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Life in a 'Godless place': A glimpse inside Australia's highest-security prison, where the nation's most depraved criminals are housed and violence can erupt at any time - CINDY TRAN and CANDACE SUTTON FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA - 28 July 2015
· This is a glimpse inside one of Australia's highest-security prison
· Country's most notorious inmates are being kept beyond the grim yards
· Nine New's presenter Peter Overton was granted rare access to SuperMax
· Home to some of the most notorious murderers, terrorists and paedophiles
Concrete walls, steel bars and electric fencing is a glimpse inside one of Australia's highest-security prison where the country's most notorious criminals are kept in grim surroundings.
The Goulburn SuperMax has been home to some of the nation's most dangerous murderers, gang rapists, terrorists and paedophiles since September 2001.
Nine New's presenter Peter Overton was granted rare access behind the prison's sterile world of unclimbable walls and never-ending barbed wires, about 195 kilometres south-west of Sydney.
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Concrete walls, steel bars and electric fencing is a glimpse inside one of Australia's highest-security prison
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Visitors are required to have a strict security check upon arrival before having their eyes scanned at barrier
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9News presenter Peter Overton was granted rare access of unclimbable walls and never-ending barbed wires
Visitors are required to have a very strict security check upon arrival before having their eyes scanned at the first barrier. They go through the same process when exiting the prison.
Among the 37 prisoners being kept behind bars are serial killer Ivan Milat and Bassam Hamzy, who was sentenced to life in jail for a 2002 murder and ran the 'Brothers 4 Life' gang.
Corrections Minister David Elliott described the infamous prison as a 'Godless place' where some of the nation's most depraved criminals are held.
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Among the 37 prisoners being kept behind bars at Goulburn SuperMax is the notorious serial killer Ivan Milat
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Inmates are shuffled around to different cells every couple of weeks and have regular x-ray checks
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Inside their cold and cramped cells contains just a bunk bed, a set of shelves and a toilet and sink
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With 171 surveillance cameras put in place, inmates are monitored 24 hours, seven days a week
Inside their cold and cramped cells contains just a bunk bed, a set of shelves and a toilet and sink.
Inmates are shuffled around to different cells every couple of weeks and have regular x-ray checks. Nine News reports it costs $550 a day to keep a prisoner at SuperMax. ($550 x 365 = $200,750 pa)
'It is money that I would prefer to see the government spend on hospitals and schools but it is money to ensure the community in NSW is safe,' Corrections Minister, David Elliott said.
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The infamous Circle - also known as 'human zoo' - where Australia's worst murderers and rapists spend their days before being locked up in 150-year-old prison wings such as Unit 4 (at the rear of the photo). Infamous criminal Bertie Kidd can be seen carrying the milk crate (right)
This comes after Daily Mail Australia took a sneak peak inside the grim caged yards of Goulburn Main prison which is known as 'The Circle'.
Like all the yards on the Circle, which holds the greatest concentration of criminals crammed together in wedge-shaped pens smaller than zoo enclosures, 2 Yard was full of rapists and murderers.
Also called 'the human zoo', the Circle inside Goulburn Main prison is a seething mass of bored inmates where tensions run high.
At night, the worst of the worst retire to the 150-year-old cells on the tiers of grimy cracked wings built for 19th century prisoners.
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Aerial of hell: The caged yards on the Circle at Goulburn Main prison can be seen in the centre of the photo between the two diagonally aligned prison wings, and house around 30 inmates each in racially segregated yards of Middle Eastern, Aboriginal and Asian inmates, as well as killers and rapists together
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Prison officials prepare for a tour of the grim series of prison yards known as the Circle which comprise caged areas crammed with the most serious killers in the country who spend around seven hours a day in the tension filled atmosphere of enclosed pens
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Matthew De Gruchy, photographed in prison where he is serving 28 years for murdering his mother and two siblings, was one of six inmates involved in a brutal jail attack on the notorious K gang rapists in 2 Yard on the Circle of Goulburn Main, which left the brothers with a broken arm and a brain injury
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Unholy alliance: Serial killer Ivan Milat (left) conspired to escape from Goulburn jail with Thomas Hudson Wilson (right), who was captured for breaking a woman's face, arms and leg with a pinch bar after his total lack of body hair made him easily identified by the victim who a judge said 'would never recover from her injuries'
The scene of murders, stabbings with prison made shivs and bashings of feared or hated inmates, the Circle has its own stringent pecking order starting from the top with the lifers eking their sentences for murder, like Anita Cobby killers Michael and Leslie Murphy and Janine Balding killer, Stephen Wayne 'Shorty' Jamieson.
