looked at us because everywhere I went, I got sick and tired of getting blamed for things or having that reputation that you didn't earn. Yeah, yeah. And like I remember, there was a time where a mate rang me up. We had just moved out to a place by Leaston, oh yeah, yeah, and there was a burglary, probably about eight kilometres away but in the country, and we had just not long moved there to a mate's place and I got a phone call from a guy that I knew and he says oh, my mate, bro, I'm just ringing you to ask you. My mate in the area got ripped off, got burgled and some bites got taken and things like that. He goes do you know anything about that? And I said no, bro, I said we don't do burglaries, things like that, especially in our own neighbourhood, we don't do that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:And he goes no, I didn't think you did, but it's just that when the cops went and investigated the burglary, we know who did it. And then he said but we're not going to do anything about it yet because we're waiting for bigger things. And that alerted me to oh no, yeah, so they're watching us. So I sort of at that time I was doing really well and I was doing well with the gang and my boys. We were going a long way, and not long after that I got us a pad and things like that.
Speaker 1:But as time went on, I thought I had, after a few years of it, I'd had enough, I'd had enough. And I thought, well, you know, I'd actually turned 50. And I thought, shit, what have I done with my life? All I'm doing is doing for the gang. I've given so much and I just had enough and I thought I actually don't want to do this anymore. And so I had that in the back of my mind. I was still doing what I had to do and it was tending to be really stressful, trying to look after pretty much the naughtiest boys in the country really and trying to keep them on track, because whatever they did, it came back on me and I used to tell them because at the police station there's all your pictures and at the top of that pyramid is me.
Speaker 2:And they're going? How can we link it to Kev and how do we make sure that we know that Kev told him to do this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and they say everything that each one of those individuals was doing they were going right and then I'll say one day it's going to go to court and I'm going to say all these things that these guys are doing is told by this guy and it wasn't like that at all.
Speaker 1:These fellas were doing a lot of stuff behind my back too, so I was sort of over that. I was going oh man, I'm not going to do that. They're not going to do that. They'll try and give me a life for what these fellas are doing, even though they weren't killing anybody.
Speaker 2:The police want to dismantle the whole thing. And the best way to do that is to take out the guys at the top.
Speaker 1:Cut the head off the snake.
Speaker 2:in other words If they can pressure the younger fellas into effectively giving up people who are more senior in the club that works out best for the police.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it wouldn't have stopped anything anyway. They that works out best for the police. Yeah, but it wouldn't have stopped anything.
Speaker 2:anyway, they can get rid of me and another one just takes the place, Someone else would just pop in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And actually I used to say if the cops knew what I was, trying to do.
Speaker 2:They'd probably shake my hand, they'd probably keep you there, yeah, if they knew what I was trying to do.
Speaker 1:Good things, but you know, it wasn't like that. You become your enemy and you just never get left alone. They're trying to destroy you as much as other people are trying to destroy you. Yeah, so that was one of the reasons it was coming up to that I'd sort of had enough. I thought, what have I done with my life? I want to sort of do family and that now. So that was one of the reasons. Another reason was one of the guys he made himself a president because he got really jealous and bitter about me being made a president. He didn't like it, so he wanted to be made a president. So he made himself a president.
Speaker 1:Quite a staunch fella. He was quite tough, very much a violent, very violent, warmonger type person, not someone to be messed with, no, very serious. And so he wanted me to help him start up this chapter that he wanted to do. But it was all in hindsight. It was all a little bit of a setup. I had a lot of vehicles and I had a lot of toys and cars, bikes Yep, he was in jail. I sort of helped him out when he got out of jail. I helped him out At jail jail. I gave him a bike, gave him a Harley and gave him a couple of cars and gave him some money and things like that. He had something else in his head. I could tell I could. So he came out to take over the chapter and I and I wanted to stand down the chapter. You were running the chapter.
Speaker 1:I was running yeah, and I wanted to stand down because I didn't want to do it anymore and I was just going to go out and work and just start living a normal life. That was okay. Well, I could tell something was going on. Something was going on because the boys weren't very good at hiding the stuff. They were having meetings behind my back. This guy was trying to destroy me. He wanted to destroy me and he wanted to. It was like a coup, yeah well it was, but I mean he didn't need to.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was happy to hand it over to him. You didn't step down anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wanted to hand it over to him. So I knew something was up. So I thought, well, I'm going to the partner that I had at the time. We started working out on a dairy farm and I knew I could feel something was up. So I knew I could feel something was up, so I started putting my cars and that away. I had El Caminos and El Camino and some other V8s and I sort of put cars away at friends' houses and sort of kept it, just kept one step ahead, because I knew I couldn't go and say, hey, is this? I feel like this is happening, are you doing this? And they'd just say, how dare you? So you know it'd be like that. So I couldn't really talk about it or get the truth out of them. But I knew something was up and so what happened was they got to the person that I was with at the time I was having a bad relationship I was in a bad relationship at the time as well the person that I moved out to the dairy farm with and she had different agendas as well. Well, and they got to her and they sort of told her we're trying to get you locked up so we can get all this stuff and we'll cut you in on it and things like that. So she did and this wasn't a good relationship. Anyway I did this person, so I learnt the hard way with that one.
