Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
At 17, Chantelle McDougall was nannying for a 36-year-old man. At 20, she was pregnant with his child and swept up in his bizarre spiritual beliefs. At 27, they all disappeared. I just wished I'd asked a lot more questions no matter what. I'm Dominique Bayens, host of Expanse, The Nan Up For, a story of control, manipulation and isolation.
Search Expanse on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more. Today it's all about the redemptive power of small dogs. My guest is John Howard. Not John Howard the Prime Minister, not John Howard the actor, this is John Howard, has lived his life pretty much outside the public eye.
John ran away from home at an early age and he fetched up in Sydney's King's Cross and And this was the cross in the late 60s when it was full of excitement and danger and temptation. John the street kid took up petty crime, odd jobs here and there, and he was in and out of jail a few times. He had some mental health issues and problems with addiction.
John was in middle age when he adopted a little dog that gave him the love and affection he'd been starved of all his life and the idea for a business that grew into something big. Now in his 70s, this former street kid has made good money renting out car park spaces in his old neighbourhood. Hello, John. Hello, Richard.
What kind of a child were you when you were growing up in the outer burbs of Sydney back in the day? Quite quiet, actually. Yeah, just an avid reader. And I now know the word to be an isolator, but yeah, certainly an avid reader. And hid out in fantasy, really. Did you have a sense of not quite fitting in from an age? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
I don't know how that showed itself in my mind, but I kind of knew that I couldn't honestly speak with anyone around me, even though I had a twin brother and a seemingly good house full of people. You escaped from the family home, like I said, as a teenager and fetched up in King's Cross. This was the late 60s. What was the cross like in those days? Oh, it was fabulous.
It was the end of the hippie days. Certainly the R&R days were shaping themselves up to be a fantasy life. This is soldiers from Vietnam coming here. Vietnam for 10 days of rest and recreation. American soldiers? American soldiers, yeah. And Navy people, yeah. They brought a lot of heroin into the cross with them in those days too. And that's part of the change as well. Did you see that change?
I saw the change. In actual fact, one of my friends, Nancy, used to work as a professional lady down towards the bourbon and beefsteak end of Darlinghurst Road. And that end was fairly much known as the working girls area who didn't use drugs. The other end up Coconut Grove up towards the main intersection there were, dare I use the word, the riffraff of King's Cross at that time. Yeah.
What kind of odd jobs were you picking up to get by as a kid? I used to buy blocks of hashish from a little coffee lounge on the way to Whiskey Go-Go and cut them up and sell them to people at Whiskey Go-Go. And Nancy gave me a place to live as long as I cleaned up after her, each customer, emptied the bins, made the bed, that kind of stuff, you know. So I would steal stuff on order, you know.
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Chapter 2: What was John Howard's childhood like in the outer suburbs of Sydney?
It was my brother who started me on this. He had a two-door Valiant and he had an accident and he asked me to steal the same model and he would pay for particular parts. And I became known as, I guess, a good car thief, really. How old were you when you were doing this, John? I was probably 15, I guess, 16. Yeah.
This was the heyday of Abe Saffron when he ran most of the sex trade in King's Cross. Did you ever see him about? I saw him, met him a number of times at the Bourbon and Beefsteak when I worked there. He always impressed me as a quiet, kind of genuine kind of man, you know, just, you know, unobtrusive. He didn't carry an air of menace about him or anything like that? Not for me, no.
I can remember one meeting, it was in the middle room of the Bourbon and Beefsteak and he was meeting with Bernie Horton, the guy, the Texan who owned the Bourbon and Beefsteak. And it was just like two old blokes just having a coffee and just sitting there chatting and it was just like harmless as.
Bernie was a kind of father figure to me and I just thought, yeah, these are two people in my life. Could have been a father and an uncle. Some of the distinctive characters from lacrosse in those days. Tell me about one-armed Ernie. One-armed Ernie had obviously one arm. And he was a bouncer at, I think it was the Coconut Grove. A bouncer with one arm? With one arm.
But you wouldn't not cross him. It was just like he could really use his one arm. And my twin worked at the club. This was before the Palace Disco opened up, where the railway station is now.