The two Sydney murders - of beauty queen Anita Cobby in 1986 and bank teller Janine Balding two years later - by gangs of young men resulted in the killers being 'cemented in' to prison for life, and the majority of them being housed at Goulburn Main.
Then it is rapists with adult victims, an assortment of violent armed robbers and those who have murdered children. Few of the long term inmates do prison jobs and they spend their days in the cages on the look out for a distraction.
Only on this day, two gang rapists had decided to bring knives into the yard and would reap the consequences.
Ring leader: Bassam Hamzy (pictured) is the highest security risk inmate in Australia and is housed in Goulburn's Supermax prison where he has converted other criminals to Islam, runs a business organising crime on the outside and where he hid this gang poster (above, right) in his cell
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Entrance to hell: The main gate to Goulburn Correctional Centre wherein lies several facilities including the Supermax prison and Goulburn Main, the feared older part of the prison which has caged yards on what is known as the Circle, where inmates risk stabbings and fatal assaults
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Mohammed Skaf (left) was just 17 when he joined his brother Bilal, then 18 in a gang of youths who raped and humiliated young Sydney women. Bilal Skaf (right), now aged 33, is serving a 31 year sentence for gang rape and has been housed in both Goulburn's Supermax facility and the MPU, part of the Goulburn main prison
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Jail made weapons, known as shivs, seized from cells in prisons including Goulburn Main, have been fashioned from brushes, pieces of metal or plastic and given tape of cloth handles for use in the prison yards to threaten, maim or kill
The details of this vicious attack - which involved four rapists and violent sex offenders and three murderes with multiple victims - is the subject of an internal report obtained exclusively by Daily Mail Australia.
Senior Correctional Officer Jamie Buck was on the ground near G Block when he heard the commotion and rushed over.
Through the gate of the yard, he could see one of the notorious K brothers, 27-year-old MSK, punching and wrestling with murderer, Shannon William Daley.
MSK was the eldest of four brothers convicted of raping eight girls aged between 13 and 18 years old at Ashfield in inner western Sydney in 2002, and who were sentenced to between 15 and 24 years prison, a fifth rapist in their gang having hanged himself in jail.
The brothers are immigrants from Pakistan's violent former north west frontier province and identify in the Goulburn prison files as Afghani.
Buck radioed the control room and Immediate Action Team to come to the yard. He unlocked the gate and noticed another inmate lying on the ground. It was another K brother gang rapist, 25-year-old MAK. MAK wasn't moving.
On the ground in the Circle, prison officers Brian Corliss and and Circle senior Steve Barton heard Buck's radio call and rushed into 2 Yard.
First class correctional officer Stephen Barton moved into the yard and immediately ordered all the other 2 Yard inmates up against ancient brick adjoining wall to 1 Yard.
From above the yard on the middle landing of prison block 2, Senior Correctional Officer Elizabeth Clune was searching cells for contraband.
She stopped and rushed downstairs to find Officers Barton and Corliss kneeling over MAK.
MSK 'appeared to be bleeding from both eyes, his right ear, the nose and mouth. He was conscious and semi-alert,' Ms Clune would later report.
The officers had MAK in the recovery position and Ms Clune went over to support the inmate's head.
'I noticed a silver electric jug lying close to the head of inmate K and a radio that was still plugged in on the bench seat against the wall between 2 and 3 Yards. I could not see any other blunt objects in the immediate vicinity.
'Nursing staff arrived at the scene ... I informed them that the left side of K's head felt very soft. When they rolled him over to the other side, a large indentation to the left side of the head was apparent.
'Once the nurses had taken control of the situation, I assisted with the handcuffing of all the inmates in the yard.'
Prison senior assistant superintendent Dempsey had arrived in 2 Yard and taken control. He went to speak with inmate Shannon Daley, who told him he had started the fight when the K brothers pulled knives on him.
As statements from other sin the yard would later attest, Daley yelled out that MSK had a knife and five other inmates rushed over to jump on MSK.
Among them were Jay William Short, 31, serving 20 years for the brutal murder of Lithgow beauty queen Alison Marie Lewis, who he strangled, stabbed and buried in a sandpit at a local sports oval in 1997.