Speaker 1:So I ended up going to jail for something very minor that got turned into something very big and I went to jail for that. And then that's when the betrayal really really hit me, as I lost my job, lost the place I was living at, lost my girlfriend, and they my girlfriend showed them where all my cars and that were. So they went round to every one of my friends who were just straight people, straight innocent people who weren't used to this life. They were just friends of mine who were helping me out and looking after my cars and things like that. Well, they went around to every one of those places and stood over those people and threatened them and made them hand over my vehicles and things like that.
Speaker 1:So I lost everything. I lost everything when I went to jail for seven months only seven months and awful damage and things like that. It was just really ridiculous. So I went to jail for that. All this happened to me while I was in there. I was falling into depression. Anyway, being with this person. I didn't know what depression was, because I never I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1:I never had depression or whatever. But she was sort of gaslighting me. In hindsight now I realise now that that's what she was doing. I thought I was the crazy one that all this bad stuff was happening in our relationship because of me. She was blaming it all on me. It's different when somebody knows where they're going or something and somebody doesn't. It's easy to manipulate, absolutely. So that was happening at the time.
Speaker 1:I went to jail for what I went to jail for. They all went around. I wasn't even in jail for a week and they went around and got all my cars and all my possessions house, bus and everything like that. So I got everything taken from me. I was already in depression before I went to jail and that just made it worse. I mean, a lot of people think so it got that bad. I tried to commit suicide in jail and it wasn't because I was in jail. I've done a lot of jail all my life Not all my life but I've done a lot of jail, lads, and it doesn't worry me, I can get through it. But it wasn't because I was in jail. It was because of what was happening. I just had enough you had enough of the depression that I was going through and that's why I don't mind talking about this. I mean, to a lot of people this would be embarrassing to talk about, but I don't mind talking about it because it shows the power of depression of someone that's got depression.
Speaker 1:So when I left the gang, I mean it was hard enough as it was. I had no support from anybody or anything like that, so I had to do it all on my own. I knew that there was a consequence from leaving the gang. I had to do it all on my own. I knew that there was a consequence from leaving the gang. The depression got me so bad that I was thinking of committing suicide and I just wanted it over. And it wasn't really what was happening to me. It was just a mixture of everything happening to me.
Speaker 1:And I was getting depression and I was going out. I'd given up drugs. I'd given up trying to give up drinking, but I hadn't yet. I'd given up drugs. I'd given up trying to give up drinking, but I hadn't yet. But I'd given up drugs. I'd been on drugs for a long time, a lot of my life, and so it was all a mixture of things, a mixture of just having a bad partner who had hidden agendas, a mixture of all the boys that I had looked after and helped out and mates that I'd helped out. They had turned on me and wanted to because of this one person that wanted to destroy me and he did. He destroyed my life at the time and then getting chucked in jail and having all this taken from me I just had depression was that strong that I wanted to commit suicide, but I was trying to talk myself out of it.
Speaker 1:I was going you can't do that. You've got seven children, you've got seven grandchildren, you've got a big family that loves you, and you'll ruin your children's life. For starters, everyone will be devastated. So it wasn't even enough to stop me. It wasn't even enough to stop me. So I did that. I tried to commit suicide, and when I tried to do it too, I thought you've got to make this work.
Speaker 1:You've got to make this happen, because I'm in jail now and the shame and embarrassment that I'd have living through it and then having to live on in jail with the shame of trying to kill myself. That's what I thought. So I did a real attempt at it, right, and got rushed to hospital, saved my life and then ended up living for it and sort of yeah, and the depression got worse and went into a deep dark hole, really pretty much Got chucked into the ICU unit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because that's what happens. Just a lot of fun. Yeah, that's what happens and it's like in a concrete box Lights on all the time Like a dog kennel, you've got a camera in there.
Speaker 1:It's like you're in a dog kennel Right and you're eating with a. You get slid a paper plate with your meal on it with cardboard fork and spoon and it's pretty much it was like being in a dog kennel.