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Chapter 3: How did a toy poodle puppy change John Howard's life?
And he had a fierce reputation, but he was a nice guy. He just, a nice, you know, unobtrusive kind of guy. Yeah. What was the police presence like at the time? Corrupt. Oh, hang on, did I say corrupt? But yeah, it was. I think that's a matter of public record. Yeah, that is public record.
Because they all used to drink at the Bourbon and Beefsteak and you had Roger Rogerson getting around the 21 Squad. I was more liable to be bashed than arrested because I was a pest.
Chapter 4: What business did John Howard create after adopting his dog?
I wasn't a criminal as such. I knew these people and I did favours for different people, but I wasn't, you know, a hardened... I was just like a nuisance, a little guy just trying to react and get on. After a couple of years, your parents had migrated to Australia from the UK. Yeah. They re-migrated back to the UK and you went to visit them in the UK. Were they pleased to see you?
Not particularly, no. In actual fact, I think it was my first prison sentence and my mother came out to Long Bay and my mother said, blah, blah, blah, we've decided to move back and pretty much you're the reason for that. And they were going to move back the next week.
And I can vividly remember that each week, because Long Bay was under the flight path, looking up at each plane that was flying over and thinking, I wonder if they're on there. That's what I can remember. You got into major trouble in the cross. Yeah. In a very nasty situation in the cross. Can you tell me what happened?
Yeah, there was a couple, psychopaths in their own way, and one of them, the husband, knew that I was friends with someone and he asked me to invite her along for a coffee down to a brothel in Kellett Street, which I did, non-thinking, and we no sooner walked in the room than he attempted to kill her. How did he attempt to kill her?
He started hitting her, close fists, and then pushing her face through the window and I was able to pull him off. His wife came in, she pulled him off and I took the woman out and we got an ambulance and I just kind of melted into the background and disappeared. What happened when the police arrived? I wasn't there when the police arrived, but within days he got arrested.
She had obviously gone to hospital and spoken about what had happened. He got arrested. My name was mentioned. I got arrested. Were you charged with anything? I do remember the police saying that I would be charged with accessory before and after the fact of attempted murder if I didn't go witness against this guy. And were you afraid to be a witness against this guy? Absolutely.
The guy was nuts. So it went to court and I believe I was declared a hostile witness because I was caught between a rock and a hard place. I was going to be either charged with accessory before and after the fact of attempted murder or I had this nutcase on my case, you know. So I don't think I was charged, therefore I was released or free to go. And... I devised a plan. What was your plan?
My plan was that he was charged and refused bail initially. Then he went to court again and was given, I think, from memory, a $5,000 bail. Oh, no. He was let out on bail, this guy? No, he wasn't. But his girlfriend, she went out and started earning money working as a working girl to raise the bail money. And I knew where she lived.
And it was getting closer, I thought, getting closer and closer to her getting the bail money, him getting out, me getting killed.
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Chapter 5: How did John Howard end up in Kings Cross during the 1960s?
So I hid in the firewall of the building that, I'm not proud of this, hid in the firewall of the building where she lived. And robbed her. Didn't hurt her, anything like that, but just robbed her of her takings and left town. How did you get out of town? I stole a car. And where were you heading? I had an idea, which I thought was a good idea, was to start a hippie commune on Moreton Island.
LAUGHTER That's about as different as you can get from the cross, isn't it? Yeah, right. Absolutely. In Moreton Island in Queensland. Yeah. Right. And how far did you get in this stolen car?
I got as far as Taree and I had breakfast, which consisted, I think it was chocolate milk, and I finished with a carton and I threw the carton out the window of the car and I got pulled up and got arrested for car stealing. I don't know if I was arrested for littering, but anyway, whatever. Where did the police take you? They took me to a place about 10 kilometres outside of Taree.
Like a watch house or something? It was like a police and court compound and they had either two or four prison cells and they were attached to the police station and it was attached to the courthouse. So you're in fear of your life still. Absolutely. And if you're going to be sent to prison and you're in the same prison as this man, you'd be in real strife.