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Supermax special: Execution style murderer Leith Marchant (above), who converted to Islam under the influence of Bassam Hamzy in Goulburn jail, sleeps on bare concrete in his cell, and has hatched elaborate escape plans
Bad men: Mark Van Krevel (above, left) who murdered two men, decapitating and disembowelling his first victim, has stacked on weight in prison, Vestor Fernando (centre) killed nurse Sandra Hoare and then his cousin in prison and serial killer Lindsay Rose (right) makes jail keys and plots to murder guards
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An aerial view of Goulburn prison, which opened in 1884, showing the middle semi-circular building which sits on the infamous Circle surrounded by caged yards of inmates who sleep in the long building of tiered wings, and Supermax, which lies in the top right corner of the photograph
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Beauty queen Anita Cobby (pictured) was abducted after a night shift as a nurse and taken to a field in western Sydney where she was raped and almost decapitated by five men, including three brothers Michael, Gary and Leslie Murphy, who were sentenced to serve out their lives in Goulburn Main prison
Brothers in blood: The Murphy brothers, left to right, Leslie, Gary and Michael, who raped and murdered beauty queen Anita Cobby in 1986 and who are now grizzled old men in prison where they eke out time in the yards among other killers and rapists and will die in prison
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Janine Balding, 20, (pictured) was abducted, raped and murdered at a Sydney train station in 1988 by a homeless gang of five, including Shorty Jamieson, who has spent decades since in a yard on the Circle at Goulburn living among other murderers and rapists
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Ivan Milat's victims: Despite mercilessly slaying seven backpackers, (from top left, Deborah Everist, Anya Habschied, Simone Schmidl, bottom, Joanne Walters, Gabor Neuegebauer, Caroline Clarke and James Gibson, serial killer Ivan Milat has carried on like a wimp in jail, threatening suicide when his sandwich maker was taken from him and lasting just two days on a hunger strike because he 'loves his tucker too much'
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In the late afternoon on the Circle, Australia's most infamous prison yard, tiny killer Stephen 'Shorty' Jamieson (pictured after his arrest) could be behind the gate of the caged yard which he shared with dozens of other notorious killers and rapists
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Farhad Qaumi (above) went beserk in his prison cell in Goulburn jail, armed with a jail-made shiv, inciting his fellow inmates to join in as he attempted to flood his cell and threatened to kill prison officers
Another was one of NSW's more notorious killers of 1996, Matthew De Gruchy, who had murdered his mother and two younger siblings at the family's Albion Park Rail home, 100km south of Sydney. De Gruchy is serving 28 years.
Joining in the melee, in which both K brothers were punched, kicked and hit with objects, were armed robber Adrian Gray, multiple sex offender Robert John Hayes and Ghebli Djait, convicted of a drink spiking related sexual assault.
Also involved was another man serving a 34 year minimum for the suffocation murders of three young children in Cabramatta in western Sydney five years earlier.
CCTV footage showed MSK being dragged across the yard and two of the inmates assaulting him, after which he was treated for a broken arm. His brother, MAK, was taken by ambulance off to Goulburn hospital for brain surgery.
The incident, which happened on February 8, 2007, made national headlines but is by no means the worst to happen on the Circle.
Divided into the caged wedges, the Circle is now a model of racial and prison 'social order' separation.
This is because in three short years in the 1990s, Goulburn was a bloodbath. Between 1995 and 1998, seven inmate murders in Goulburn Main put the prison way in front of infamous Long Bay Jail, where despite numerous stabbings, only five inmates were murdered between 1983 and 1998.
Several of the Goulburn Main murders resulted from conflict between Aboriginal inmates and those of Middle Eastern background, prison authorities devised a system of segregation by race to keep violent attacks to a minimum.
The yards on the Circle which, like the spokes of a wheel ring the central tower of the prison, now comprise a Lebanese yard, a Koori yard, a yard of the most despicable murderers, an Islander yard and a yard of Asian inmates who mix with a variety of other ethnic origins.
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Visitors to prisons like Goulburn have concealed knives, weapons, bullets and drug implements in their cars and on their person, only to be arrested and charged by officers who know how dangerous it would be if any of the weapons reached the yards which have a history of murder and stabbings
Thrown into Goulburn's Supermax because of prison behaviour were killer Guy Staines (left) who converted to Islam in jail, and Craig Richardson (right). a mentally unstable convicted murderer who plotted harm against guards, lighting a fire in his cell to lure staff and making shivs out of exercise equipment in the yard
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Continual upending of cells and searches for contraband unearth drug implements, weapons, mobile phones and SIM cards and other items which inmates in prisons like Australia's toughest jail, Goulburn Main, can mean life or death in the yard for other inmates or for the prison officers
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Gang rapist, Bilal Skaf, pictured in the visitors' room at Goulburn Supermax prison sits with his father Mustapha and mother, Baria, who is filmed in the act of secreting in her sock cartoons and letters which Skaf tried to smuggle from the prison to the outside, an act which saw Baria banned from visiting him
The violence inside Goulburn prison is the subject of a new book, 'Australia's Most Murderous Prison - Behind the Walls of Goulburn Jail' by James Phelps.