Speaker 1:And so that didn't help with the depression and one of the reasons why it helped me leave the gang as well is because I met this lady called her name is Tania Whitaker and she's a clear voyeur and she came to do a cleansing on the house on my kid's mum's house and I met her and she shook my hand and said oh, you're really strong, you should be doing what I'm doing. And I didn't know what she was talking about and what she meant was. She said I had gifts, that spiritual gifts, that, and I didn't realise that I had and had gifts, spiritual gifts, and I didn't realise that I had. And so she did a reading on me and she got my trust straight away because in saying this, my mate that I was saying my mate, dion, who he he had passed as well, he had passed away. So he was my best mate and my other mate as well, carl, who I grew up with. We all used to get up to mischief before I joined the gang. He passed away in a car mate as well, carl, who I grew up with and we all used to get up to mischief with before I joined the gang. He passed away in a car accident as well.
Speaker 1:So my closest mates that I had had they all had passed away. I was the only one left out of them, so my father had passed away while I was in jail and my brother from years ago had passed away. She did a reading on me and these three people came through Dion, my father and my brother and she was telling me things that they were saying. And when she told me what my father was saying to me, she said it exactly how he would say it and things he was saying. Sorry about things and sorry for it. And then my brother came in and said sorry for leaving you behind, you know which. It all meant something. And when she'd tell me what each person was saying, she'd say it exactly how they say it. See, this person didn't know nothing about me. How powerful.
Speaker 1:Yeah it was the first time I'd met her, so I was like blown away. And then the most powerful was um, when Dion came through, she said there's a guy who's showing me a tattoo of writing on his arm and I and I went what that one? She goes, that's it. She goes, he did that. And I, yeah, and she goes, see your best mate, you're like brothers. And I, yeah, she goes, he's a hard case, he's a character. And I, yeah, that's him, because he's walking around sitting next to you right now looking at you going. I used to do that all the time. I used to do that, so I knew she was legit straight away. And she actually told me about this time when I was telling you about how we were cracking jokes and we were at war in an intense time. I'd never even thought about talking about that to anybody.
Speaker 1:So no one even knew that, and she told me about that. He was saying she goes, he's talking about this time when news were doing it and I about this time when yous were doing and and I oh, and and. So I knew she was legit, I knew that this was real and I, so she got my trust straight away. Right, we ended up becoming good friends and, um, she took me under her wing and started showing me the gifts that I had, you know, healing and things like that. So so I realized at that stage that was another road to take, another journey for me. So I, I've got another path to take. This is I'd rather be doing this, the spiritual work, you know. And so it was really intriguing to me and what she told.
Speaker 1:I didn't believe her at first, like, what do you mean? I can do this and I can do that. She goes, you can read people, you can speak to spirits and you can, you're healing, you can heal people. And then I was going what, and can heal people? And? And then I was going what? And? And she was right. She was right. She started taking, uh, showing me things and we'd go to people's houses, do cleansings, cleanse their houses and things like that and and then I'd start seeing things and, um, I'd start talking, like seeing little pictures and, yeah, like flashing my head in front of my eyes and, um, people showing me things and and then, uh, by hearing, seeing things, and then I started helping spirits that were stuck and lost and helping them cross over, and it was just amazing. I just loved it.
Speaker 1:And I thought well, this is unreal. It's like magic.
Speaker 1:And I never even had any idea and I probably in my life earlier I probably wouldn't have been ready for that anyway. But so that's what I've been doing with this person. So that was another reason why I left the gang and that anyway. So back to where I was, in the dog kennel in the ICU unit. But I mean, I was in a really deep dark hole. I wouldn't have crawled into a dark hole and never come out. That's how bad I felt. But I ended up coming.
Speaker 1:It was the spirituality that Tams had taught me and showed me that got me out of it. I mean, I came out of my cell into a little wee yard, concrete yard had a cage over it and there was a little bit of sun shining through in the corner and I went and stood in the sun, closed my eyes and, boom, I got a vision. I just got this really strong vision and I don't really want to explain it, but and this was really clear, really strong, and I felt like this was God showing me something, you know, and I felt just a loving feeling and a warm loving feeling. And I opened my eyes and I thought, whoa, that was freaky, that was out of it. So I went to the phone and rang her up and she told me what that was all about. And from that day onwards, I got better. I started getting better and better and better Came out of it. So I went to the phone and rang her up and she told me what that was all about. And from that day on, I got better. I started getting better and better and better, came out of the ICU unit, went back to the unit and I just I just started bringing myself out of the depression and started getting better and better.