Yeah, but I was up the coast and he was in Sydney. But it was Christmas period. It was really, really hot and they had half a trap door in the prison cell door and I asked the prison officer, because of the heat, to keep the flap open. I stuck my head through late at night and figured if I can get my head through, I can get my whole body through. You're a pretty small guy.
Were you able to do that? Yeah, yeah, I was able to do that. Get your whole body out of the hatch there. I stripped off. I tied my clothes to my ankle. I climbed through. I got into the courtyard. It had bars and chicken wire going into the walls.
and right in the corner where there was some wood bedding, you slept on wood slats and they had these wood slats standing against the corner and I got a broom and I pulled out the chicken wire and I could just fit my head in between the prison bars in the roof of the courtyard and got out. Where did you go once you escaped from this remand centre?
I hitchhiked to Taree and then I hitchhiked from Taree to Newcastle. Was picked up by a guy in a Ford Star Fairlane who sexually assaulted me and got out at Newcastle, got a train to Sydney and moved into a crash pad down in Woolloomooloo. What state were you in? Not good. It was a reaction. I lived in a reactionary state most of my life. Reacting to whatever was happening. To whatever came.
You know, like a pinball, when you pull back the pinball? That's how I was. It was just like this ball bouncing from one incident to another incident, you know? Did that psychopath... catch up with you? Yeah, he did. He pulled exactly the same trick. He asked a friend of mine, this is why I was on the run. I was on the run, I think for less than a bit under a week.
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Chapter 6: What led to John Howard's time in prison and struggles with addiction?
Why did you move back to the cross given it's your home? Even though it's the site of your downfall, it was... Oh, yeah, but it was just like it would always be my home since 13, 14. It was just like this is my home. I went through the Wentworth Courier and I found a budget hotel in Springfield Avenue called the Springfield Lodge.
was advertising for a night manager, and I'll use that word loosely. See, I remember in the 80s and 90s a lot of touring bands used to stay there. I think I might have stayed there a couple of times myself. Absolutely, just three doors down from the Mansell Room. And I can remember the day I got the job. I went in there.
I'd spent weeks on a resume filling in the years gaps that just didn't exist. And there was a small Greek man standing behind the counter talking with the receptionist. And there was a guy sitting on the sofa in the foyer waiting to see the manager. I walked past him, went up to the counter and said, I'm here to apply for a job.
The little Greek guy said, yeah, just come in and I want to have a chat with you. Well, he was the owner and he said, yeah, fine. You know, he interviewed me and said, fine, you can have the job. And then he went out and told the guy that had been sitting in the foyer waiting to be interviewed that the job was filled. So King's Cross was changing at that time. Absolutely.
I moved up from Melbourne to live in Potts Point, the cross around about that time, and I remember that changeover period as it was becoming gentrified, like old bikey bars were being shut down and replaced by smart restaurants, that kind of thing. What did you think about all that as it was going on?
It was far better than what it had been previously, as in it was the gangster wars, it was those kind of king hit kind of... I used to walk one block from where I lived in Ward Avenue to Springfield Lodge and I would have to remind myself, no eye contact, you know, just keep your head down, walk home. I remember it was at 3am on a Saturday night or Sunday morning.
That's when you'd see cars cruising around the neighbourhood of young men who'd come into the cross and hadn't got what they wanted and now were just looking for someone's head to beat in. And they were the unpredictable ones because the people who lived there knew each other. But it was the unpredictable ones that were the ones to look out for.
So tell me, John, how was it you got your first puppy at this time? Oh, Sonny, my little toy poodle. I had met a B&D mistress. What, a dominatrix? A dominatrix. And I wasn't a client at all, but I had met and we seemed to get on well. And we'd known each other for about a year and got along really well. And she invited me over for a cup of tea one day.
So I went over for a cup of tea and two of her dogs had had puppies a couple of days before. And there was these two little four-day-old puppies just playing on the floor, you know, a little black one and a little white toy poodle. And combined together... They were about the size of a $5 knife. They were like these kind of big witchetty grubs. And what did it feel like to hold one of them?
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