Around 30 inmates fill each yard and on hot days by the late afternoon before the 3.30pm lock down, the cages simmer with the frustrations of child murderers, teen stranglers and baby rapists.
The Murphy brothers look like grizzled old men now. At a tiny 149cm high, Shorty Jamieson is visible at the front of his yard behind the wire gate.
Another prominent figure in one of the yards on The Circle was Thomas Hudson Wilson, a onetime jail accomplice of serial killer Ivan Milat, who was identifiable by his tall completely hairless body and bright green eyes.
According to Phelps' book, Wilson and Milat spent time in Goulburn's MPU (Multi Purpose Unit), aka 'baby Supermax' but known to the inmates as 'the Bronx', where prisoners like gang rapist brother Bilal and Mohammed Skaf have shared a cell.
Convicted murderer Ronald Priestley stirred up trouble in Goulburn prison becoming involved in serious prison riots and assault on officers
From there they planned an escape, one of several Wilson escape plans, which included a daring plot in which grabbed a female officer by the throat at a courthouse in Burwood, Sydney, and locked her in a room before going on the lam for two months.
Wilson was deported back to New Zealand in 2011 after serving one 14 year sentence for breaking a woman's face, arm and legs with a pinch bar in an attack he was said to have been paid to do by the woman's former boyfriend.
It was in the MPU that Farhad Qaumi - known out on the streets as 'the Afghan' - had gone beserk in a cell .
Qaumi, who at the time was on remand for the double murder of boxer Bassam Chami and Ibrahim Assad - of which he was later acquitted - armed himself with a jail-made shiv, inciting his fellow inmates to join in as he attempted to flood his cell and threatened to kill prison officers.
Qaumi was moved from the Bronx straight into the High Risk Management Unit, Supermax, which is is a separate jail constructed on the grounds inside Goulburn prison just a few hundred metres south of the Circle.
In Supermax, Qaumi had joined some of the most evil violent men in the country, in the quiet, clinical environment of Supermax, which gives the outward impression of a hospital or mental health facility but is a place where prison officers risk manipulation or assault by inmates with nothing to lose.
Living together in the three units which make up Supermax were criminals like Malcolm Baker, who murdered six people in the 1993 Central Coast massacre, and since coming to prison had become a paranoid and aggressive prisoner considered 'at high risk of assault, escape and hostage taking'.
Then there were the notorious murderers, Michael Kanaan, who killed two footballers at the Five Dock Hotel in Sydney, Leith Marchant, an assassination style killer who had become such an extremist Muslim convert that he slept on bare concrete in his cell and Mark Van Krevel who mutilated and killed Two men including Wollongong's former mayor, and had spent several spells in a prison metal facility.
Five time serial killer, Lindsay Rose, was known to produce jail made keys, had plotted to murder a prison officer and was considered 'highly intelligent and manipulative by Supermax staff.
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Officers carry one of serial killer Ivan Milat's victims from the Belanglo Forest in NSW, which lies just 72km north-west of Goulburn prison where Milat now resides in a Supermax cell in which he will remain until he dies
Another was Vester Fernando, who with his cousin Brendan had raped and murdered 21-year-old nurse Sandra Hoare after abducting her on duty at Walgett Hospital, in northern NSW.
Murdered Ronald Priestly, was in the prison art room when Vester stabbed Brendan to death, and had ended up alongside his mate in Supermax organising prison riots and assaults on officers.
Vester had then murdered his cousin in Lithgow prison and was shanghaied to Supermax where, fora time, he became a Muslim convert under the influence of Australia's most dangerous prisoner, Bassam Hamzy.
Hamzy, who resides in Supermax under the highest security AA rating, runs business from his Supermax cell organising crime and payments and manipulating followers of the Brothers 4 Life gang.
But it is Australia's worst serial killer, Ivan Milat, who is serving seven life sentences in Goulburn's Supermax, who has caused prison authorities the most headaches, making several escape attempts, swallowing metal objects and chopping off a finger with a plastic knife in order to get outside to a hospital from which he hoped to escape, and staging a hunger strike after the prisons commissioner confiscated the sandwich maker and television from his cell.
Milat gave up on his hunger strike after only two days because the killer, as then Commissioner Ron Woodham put it, 'loves his tucker too much'.