Speaker 1:And it was, it was the, and it was the. This thought that that everything happens for a reason, you know, and started to think about everything more positive instead of everything negative and the dark stuff, yep. And that every day I just got better and better and better, stronger and stronger, yep, and I didn't care about anyone. I actually became free. Yeah, I felt it. I felt I was on my I, I had a cell by myself, right and and, and I was.
Speaker 1:I was going through a lot of grief and that for what I'd lost and I still hadn't. I wasn't ready to get out, right, and I was going oh, I can't get out yet, because I wanted to get out and have revenge on these people that taking my cars and done things to me and like that so. But then I had to try it, but that was keeping me in a dark place, so I had to stop thinking like that. And so I started thinking about my spiritual side and started working on that and I started reading a lot of books on our souls and and things like that. And I mean, I didn't turn religious, but very spiritual. Very spiritual like like the universe and our souls and spirits and things like that.
Speaker 2:It's almost like a higher calling and a sense of purpose as well with that.
Speaker 1:I started realising while I was in jail because I started feeling free. I was in jail but I was free, and the irony of it is this I was sitting there and I thought I had to come to jail to be free.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I actually feel free. I didn't care that I was in prison. I was reading books and I would just go out and I'd just spend time by myself. I'd sit in the yard and I'd see other prisoners and other guys and mates going up and they're on the phone and they're arguing with their missus and they're slamming, smashing the phone and they're getting off the yelling and screaming and going fuck. And then you're like fuck, you broke the phone. You're like fuck yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, you fucking.
Speaker 1:And I'd just sort of look at them and I'd look around at everyone and I just felt sorry for everyone. I just felt sorry for everyone because I knew that they weren't feeling free like I was, you know, for everybody, because I knew that they weren't feeling free like I was. No, you know, yeah, and I was healing, I was getting healed, I was healing myself and I soon realized that all of this oh, this is what happened. I've got to tell you about this because I started seeing little signs since then and like I was sitting in my cell and it was afternoon, it was an afternoon lockup and there was a real boring my cell, and it was afternoon, it was an afternoon lock-up and there was a real boring sort of movie on in the afternoon.
Speaker 1:I wasn't really listening to it and I'd been asked by Tarns. He said you need to write a book about your life. So I thought, well, better time as any to start this. So I was sitting there and I was writing things, which was actually very healing as well, because I had to think back of things that I had never thought about or gone back to in years and years and really emotional times like my brother dying and things like that. I never talked to anybody about that. So as I was writing things, I had to remember my feelings, my emotions at the time, my thoughts, and I heard what was going on. So it brought me to tears a couple of times writing this book. So as I was writing this book and as I was writing this book, I got to his part and I put it down and I was going hang on, I was never really a bad person.
Speaker 1:Even when I was in the gang I've done some bad things. But when I've done those bad things, I felt bad about it, even when I had a fight, even when I had a fight and I beat the guy up and he's lying on the ground and I felt sorry for that guy, even though he started it and everyone thought that I liked violence. But I never, ever did. I hated it. I hated violence and it was just a necessary thing to do. It was survival in the life that I had and I was thinking to myself. I was going why is this happening to me? I shouldn't have this sort of bad karma. Why is this going on? And right at that moment this guy on TV hyped up and said sometimes a life needs to be destroyed to have a new beginning In that moment, right in that moment, as I thought that and it was just one of those signs that I was out of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so so that's always really stuck with me, you know, and that's why I always go back to remember that oh, why did you miss my cars?
Speaker 1:I missed my bikes, I missed my all my material possessions and then, and then, that's when I started realizing as well and so I always go back to that moment sometimes your life needs to be destroyed to have a new beginning. So you start beginning your next life, and it picked me up. It picked me up and and I took that moment and I just got better and better and better, and and I always thought everything happens for a reason, whether it's good or bad. You know so. So I don't think of any of the bad reasons. You, you bad things happen to everybody, absolutely. They make you stronger for one. They make you. You need to learn them. It's happening to you because that's something you need and what would help your children later on in life, or help somebody else later on in life.
Speaker 2:There's a purpose.
Speaker 1:There's a purpose for everything, so therefore, I believe that there's no bad things that happen, because it's actually a good thing, yeah, I agree. So I was getting better and getting stronger and it actually ended up like I'd be sitting there reading my book out in the yard or in the wing, and then these guys would be shitting. So I started drawing. People started being drawn to me and coming and sitting at my table and I was sitting, and so I put my book down.
Speaker 2:Hey, bro and they were like hey, mate, oh, you were that guy in the wing. Yeah, I was like.
