Deadline: Gift ideas for the young Victorian hoodlum who has everything

You’re never too young to start learning in the Education State, so some bright spark has come up with the perfect gift idea for Victoria’s aspiring armed offenders.

Christmas is sorted for the aspiring hoodlum in your life. Picture: Morgan Sette

Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

When I grow up

Youth crime is a front and centre concern for many Victorians, despite assurances from some of our pollies that everything is peachy.

After an Ashburton man was killed when a stolen, speeding Jeep Cherokee — allegedly packed with six teenagers — struck his car in Burwood, the Allan government's Housing Minister Harriet Shing was keen to play down the issue.

“We want to make sure that we are able to understand what happened,” Ms Shing said.

“We have the lowest youth offending rate in Australia, however, we also know that it is a very small group who are persistent offenders.”

But it seems like it didn’t calm unsettled voters.

Our colleague Regan Hodge keeps a watchful eye for all matters relating to youth crime.

That’s how he spotted the below post on the WTF Carrum Downs Facebook page last week.

Let’s hope it’s a joke, though the way things are going in Melbourne …

The perfect gift for a young Melburnian this Christmas. Picture: WTF Carrum Downs

Hot stuff

We’d like to think we’re all over the socials but sometimes things in the online space escape Deadline.

We were sent an oldie but goldie last week, a pic of the late Melbourne gangland figure Mark “Chopper” Read and his new best friend that day, Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis.

Given the fame of Kiedis and the infamy of Read, it’s hard to know which of them would have asked to have the pic taken.

For those who can’t pick the difference between the two performers, Kiedis is the one who does not have the words I LOVE ITA BUTTROSE tattooed on or about his buttocks.

"Chopper" Read and Anthony Kiedis. Picture: Supplied

The son sets over Hanlon legend

That old rascal, the late George Hanlon, is a racing legend because of the image he projected as a bumbling, absent-minded eccentric who knew as much about training horses as anyone and more than most.

The real George was a little less loveable than that. So were some of his undesirable contacts.

His son Gary Hanlon tended to be overshadowed by the triple Melbourne Cup winning father, at least in public. But when friends and family gathered at Geelong racecourse on Tuesday this week to celebrate Gary’s life, it adjusted the picture a little.

Fact is, it was Gary who rode work on all but a couple of George’s 49 Melbourne Cup runners from the 1950s to the 1990s. And it was Gary who did most of the preparation with Piping Lane, 40-1 winner of the 1972 Cup. He even had to yell at his father that they’d won the big race — because George still had his binoculars trained on his other two, more-favoured runners labouring midfield.

George (left) and Gary Hanlon

It wasn’t the only time that George was shortsighted. It took a month for Gary to persuade him to have a look at a big colt from Gippsland that one of Gary’s mates had brought down to their Epsom stables in 1976.

That horse was the then unknown Family Of Man, soon to become the greatest horse that Hanlon ever trained, a Cox Plate winner and Australian stakes money record holder. George ran him in everything from 1000m sprints to the Melbourne Cup.

The big horse would have won even more stakemoney if George hadn’t got him beaten here and there to set up one of the betting stings for which he was famous. And for which he was well-known on the shady side of the track in the 1970s and 1980s.

Hanlon senior was a go-to trainer for Sydney crooks like George Freeman and mafia frontman Robert “Aussie Bob” Trimbole, not to mention the shifty tycoon Robert Holmes a Court, who owned 1984 winner Black Knight.

Trainer George Hanlon with racehorse Our Pompeii at Morphettville stables in 1995.

Gary, meanwhile, knocked around with the Black Uhlans outlaw motorcycle club, among other scallywags and scoundrels. Like George before him, Gary was a handy boxer as a youngster and willing to back himself.

If he’d been lighter, he would have been a terrific pro jockey. As it was, in his 20s he was one of the most sought-after amateur jockey in Australia, often invited interstate to ride in highweight races against pros.

Gary let slip a few stories in the decade before he died. No doubt some of them got a run at his wake at Geelong. Such as the long-held secret about how Hanlon father and son quietly prepared a horse called Mr Digby to win a massive plunge in Sydney in 1981 on behalf of George Freeman.

The vandals in Bendigo aren’t among the state’s finest. Picture: Gianni Francis.

Rules of spelling liberated

Animal libbers might be long on compassion but they’re short on spelling, if an attack on Jacinta Allan’s Bendigo office is anything to go by.

The Premier’s electorate office was spray-painted one morning last week with the words “heartless” and “spiness”.

We assume they meant “spineless”. It certainly wouldn’t mean “spinless” because spin is one thing the Premier’s staff are very good at, especially when it comes to CFMEU matters.

Supreme sacrifice

Police and prosecutors weren’t the only ones relieved after a jury recently found Greg Lynn guilty of murdering Carol Clay at Wonnangatta in 2020.

One veteran newsman, seen in the background of TV cross, looked glad to be finally out on the Supreme Court steps judging by the way he hurriedly sucked on a vape live in front of thousands of viewers.