P RI SO N BR EAK

Goose Bay, Kaikōura, 1975

It all started with a Holden Torana and a caravan, both stolen. I had
driven up to Kaikōura from Christchurch on a hunch that the cops,
the fucking pricks, were after me. I’d been staying in a Christchurch
motor camp for a few months, sleeping in the caravan, doing a bit of
paid work, but the newspapers were panicking about a burglary at a
sports store in Hokitika where all the guns and high-powered rifles
had gone missing. A disquiet descended on the South Island. The
police put an alert on my name, and had my parents up about me.
My poor parents couldn’t tell them where I was; they didn’t know.
That’s when I decided to moonwalk. I was nineteen, fresh off
a jail stint in Australia. I packed up my caravan and drove north to
the small settlement of Goose Bay, south of Kaikōura, where there
was only a campground to speak of. For a few days I had a good time
there, enjoying the sun, watching the seals, perusing the township.
Then, one day, I decided to practise some target shooting. I was
shooting at these rocks in Goose Bay, and some bastard thought I
was shooting at the seals. They must have rung the cops, right? The
cops must have put two and two together and thought ‘Shit, that’s
that bloody Taylor’, because there weren’t so many people running
around committing crime back in those days.
The local police called in the Armed Offenders Squad, which
happened to be on an exercise at West Melton, near Christchurch.
They knew I was armed, so they packed up their choppers and flew
to Goose Bay. It was dark. A loud-hailer started kicking up and the
power went off while I was watching TV in the caravan.
‘Taylor, throw out your firearms and come out with your hands
above your head.’
Christ, I thought, I won’t give up without a fight.

12

PrisonBreak_TEXT.indd 12 31/05/21 10:43 AM

 T h e
begin n in g

Dunedin, 2020
I was born Arthur William Taylor in 1956. I have ten aliases.
Terrence Brown. Herbert Chandley. Peter Dursley. Peter Greene.
Peter Murphy. John Newman. Paul Richardson. Michael Smith.
Alan Wilson. Mark Taylor. All names of real people who had a short
start in life. It was easier to get a job if you didn’t tell people who you
really were, so I shopped around the sections of cemeteries reserved
for newborns or stillborns, and registered a birth certificate in their
name. Nobody checked. Nobody cared who you were. They just
cared about whether you could do the job.
My criminal record, including traffic offences, runs to sixteen
pages. From 1972 to 2012. Thirty-eight years in prison, or so the Parole
Board tells me — I’ve lost track. And 155 convictions. I’m fighting a
few more. I was released from prison on parole in 2019, after being
jailed for seventeen years and six months for kidnapping, escaping,
and possessing drugs and explosives. My sentence officially ends in
2022. On the page it sounds bad, but the record doesn’t tell you the
whole story.
Life’s a bit different now. I live in Dunedin in a small tiny home,
near Baldwin Street where the tourists come and take their photos.
Right near student-town. It’s semi-rural and you can’t hear much
except the lovely lambs and the birds and the occasional crunch of
gravel when the police circle by. My cameras detect them crawling
up and down the road, maybe once a day, sometimes once a week.
A security car swooped by at midnight the other day. Fuck
knows what they’re looking for. I’m inside, typing on my computer;
preparing submissions, writing letters to Corrections and answering
calls from prisoners. There are cherry tomato plants growing on my
deck. They’ll be beautiful in summer if the Dunedin snow doesn’t
get to them first. A family of ducklings walked past the other day.
When I look back, I think: Be careful. Slow down. Take things
slowly. Think things through. When I was young, I was cocky and
brash. We have choices in life and we are responsible for them,

13

PrisonBreak_TEXT.indd 13 31/05/21 10:43 AM

 P RI SO N BR EAK

but sometimes our ability to lead a happy, productive life is taken

away from us. It took me a long time to learn that there is always
something you can do to change things if you have the right
encouragement and support, and the will.
What I’m left with, though, if not memories of a life on the
outside, is a world of adventure and a path that’s led me to help
others. My will is iron. A sniff of injustice gets my back up. Prisons
are failing our inmates. This book is for them. The stories are for
me.

14

PrisonBreak_TEXT.indd 14 31/05/21 10:43 AM