Speaker 1:I was like you know, like what was it? Those prison movies? And there's always that old wise guy the old wise guy with the book, yeah, yeah, the one that is clever, that's got all the good advice.
Speaker 2:I was that guy, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I sort of had a giggle to myself now and then thinking, oh shit, I'm that guy, I've become that guy, and I didn't really care about having any company or anything, but people would just come and sit at my table.
Speaker 2:They could probably sense the inner peace that you were feeling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just probably drawn to me. Yeah, absolutely Just probably drawn to me yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:And I'd give them I could voice it. I'd go not going on too well with the missus and they'd go yeah, bro, fucking hell, so what's going on? They'd say things like oh, fucking, she won't answer the phone anymore and fucking this, I think she's fucking around. And I said bro, bro, bro. I said you have to remember that. You put yourself in here. It's not her fault, it's not your children's fault. You have to. You have to think of, you have to put yourself in her shoes. You put yourself in here, right? I said she's the one doing it hard. She's doing that prison scene. Her and your kids are doing prison sentence with you. They have to come into this shit place, get patted down, strip searched, fucking, get treated like shit. You know, come in here in a terrible fucking place, see you for fucking an hour and they're missing out on having you at home and everything they have to buy you.
Speaker 1:They put money in your account every week so you can have munchies and things like that. Your missus is on the benefit for us. So they're doing your sentence with you, bro, you have to remember. And then you're accusing them or fucking reaching around or whatever. Well, even if she is, that's your fault because you put yourself in here, she wouldn't be if you were out there. No, you know, but you don't even know that. No, so why put yourself through that? Why put her through that? That's why she's not answering the phone anymore, bro, because she's coming onto the phone and you're saying and you're accusing her of fucking around or whatever. And you're accusing her of fucking around or whatever. Bro, just try this next time, next time when she does finally answer the phone, try giving her some support, asking if she's all right, if the kids are all right, because, bro, honestly, she doesn't want to. She gets anxiety when that phone rings.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, and she has to. She goes, oh no, he's going to go and he's going to fucking accuse me of this and that, Of course, she doesn't want to answer the phone, bro, yeah, yeah. So I'd be giving them advice right there and they'd go, oh yeah, and then I'd see them trying it this time. They'd come back and go bro, you were right. Fuck, she's coming to visit me, and I'd go, yeah.
Speaker 2:That would make me feel good.
Speaker 1:It would make me feel I just didn't care. I didn't care about all the bad shit that was going on around the world or in there. I just was healing myself, you know, and once I was doing that and just being okay with being by myself and being alone and not worrying about what everyone, all the bad shit that was going on and the negative shit I started seeing all the negative stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, seeing it for what it is Seeing it and seeing all these poor cunts, I'm sorry these poor guys that are in there and doing it hard and I remember doing legs like that when I had a miss and I was All the worry and the fighting and all that sort of shit. It doesn't get you anywhere. Just don't go to jail. No, that's right.
Speaker 2:It's that simple.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's not about money.
Speaker 2:If you've got no money, it's rather be poor and free than rich and in jail, and that's why, like you said earlier, it's worth everyone doing it. Oh yeah, I think everyone should do it.
Speaker 1:It turns you into a completely different person once you've been there. Absolutely yeah. It goes one way or the other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's it. A lot of people they take that whole lifestyle on and other people they're out, they're never coming back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and I've seen a lot of people do that. They've just completely changed their lives, and for the better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what advice would you give others about the dangers of gang involvement?
Speaker 1:Well, of course there's the obvious you could die, yeah, you could die. You could die the peer pressure, meaning if your brothers are going into war, you have to be there. If something's going on, you have to drop everything and be there for them. Otherwise, that's part of the brotherhood thing.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter what you've got organised in your life. That stops. You've got to drop family, drop everything and go running to that.
Speaker 1:So be prepared for that and be prepared for jail, because you're going to do jail. If you're a gang member, you're going to do jail at some stage and it's going to happen, it's inevitable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of people probably believe that they can get into the gang lifestyle and avoid jail. Yeah, because they think they're too clever they're clever enough to stay out of it.
Speaker 1:No one. Everyone does jail and the peer pressure. Like I said, if you need to be there for your brother, you have to be there you have to be there.
Speaker 1:There's no getting out of it. Otherwise, don't even sign up for the gang. Yeah, another thing is be prepared for the police. Like the police, the police. You'll never get left alone. You'll get pulled over. You'll get harassed. You'll get hassled for the rest of your life, Even when you leave the gang. It won't matter. You'll still be that person. Your family will be harassed. They'll. They'll never let you live it down.
