Dad, push the doors closed, got them locked so no one could get out, and he's turned around and yelled out, no one is leaving this tab until I get my wallet back.

Now there's one hundred men who turned and looked at us, and there was just complete silence.

It wasn't long after that, or probably a couple of years after that, that he was featured on Australia's Most Wanted.

Oh that would help, So he was in the probably the most wanted list.

I'm Andrew Rule.

This is Life and Crimes, and today we welcome to the studio Peter Norris.

And Peter Norris has written a book which is very eye catching.

It's called The Bank Robbers Boy.

It has a very striking image on the cover, better than many covers.

Peter designed it himself.

It's a photograph of himself, just a rough little snapshot of himself as a I presume it's himself as a little boy of maybe two, and he's looking at the camera carefully, perhaps watchfully, and it is a perfect image for the subject.

And the subject really is the memoir of that little lost boy who grew up knowing that his father was one of the biggest and toughest bank robbers in Australia in the golden era of bank robbery in this country?

Is that a fair summary, Painter.

That's a fair summary, Andrew, Yeah, yeah, And as you say, I did design the cover myself and carefully chose that photo.

You know, it's not one, not a moment that I remember.

Too young to recall obviously, But.

How did you come to still have that photograph after all your disjointed life which we're going to talk about.

You've been moved from pillar to post until you've turned maybe eighteen or something, and a lot of stuff would have got lost along the way, but you kept that photograph.

Yeah, I've managed to keep a couple of photo albums and somehow, you know, as you go through my story, there's lots of moments where I'm able to grab a backpack and fill it with whatever I.

Could, and you grab the albums and it was always albums, always photo along with a Tom the turtlemost Eddy Bear, yes, and maybe one set of clothes, but that was it.

So Teddy Bear and your family albums, Well, that's said something for your character.

They've been with me for life.

For life, isn't it isn't that beautiful.

It's a touching story in many ways, simply told effective, no pretension.

You're not one of those guys that licks the pencil stub and looks for long words.

You just tell it how it was.

And I found it quite moving, actually, and I was reading it.

I was saying a few minutes ago before we started that I was reading this on the train and I found it.

I was worried that I'd miss my next stop, you know, because I was getting involved in it what happened next and soon, because there was always something happening in your young life life, and it was from crisis to crisis, and it's very compelling.

Did you find that aspect when you were writing it that it brought back the way it felt to be that little boy?

Yeah?

I did, and look and one thing that I suppose that I really wanted to get out of this was to be authentic.

And as you say, so if I felt a certain way at the time, I didn't need to use fancy words or look up at thesaurus to make it sound a little bit more fancy than it was exactly.

I just just wrote it the way I felt at the.

Time, and it's highly effective and We met at a writer sesstel recently and never set eyes on each other before, and you said I'd like to read a piece, and you read a few paragress from the book, and I found it enormously moving.

I thought it was very well chosen and very effective, and that we may get to that bit today.

It was the day that your dad said, we're heading west.

Like you went to a lot of places with your dad at very short notice.

Two minutes, three minutes, five minutes.

They're always a short note.

And as you said at the time, you got a car meaning dad pinch one and you drove from I think it was I think it was from Melbourne to Perth.

I was across another and you had a sort of a scene with your father on the way and I thought the really said a lot for your character, and also you're writing that you were able to capture that a moment of wisdom.

Yeah, it's skilled from the whole violent loss and everything else that you Yeah.

It's a small part of the small part of the book obviously, but such an integral part of the story because it highlights my love for my father, but also the fact I didn't want to become him.

You didn't want to be him here.

Yeah, it's a funny split thing.

Yeah, really tough.

You love your father or your mother, but you don't want to be them.

Yeah, and as a kid, a tough time to negotiate too, and confusing feelings and terrible yeah, awful.

Yeah, you feel that for people who have got this, you know, built into humans, is this loyalty to your own and to think that you've got to somehow negotiate that when you know one member of the family's been dragged off to jail and the other one's dragged off to the boys home, and the girls are dragged off to god knows where.

