Greenpeace activist Jon Beauchamp back safe in Mallala after his two-month ordeal in Russian jails FREE AGAIN: Jon Beauchamp back home in Malalla with his partner Tania Purtle. HE shared a Russian jail cell with a violent murderer, lived in below freezing conditions and ate nothing but bland porridge and soup for more than two months. The international press labelled him a pirate and a hooligan and worse, he faced up to 15 years in prison after a routine Greenpeace mission went horribly wrong. But Jon Beauchamp, 51, says nothing has deterred him from working with the environmental organisation again and he doesn't count out returning to Russia - the very place he holds many memories he would prefer to forget. "If they called me up and asked me to do a trip that I wanted to do and I had time (I would go)," he said, as he sat in the comfort of his Mallala home alongside his partner Tania Purtle, 40. You always worry ... I wouldn't be going back to Russia in a hurry, not for a year or two. In an exclusive interview with The Advertiser, Mr Beauchamp admitted he can relax now, but was far from relaxed when he realised how much time in prison he was facing. "I wouldn't have lasted," he said. Greenpeace activist Colin Russell has returned to Tasmania after spending three months in a Russian prison. The nightmare all started on Thursday, September 19, when Mr Beauchamp, an engineer, and 29 other Greenpeace crew members were "peacefully" protesting on Russia's first offshore drilling platform - owned by energy giant Gazprom - when armed Russian authorities seized control of their boat. Within days, the crew - branded the Arctic 30 by the media - found themselves in Russian detention centres in the country's Murmansk region, charged with piracy and hooliganism. Mr Beauchamp, who was born in New Zealand and has worked for Greenpeace for the last six years, said the first few weeks were the most worrying. "We didn't know where we were (so) there's a slim chance that anybody else knew where we were, so for the first two to three weeks we were pretty worried," he said. While he said being locked up was far from ideal, Mr Beauchamp said Russia's prison conditions were "adequate," despite the fact he shared a cell with a murderer. "One guy had chopped a guy's face off," he said, of one prison inmate. Greenpeace International activist Jon Beauchamp in detention in St Petersburg, Russia, before his hearing in court. Picture: Greenpeace. (I thought) he's not going to do it to me - we're in prison, what's the point of doing that? Mr Beauchamp said he was transferred in the "dead of the night" numerous times from various prisons in the region, including one in the "middle of a pine forest in the middle of nowhere." "It was low temperatures, minus temperatures occasionally ... the heating was shit," he said. It was just cold all day. Mr Beauchamp said he spent 23 hours a day in a small cell and had just one hour to roam the exercise yard freely. Luckily soon after he arrived, Greenpeace and other volunteer organisations provided Mr Beauchamp with warm clothes, books and some food, but he didn't see the 29 other crew members for the entire time he was detained. Sure, he had food to eat, but it wasn't the stuff you get in five-star restaurants. "For breakfast you'd have a very watery porridge with no salt or sugar ... lunch you'd have a bowl of Borscht - sometimes it was edible, sometimes it wasn't," he said. After that if you wanted, you could have a really cold bowl of macaroni. Showers were only allowed once a week and there was no contact with the outside world, except a few "secret" letters delivered to Ms Purtle through Mr Beauchamp's lawyer. "The only way I could get messages out was through my lawyer if no one was watching us or we had a guard that was looking the other way," he said. Mr Beauchamp was also able to call his partner from prison via two phone calls approved by the head of the prison. After more than two months behind bars, Mr Beauchamp - and the 29 other crew members - were granted parole and then amnesty, which meant they were out of detention and confined to the streets of St Petersburg. "We stayed in two hotels ... the whole place was bugged," he said. It wasn't like a holiday - everybody was on edge. We had guy's wandering around the hotel bar with guns hidden in their pants. On Friday, November 29 he laid eyes on Ms Purtle for the first time since he left Adelaide six months before. "I tried to break down, I tried to cry but I couldn't," she said, of the emotional reunion. I don't know ... I felt like it but the tears weren't there. A month later, at the end of the December, the piracy and hooliganism charges were individually dropped from all 30 crew members, yet the case still remains open in Russia. "While they keep investigating the ship," Mr Beauchamp said. As for what's next for the adventurer, for now, he will head back to work as a boat mechanic at AJ Marine Services in North Haven. While future adventuring with Greenpeace calls, it's something Ms Purtle would rather he forgets. "I can't stop him," she said. If he wants to do that, that's something I'm going to have to deal with. I can't deal with Greenpeace again ... I do not like how I've been treated by them. Even though he's spent the best part of three months in limbo, Mr Beauchamp said he doesn't hold any hard feelings against Greenpeace or Russia. "You do hold a little bit of resentment but the Russians were just doing their job," he said. This is Russia ... this is the way it works.