Speaker 2:You're a target.
Speaker 1:You're definitely a target, and once you're known, you're known and you'll never be unknown.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, be prepared for that. It's definitely a change of lifestyle and you've got to be ready to handle it or do it well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that when, too, you know it's not just when they go to war, they're actually after you as well. You know, it's not just your brothers that are fighting.
Speaker 1:It's actually you.
Speaker 2:You become a target to the other gangs. Yeah, you know, if there's issues between gangs and things, things could escalate quite quickly for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely they like. You've got to take this into account as well. If you go to war with another gang, well, five, 10 years later you might leave that gang and have a change of life, and you might even go to be a Christian or whatever. Whatever happens, leave that gang. You might want to live a family life. You run into those same people. They're going to, they're going to want you they're going to want retaliation on you and just because you left the gang, that won't matter, it doesn't matter, it's you, it's you.
Speaker 1:They remember you were part of that shot at them or beat their mate up or whatever. You will always be that target.
Speaker 2:You'll be answerable as that person For the rest of your life. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:And remember, even when you're old and you can't fight anymore, you've still got to get they drive you or drive past you, or whatever you've got to get.
Speaker 2:It'll be some young fellow who's got a point to prove. Yeah, he's going to say, oh, I got him, I got him, yeah, I got him, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:They want that trophy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that. It never leaves you no.
Speaker 1:You can get out of it. But I mean with me, I just don't worry about things like that anymore. I'm not going to let it define my life. No, I don't not go places because, oh shit, I might run into those people or those people. I don't care, I'll take it. I mean that was my life then. If it happens to me now it happens to me, I mean mean I'm not gonna, I'm not, my life has been destroyed. Yeah, right, yeah, I'm not going to carry on destroying it myself.
Speaker 2:No, you can't and you can't live in fear. You know everyone. There's a risk of bad things happening to all of us yeah you know.
Speaker 2:But but we can't just, you know, wait for that to happen. We've just got to allow it to happen. If it's going to, yeah, and do the best to mitigate it because, like you know, you're doing good things, you've got good things planned and you may find that you're lowering your risk of bad things happening, because people will see that, Like if you were to ask me the question how do I feel now being out of the gang?
Speaker 1:I say the word that comes to mind is freedom. I mean I feel free, even though I have to watch out for running into old rivals and things like that. I can't worry about that. No, I mean because otherwise I'm not free.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, If I let that trouble me, if I let that trouble my head, I'm not feeling free, yeah, I mean, but I feel free because I don't care about that sort of thing, and I think now I've been in a different mentality and not having to see, and that's part of another freedom. Part of freedom is that I don't have to do anything. No, I don't have to, you know, live up to the gang's expectation or anything, because there is no gang anymore, it's me, and I don't need to do anything about it. I don't need to retaliate, I don't need to do anything about it, I don't need to retaliate, I don't need to prove myself.
Speaker 1:I can have a choice to do it, and I think now, if I did run into any rival, my mindset's that different now that it would be different. It would be different anyway, and so I think I'd handle it a lot different. Yep, I'd still defend myself if I had to, but I think I'd deal with this whole situation a lot differently Because I don't care about the staunchness of it anymore. I don't care about it, and there's no shame in that. I mean, I feel like I'm a bigger man now than I ever was.
Speaker 2:Isn't that funny. It's probably tied into emotional maturity, in that the gang's lifestyle, the gang lifestyle is probably more of a young man's game. Yeah, definitely it's the bravado, it's the I want to do what I want to do. I don't want the rules and there's probably a sense of freedom that comes with young fellas joining the gang. They feel a sense of freedom and they're like I can do what I want you know, and that but what they're doing is actually locking themselves into a situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's right, yeah, so yeah, but I definitely feel free now, and not because, I think, not only just because of the gang. I think because of my spirituality now and being and taking that journey and walking down that path. Now it's just such an enormous freedom feeling and there's a whole other world out there and it's all just really positive. It's all positive. I mean, now I'm healing people. Now I'm not hurting people. I'm working in with Tans Tans is where I come from. Now we're starting up a business and things like that. We're doing healings and readings and psychic readings and things like that. So it's all good. It's all good and we're cleansing houses. So we're not only helping the humans, we're helping the people that have passed and sort of stuck as well. It's an amazing world to be in. Can imagine it'd be very fulfilling. You know, yeah, and and like we haven't even touched the, the tipper yet. I mean there's, there's so much, there's so much out there that we don't know about. Oh, yeah it's amazing.