It's very confronting, confronting, and imagine it must be the same for you know, as you probably found through your research and writing, being married to a criminal would almost be the same.

And I imagine this totally.

I love them, but yeah, you know, but I don't.

And then finally, which leads us to one.

Of the big psychological.

Things in your book, I imagine, I think, and tell me if I'm wrong, is the fact that ultimately your mother, the woman who gave birth to you and to your siblings, on one day, she just left, which happened so long ago that I doubt you can actually remember.

It, literally, don't remember it.

You were the baby of the family.

Yep.

Absolutely, your older siblings would remember her a little bit.

Yeah.

So I've got three older siblings, two or two sisters and a brother.

And they're still with us.

They're still with us.

Yeah, my older brother and my older sister.

So, older brother Dave, older sister Tina, they both remember her, they do, yep, yep.

So you know, a lot of the memories in the early chapters, you know, I'm relying on, particularly on my brother.

Yeah, Mum's departure is all.

He's all Dave's memories.

Yeah, and so take us to that.

You've rebuilt this through your brother's eyes.

Yeah.

Yeah, Well, you know, I was born in nineteen seventy three.

It's not long after that, from eighteen months a toddler kind of just you know, walking getting around and without knowing.

My brother Dave, he's pretty much my father.

He's this charming, great guy to sit in a beer with.

Again, I probably wouldn't want to be him.

It's different, but a great guy who you know, he has friends that are high court judges and criminals and everything.

In between these these they're just just amazing individuals have the ability to befriend everybody.

So we had some great conversations and he recalled the day that mum told told him and cuddled all of her kids and had a shopping bag and was going shopping for the day and quarter bus and she went and away she went.

This is outside the town of in New South Wales.

Yeah, yeah, yeah's this.

I think this was in Kellyville, I believe in a Sydney.

Suburb, Sydney suburb.

So she just and that was it.

So she plotted her exit in the previous hours or days, days and months, Yeah.

With full knowledge of her parents, who you know, my grandmother and go Pa, you know, they would have known that the time that that day she was she was heading, she was heading.

And yeah, so we have not heard from her or seen her since at all.

Nothing.

That is fifty years it happened in seventy five, right, yeah.

Yeah, fifty years ago.

Yeah.

So I even't found a fourth birthday card recently actually, so in one of the albums I had with these things that I grabbed which is from her, but it's in my dad's handwriting.

Oh so Dad, Dad, had given it to me at the time to.

Say this is from mom, to say this is from mom.

Oh, well, let see, I've still got that.

Yeah, it was thoughtful.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's another theory to that though.

What's that?

Oh I see, it could be very sinister, It could be very Yeah, that's the point too.

Yeah, okay.

So which leads us to a question which I raised with you when we first met, and I think I didn't raise it, and it certainly occurred to me.

If you were able to your mother through using people who are good at finding people, would you want to do that or would you not want to know the truth.

No, I would absolutely want to know that.

And you know, the way that I even finished my story, part of that is just letting Mum know that I forgive her for those decisions.

The decision to walk away from four children would be a tough one, terrible and yeah one that you know, no doubt, if she's still alive, would still be with her.

But I'm also aware that had she taken the four of us, Dad would never stopped looking.

Oh I see, yeah, and that would be bring its own problems.

That would bring its own problems.

I suppose we owe it to our listeners to sketch in a sort of a thumbnail sketch of your father's career as a bank robber and other things.

Okay, who was your dad and where'd you start out?

As suppose you know what happened next?

Now I know, certainly before my time and before kids.

You know that he spent a fair at a time in Tamworth Boys Home and a lot of our more notorious criminals there and Grafton, Grafton Jail, So it's probably Grafting where he met some of the more notorious criminals such as George Freeman and those guys.

And he knew Russell Cox, Russell Cox Russell, Yeah, mad Dog Cox.

There were some big um robbers at that era that came to Sticky End.

Yeah, that's reading Raymond.

Raymond n Yeah.

