Free Born to Fight by Mark Hunt, Ben Mckelvey Page A

address and told me to come round when I could.
    It was a good moment for me, a learning moment. I know no one ever deserves a medal for just deciding
not
to rob someone, but you have your battles, and I have mine.
    I moved around a lot in my first couple of years in Sydney, usually leaving a rent debt in my wake, until I found some digs that suited my station and budget. I’d lived in some shitholes, but this particular place took the urinal cake. A dilapidated, falling-down old warren of peeling paint, suspicious stains and nocturnal noises, the place on Chalmers Street in Surry Hills was almost exclusively populated by junkies, except for me and Dave, who I shared a room with.
    There were a lot of cons about living at that place, but the absolute worst thing about it was that even the junkies managed to move on. Not Dave and me, though.
    It was while I was living there that I first went back to New Zealand. I thought a trip home might clear my head and give me some relief from the pokies. While I did manage to keep away from gambling while I was there, the old demons returned to haunt me.
    I went back to see the girl I’d had a child with – not to see my baby, but for more sex. I drank and smoked, and even did P (crystal meth), which was becoming as popular as rugby in Auckland.
    I hit the clubs, places where I used to scrap. On the last night of my trip, my fists flew again, which nearly got me back at The Rock for a long-ass stretch.
    We were coming out of a club in South Auckland when it happened. I can’t remember if it was closing time because I was pretty fucked-up by then, but that sounds about right. I remember jostling and shouting – the type that usually fringed a scrap – and I remember surging forward. It had been a while since I’d been in a scrap, and soon I was balls-deep in one. I copped one on the chin then retaliated, and then some. There were a lot of bodies in this fight – maybe dozens – so there was no shortage of people ready to throw their fist at me. When they did, I gave it to them.
    The last guy who fronted me was a Pakeha dude. He didn’t hit me, but tried to put me in an armlock. He got the same the rest did. As he fell to the ground, a shitload of police came into view and it seemed that all of them were running for me. As it turned out, a few plain-clothed cops had arrived on the scene to break up the fight, and one of them now lay on the ground doing an inventory of his teeth.
    They cuffed me and put me in the back of a car with the cop I’d slugged. As we drove to the lock-up, he relished peppering me with gut punches.
    ‘You like that, nigger?’ he said as he was getting into my ribs.
    ‘Come on bro. You can’t just pop up on a brother like that,’ I told him. This only made him angrier and wound him up a little more on the punches. I didn’t blame him at all. I probably would have done the exact same thing if I were a copper.
    After I was processed and chucked in a cell, I sat there stewing.
What the hell was wrong with me?
It wasn’t like the old days before I left for Australia. Then I didn’t give a shit what I did, I just acted on impulse, not caring in the slightest about the repercussions. I thought I was done with this stuff, though. Unlike the two previous instances, I really feared another stint in a Kiwi jail.
    For the first time in my life I woke up in a cell feeling repentant. When I was called to court, I spoke sincerely with my state-appointed lawyer about how I was trying to mend my ways, and that all I wanted to do was get on my flight, get back to Australia, and stay right.
    When that story was related – via my lawyer – to the judge I was amused to find it sounded exactly like thebullshit I’d spouted in court in previous years. What could I add, that I really meant it now?
    The judge spared me, but probably not because he believed my story.
    ‘When is your flight Mr Hunt?’ he asked.
    ‘This afternoon, Sir.’
    ‘Do you promise to be on that