Speaker 1:It's amazing this, this person, she's completely changed my life. She saved my life, you know, and I got a lot of respect and admiration for her and I trust her with everything. And so, yeah, and it's all about you know, it's all about keeping myself good and positive and carrying on. I mean I'm not, I'm not perfect, I'm not there yet. I mean I've still got a long way to go. Yeah, and and I've only been sort of doing this for three years odd now, and and uh, of course, I work right on a farm now. I'm there still dairy farming, and so that takes up a lot of my time. But yeah, but I think what I, what I wanted, my goal is I, I'm not going to be dairy farming forever. I'm just going to stay loyal to my boss at the moment, because he gave me the chance and he, you know he'd been a gang member and everything he got helped me in there.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it's a big deal, isn't it, when people give you that, yeah, that chance, yeah yeah, yeah, and so I appreciate that a lot and I um, so I'll stick with him until probably the end of the season and and then.
Speaker 1:But I really want to get into doing counselling work and cool and uh, sort of help the youth before they sort of hit the gate. I might not help everybody that I talk to, but if I can help some and make them realise what they're doing and sort of well, then it's worth it. And also I really want to focus on helping gang members that want to leave but don't know how, because that's what happened to me I had no support and I had no help doing it and it was one of the hardest things I ever had to do and it turned out a terrible ordeal. But I want to look at, I want people out there to know that there's somebody. You know, there is a way, there is a way. And it took me years to leave the gang and only because, and especially where I was coming from, a president and stepping off that pedestal and just thinking I could just jump into a normal life and just live a normal life like everyone else. It's not like that.
Speaker 2:It's not that easy.
Speaker 1:Not when you've been living a gang life for no, for those years, the yeah, you can't just step out of there and then just completely walk another path. It's not like that. I was so used to the survival skills that I had picked up to live in that life yeah, that that you can't just let those go. No, that's right. You have to deal with straight people working people and things like that. And, and you've got to deal with straight people working people and things like that. And you've got to deal with situations and people not like you used to. No, like you can't just say fuck or punch your whole head in or something or intimidate them while being a gay.
Speaker 1:You can't do that because you end up just getting locked up.
Speaker 2:They'll just call the cops straight away, and then the cops already know who you are. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And they'll be happy to oblige them. But so you just you have to deal with everything differently. You have to learn how to deal with normal people differently. Yep, and it's not an easy. It's not an easy transformation.
Speaker 2:I can imagine.
Speaker 1:Transition Yep Very, very hard.
Speaker 2:Very hard to do, but.
Speaker 1:I'm getting there, I mean I've come a long way. I've come a long way to where I was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're doing really well. Like you say, that's a huge portion of your life that has really shaped your identity, and then reinventing your identity, especially when you're older, it's massive. I don't think anyone can really understand what that's like until they go through it themselves.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yeah, I didn't realise what it was going to be like. I thought it'd be easy and it definitely wasn't Like.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to wake up one day and I'll be that new person. It's like no, actually it takes some time, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to step over it. I'm going to step over this picket fence, yeah, yeah, I'm looking at when I do. I believe now that I've lived a life so I can help others, and I lived that life for a reason, and I think who better to help others than somebody that's lived it?
Speaker 2:Oh, 100% that lived experience is more valuable. What I've learned, especially in the last year or two, is that lived experience is more important than any degree or any bit of paperwork you can do any bit of study.
Speaker 2:You've got the option to study at any time and you can learn what tricks and secrets are out there in terms of helping people that exist. But you are going to be able to apply your life lessons and there'll be counsellors and things and people in all sorts of roles that if ask them questions and you say, what do you think I should do, or you know, do you know what this is like, they'd go I don't know. Open your book, you know Whereas for you, you go, mate, I know all about that, yeah yeah, I didn't read it in a book.
Speaker 2:No, you didn't know. There was no manual, for you lived it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was no playbook or anything to show me how to live that, to find it out for yourself, and just do it.
Speaker 2:It's like if you wanted to know about parenting, would you want to go and talk to someone who studies some parenting or someone who has kids?
Speaker 1:That's right. You know like you really should talk to the person or a parent.
Speaker 2:Realistically, that's the thing it's like. If you're like, fuck my five-year-old, I just don't know what to do here. But then you've got friends who have a 10 and a 7 year old. You're like, well, they've probably had a 5 year old before they have, so I'll ask them what they did with 5 year olds someone that's actually done it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the most valuable thing yeah, so moving on in my life. Moving on is I want to get stronger with my spirituality. I want to get stronger with my spirituality. I want to put myself out there and me and Tarns are starting up a business doing healing and spiritual readings and things, and so I'm definitely going to throw myself into that role as well.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And then, at the same time, try and help people as much as I can, because I feel like that's what I'm supposed to do. Yeah, and I feel like it's giving back as well. You know, I'm not living on the wrong side of you know life now I feel I need to give back, and it makes me feel good to want to do that.