And there's still a guy that I refer to it in the book and I still don't know who it is because it's again it's my brother's memories and just a guy called Wombat, who we called Wombat.

And we were just watching the news one day because we'd seen met this wom bat at our house.

He's there regularly.

And then the news came on and showed a man who'd been pulled up at a traffic light and been shot in the head, and that was that was one Bat saw.

Yeah, sure who he was, though you must find that we need to know who Wane Bat was.

What do you think happened there?

There'd be a falling out between friends.

It'd be a falling out between you.

You don't get shot in the head of the traffic.

Light by that's by a lollipop.

No, clearly a hit.

And you know there's those that stuff going on at the time.

Okay, so you might have something falling out of it.

Yeah, ye, suspected of informing, Yeah, cheating somebody out of money or.

Something like that.

Yeah.

I tend to find that most of the criminals of that era, although they're criminals and clearly dishonest, I found they had their own code.

Though I certainly no listening to Dad that he was always fair and would never robel cheat another criminal.

That was his kind of That was the discussions that we used to have.

If you were whacking up the bank robbery money, you weren't.

You weren't dealing it from the bottom.

You just you just be fair and honest.

But anyway that doesn't mean they're all the same, I suppose.

I guess not interesting, isn't it that sort of basically sociopathic crooks can have a code that they.

Still Yeah, yeah, they had their own code.

I was very impressed to give our listeners and readers, your readers, some impression of your father's charisma and strength of character and his sheer presence.

Let's say there's a story you described and it's in a tab.

Clearly, like so many other citizens, your dad spent a lot of time punting, and that was probably the root cause of most of his troubles.

And you know, the money comes in and the money goes out, Well, we know where it's going.

He wasn't buying Jaguar cars.

He was backing horses and dogs.

That yeah, And we're punging from a from Thursday night till Sunday.

That was it.

His wallet goes missing in this crowded tab.

He steps out and grabs some piece of wood from somewhere and somehow gams the double doors so they won't open from the inside.

Yeah, and then he bails up everybody in that room.

Now, they might have been one hundred people, They might have went.

Fifteen there was a day that I recall, Dad had placed his newspaper down on a bench and if you know, for those that are old enough to remember, the old tab's there.

You know, they smoke field back in the day when you could smoke inside the building, and there's just races blaring, and there's generally only males in there, and you know, one hundred blokes just all running around putting their bets on.

Yep, and yeah.

So he'd left his wallet on one of the benches, placed a bet, and then gone to his pocket to grab his wallet and realized that, you know, it wasn't there, gone back to the last place that he was and the wallet wasn't there either, And I remember just looking at him, and his face used to kind of go red, and these veins would pop out in his neck, and I just had my little arm.

I would have been about seven at the time.

I reckon, just had my arm wrapped around his leg.

And then he started walking towards the front door.

Thank god, you know, we're just going to leave, because I knew what he was capable of.

And then we got to the door.

Instead of walking out, he's pushed the doors closed, got them locked.

So no one could get out, and he's turned around and yelled out, no one is leaving this tab until I get my wallet back.

And there's one hundred men who turned and looked at us, and there was just complete silence.

And of course, as a seven year old fairly daunting, fair if you were, I got no doubt that he would have at least intended to work his way through each of each and every one of them.

And there was a man at the back of the room who put his hand up and said, I just found this.

Is this your wallet?

And he pushed his way through the hundred men to get to the back and snatched the wallet and look through it, nothing missing, and then that was carry on.

Opened the door, opened the door, and off we went, if we went.

So that tells you a lot about your father, that story, doesn't it.

He's a punter, a victim of the punt really, yeah, absolutely, and.

Probably committed crimes to square up betting debts.

Probably, yeah.

I had Yeah, lots of our, lots of their parties and contacts.

There was always bookmakers present, so I'm sure there was credit given, as you know, it was required and all those sort of.

Things, and they'd have to then have to square off.

And of course they always pay their bookie, always pay book always pay the book The thing is big on bookies and and most bookies always pay their debts too.

Notwithstanding that, I think they robbed it for your bookies too after some big race mates too.

That was that was the thing back in the.

Day Lloyd Tidmarsh ended up dead, was That's right been Jockie Smith and Jockie Smith would have been a contemporary of your fathers.

They would have known it, They would have known each other, Yeah, for sure, from the same sort of blood.

Really very famous escapeian.

Famous for his for his escapes.

Yeah, yes, capologists.

But it also shows that the victim of the pump, but also enormously confident, tough bloke who who'd come through baptism of fire in the boys' homes and that made him the toughest bloke in the most surroundings.

Yeah, he wasn't actually in a high security jail.

He was tougher than the most paper And.

There was something about I think crims of that day that they all knew how to box.

Yeah, yeah, they're all.

You know our uncle Billy Billy Smith.

You know, if you look up some of the best sort of street fighters back in those days.

You've got you've got him in.

Some of the boys that they'd say were the ones that could go yeah and very good.

A story in there about visiting a fish and cheap shop.

Our uncle Billy cleaned up the bikes a through them through the window, and this guy was, you know, five foot seven with coke bottle classes cheesy.

Yeah, good fight.

Yeah, well, and the good fighter is a lot better than people that can't.

Yeah, it doesn't matter about size.

Yeah, it's quite compelling stuff.

Just lead us through from when your memory kicks in.

When how far back do you think you can remember?

You remember turning fourth for a start.

Yeah, So my first memory, my literally my first memory, I was living in a foster care situation.

Now at the time, I wasn't aware I was in a foster care situation.

I thought that was my biological family.

The Seventh Adventures.

Yeah, the one who belted it yep.

Yeah, so I had this problem right up until I was a teenager, until I got my nose quarter eyes.

But it used to just bleed nighttime.

And then yeah, the the person I thought was dad gave me a pretty big belting for bleeding on the machine.

Unbelievably cruel thing to do something that's clearly involuntary.

Yeah, it seemed like it.

But interestingly, it was around that time when something clicked in my head and I looked a little bit closer at my surroundings and I realized.

That I'm not different.

Yeah, And I was this tall, curly haired kid.

My siblings had red hair and were plumping around and different.

Mum and Dad didn't look anything like me.

And you twigged, and I tweaked, and you still had some faint memory of your siblings, some faint memory.

I I've just read this in the last twelve hours, but just explain to the listeners how you came to be reconciled with your biological father.

After that, it was just like any other Sunday morning, and this seventh day at Venice.

Family that I was with, you used to go to church every week, and I was a very active child, so I was out just running around the garden before church, literally just running laps around this this rectangle.

And this man walked into the front gate, big burly guy, big thick arms and thick shoulders, and he had there was another person with him that went towards the person I thought was my mother, and this man made a bee line straight to me, and there was a moment of confusion, but he came straight to me and picked me up, and we just looked at each other.

And I think the first thing I believe I said was can I go home?

Can you take me home?

I just knew that was carried me out to a waiting car.

And seventh Advents didn't put up much opposition.

Well, the other person that was there, and I know, I don't know this for a fact.

I believe was probably social work or someone.

And I do know that for a fact that Dad at that stage had had won the to get his kids back through the new South Walest courts.

He'd done it properly, done it properly.

So he collected all four of you.

He collected all three of us, colllected me and my two sisters.

Oh, and Dave was Dave decided with your grandparents, with your maternal grandparents, yep, of course, yeah.

And did Dave grow up with him pretty well.

Grandpa died probably when Dave was pretty young, just a teenager, and then he went off really just made his own life.

He became a gunsmith.

But yeah, so I went back to this waiting car and there was these two giggling girls in the in the back seat and they were cheering, and they were my sisters.

Your grandparents in maternal grandparents, popping Nana.

They lived originally they lived out on a property somewhere out of Sydney somewhere.

Yeah, yep, yep.

What did grandpa do?

Look, I never saw of saw him go off to work.

It was just things that he do around the property.

You just you know, fixing fences, little farm.

Yeah, he's a small farm.