Speaker 2:You've got some karma to offset. Yes, pretty much.
Speaker 1:That's the way I see it.
Speaker 2:There's been plenty, I think, about the harm that I've done in society, because I have caused harm through the illegal things that I've done and a lot of the illegal things that I've done was supply of illicit substances. I would have definitely caused, while these people would justify it and a lot of drug dealers do, and I did at the time too, justify it that I am helping them achieve a goal With steroids. It was the case With other things. It was a bit more like they want to get high, obviously, but there's so much harm that comes with that. There's family violence, there's all sorts of things.
Speaker 2:You're just fueling it, you're fueling confusion and chaos and mental health issues, and all sorts of things I used to say to people.
Speaker 1:I'm a drug dealer, but I'm not selling it to anyone that doesn't want it, and that used to justify it to myself. I used to say at least I'm not selling it to anyone that doesn't want it.
Speaker 2:No, that's right and that used to justify it to myself. I used to say at least I'm not selling meth, or at least I'm not selling meth to school kids or something like that.
Speaker 2:People would be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm like actually, but I'm still selling something that's illegal for a reason. And when it came to medicines even, it was like no, there's a reason. Doctors oversee this kind of stuff, because you're fucking with your body quite bad, and a lot of people would take it and not know how it's going to affect them.
Speaker 1:Um, so there is that risk of harm, um, but look, you learn these things as you go away, yeah yeah, probably a little late in my life, but, but I mean, I still think of it like it happened, when it was supposed to happen.
Speaker 1:yeah, that's right, and my change and everything and my spiritual I probably wouldn't have grasped it so much earlier in my years because I wasn't ready for it, I'm ready for it now and however long I've got left in my life, I want to do good by that and do the best I can and do it all positively and be there for my family, and I love my family so much. I've got seven children and seven grandchildren. I just want to do the best for them and be there for my family, and I lost my mum a couple of months ago, so you know that was another bit of a downer for us, down with us. But yeah, it's. I realised that we we're not, none of us are here forever no there's one thing in life that you're sure about, and it's death.
Speaker 1:So before before I go, I wanted to be do the best for my family and help as many people as I can, so I want to throw myself into that.
Speaker 2:I've got no doubt that you will Thanks, and I think you're very capable and able to do all that, and especially because of that lived experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that's everything that we've got, and is there anything else that you'd like to say or put out there?
Speaker 1:No, I think I can't think of anything else.
Speaker 2:We've got it all out, yeah, good, I think we've got to do another one that's on stage two as well, with Tani, I think, yeah, I'd love to, because, again, I'd love to do like I said to you I'd love to learn more about Clever Wernsey as well, and just that whole side of things, and I think she'd be a really awesome person to meet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. I think whoever's listening or is interested in this story that it'll clarify a lot too from what I've said about the clairvoyancy and the spirituality. So when we do a session on that with Tarns, it'll be a lot more clear. That'll explain all that sort of things a lot more.
Speaker 2:Well, I can link her as well in this episode. So if she's got a business page or a number or something, or even a social media, I can link her as well in this episode.
Speaker 1:So if she's got a business page or a number or something or even a social media.
Speaker 2:I can put her in the description, so anyone who's interested in getting in touch with her can do that. And also yourself too, if there's an email address or something I can put in there, it just means there might be people in similar situations to you that maybe are looking at leaving a gang or have friends that are in a gang or something like that.
Speaker 1:Maybe they have friends that are in a gang or something like that. Maybe they might be able to talk to you, just get a bit of perspective or some advice. Um, yeah, well, I've just started up a, um, uh, instagram page cool, because I was never on, I wasn't on instagram and instagram, and so I can't remember, but I'll get it afterwards. Yeah, but, but I can give you my uh email and um, which is knga13zzz at gmailcom, and I also have a Facebook page Messenger as well. Kev Nafari.
Speaker 2:I'll chuck the links in the description anyway to be nice and easy for people to just click on. But yeah, I want to thank you for coming in and sharing all of that.
Speaker 1:Thanks, mate. It's been great being here.
Speaker 2:I'm happy to speak about what I spoke about. Thank you, cool, no worries, and we will have you on again soon. Thank you very much. Thanks, josh. Thank you.