I didn't kind of see any maybe you know, a few cattle and things, but nothing, nothing significant.

Some sheep and a few cattle, but yeah, probably just more of a hobby sort of.

I quite imagine that that day.

He is more or less retired.

And they'd adopted your mother when she.

Was a little girl.

Yep they had Yeah.

And did they have any other children or adopted her, not.

That I'm aware of.

No.

So so their surname was Norris, which which Mum talked.

Mom took back, And where did your mother meet your father?

And do you know the story?

Yeah, I do know the story.

Yeah, she was working in a pub I believe, just pouring drinks.

And she was a part time model as well.

She was about twenty at least twenty years dad's junior, and Dad wasn't a big drinker.

But we'd spend a lot of our time at pubs and always be these you know, these accomplices of dads.

It would be sitting around tables just just talking, and you know, they'd throw us some money to go down to the milk bar and buy some lollies while they they did, or do whatever they did.

But Dad, anyway, obviously prior to us coming along in one of these meetings, that had met mum and they hit it off.

And had four kids and had four and they stayed together.

That would be back around the time Dave was born.

I suppose.

Yeah, he's how many years older than you?

Yeah, seven years older than me, so mid sixties and.

Sixty five, and by seventy three, moms gone by seventy four, seventy four.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, So she's hit the toe, yep.

And you don't have a feeling one while or the other about it, anything bad having to her.

No, I must admit it's something I hadn't thought of, and it was someone else that suggested it to me that had I can sit and the way that this came about.

I had a phone call from somebody and I won't say all, someone who's in the media, who said, we've done a bit of looking around and your story about mum catching a bus and disappearing and never been contacted was really similar to some others.

Whether the result was that this person was murdered of course, had not disappeared forever and not made contact with anyone, and that was only this year that that that I.

Received that And that's not a crazy it's not a crazy.

Theory crazy, No, it's not crazy at all.

But what about the.

Preparations for you, the grandparents to adopt you out and all?

As if it was prepared Ink hurts with mum.

Yeah, so we were taken to a seventh Day at Venice Church.

Do you think they'd already mapped that out ahead?

Absolutely?

Okay, yeah, yeah.

I would suggest mummas there of anyon on them.

That would suggest that.

Yeah, but that's the story that I know.

Yeh, that's all I've been to.

Well, that's a point to But we're dealing with childish memories which are tricky, correct it's very very interesting and you'd be very interested, you say, in finding your mother if you could.

Yeah, yeah, I'd love to know.

Yeah what happened?

I mean, if she's live, you know, she would only be late seventies.

What is her full legal name?

Rose Marie Arnold?

Arnold is her birth.

Name birth Rose Marie Arnold, known as Rose Marie Norris yep, and possibly Rose Marie Pew at some start, maybe.

Yeah, maybe more likely Arnold or Norris.

When was she born do you think?

I would say maybe late forties, early fifties, right, that's early fifties possibly.

Yeah, she was about twenty one.

Name men, I was pretty young and then had Dave pretty pretty quickly.

Yeah, okay, right, you're not really sure when Nana Pop lived.

No, I just know, well, I know we're out it.

I think maybe Dural Durrell.

Yeah, okay, potentially out that.

Way that way, Yeah, okay, No, that's an interesting thing.

And you never know who's listening, who might go Ah.

Also there are people who are very good coming.

Records, that's right, and had records, And if anyone listening it feels the need or want to do that.

Yes, get in touch.

No worries Now the obvious question is what happened to the bank robber?

Your dad Gary Pugh alias Gary Reynolds alias Gary A lot of name you've had?

How many names you think you've had as a kid growing up?

So the name that you've answered, Jesus what I had?

Yeah?

So many?

And you move to your Reynolds Yeah, you know, hope so and.

You always learned the name.

Yeah, it was.

Always something that we got to we had to practice.

So Dad just you know, instilled that in us to just keep asking the question over and over again.

Yeah, because we went to a new school under a new.

Name each time, they could just do that each time.

Yeah, we just another name.

How would the police keep finding him?

Now you're in Shepperton after going from Bendio, let's say, and he's in New South Wales like really originally, so it's not as if the Victorian couples all know him, no or not by sight necessarily.

Then Monday bang bang bang, one night, you know, they come through the door and they arrest him Victoria's how would that be?

Yeah, I mean you know, it wasn't long after that, or probably a couple of years after that, that he was featured on Australia's most wanted Oh that would help, But that was two years after this particular time in Shepherd And so he was in the probably you know, the most wanted list I think at that time in Shepard And when we got raided was because of the fight.

So we're living in Salvation Army, you restpite center in Shepard And and we've been there for some time and on occasion we could hear what sounded like sort of a domestic dispute in the apartment unit next two hours and for the most part we ignored it.

It just seemed like, you know, a couple yelling at each other.

On one particular morning, it seemed like it escalated sort of breaking glass and a woman crying and a man, yeah, yelling And it was that on this occasion that Dad went to the door and knocked on the door and was really polite and just you know, basically just sit, I'm here, just to check that everyone's all right.

This man, who you know, was the one that was sort of yelling at his wife and you know, potentially you know, the domestic abuse perpetrator, stormed out of the front wire door, you know, went straight into Dad and just started swearing at that Dad, and Dad being Dad, sort of tried to remain calm, but that didn't last for too long while this guy was continuing to swear, particularly in front of us kids.

So it ended up that they were ended up in a fistfight, and you know, Dad got him a couple of good ones and split his eye open and his chin with her knee.

But this was a really, really really big man and eventually got the upper hand on Dad and had him on the ground with his arms around Dad's neck and he sort of had one arm locked in around Dad's throat, and he was quite calm at this stage the big man, and Dad's face was turning purple, and the man, in a really kind of strange and almost psychopathic kind of voice, just looked at us, you know, me and my siblings and said, you know, do you want your dad to die today?

And was just in a really sort of soft, calm voice, which seemed you know, quite sort of spooky to us, and as kids, you know, we were deeply impacted.

We were sobbing and crying, and you know, I think one of my sisters had sort of dropped to her knees and you know, rightfully so thought that dad was going to die that day, and that was really only broken up by you know, from the side came this old man who you know, we don't ever really seen the chain, smoke mental cigarettes and never spoke to any one, and brought the stool that he sat on every ay down on this big man's head and split his head open and knocked him unconscious.

So, yeah, an act of courage from an old man who pretty much said nothing at any time, does not it as you walked past and decided to act on that day?

Good stuff.

But within twelve hours the police had grabbed your dad, yeah, and taken him off to Yeah.

So that large he had charges penning.

Yeah, charges pending.

Yeah, but that large man had had said to us that day that he was going to come and kill the whole family.

Yeah, when we got raided that night as kids, that's what I thought happened.

Yeah, until you know, I sort of woke up and Dad was pinned to the floor with detectives, and as he did every single time, he was quite calm and just said it'll be our kay, Pete.

I'll come and get you as soon as I can.

Yeh.

That's another theme in the story is that Dad kept his promise, always came back to find me.

I could couldn't always get all of us, but it always because you were the baby.

Was that yeah, yeah, at that time, as we might get too old, as I then became a state ward at Beltara, yeah yeah, and that it was a government decision to put me into Beltara.

I was eleven, so that was pretty beautiful.

It was horrible, yeah, so you know, and I opened my book with an open letter to the government of Victoria, just with a statement that they told me that I was going to be able to read at a hearing.

And then once they read my statement, they decided that it was too hard for them to hear it.

Yeah, too heartbreaking, too heartbreaking, and.

They decided, well at work out safety reasons for that, that they didn't want their people exposed, people exposed as such as that, right, that was the excuse anyway, So I've put that to very effect.

So Beltara, you're eleven, You're in there for X time and it seems like a long time, but it might have been months ago.

Yeah, months, and then the wheel turns again and a foster family they turn up and take you in.

And so at the end of this first episode, we've got Peter eleven years old leaving bell Tara, the Victorian State institution where he had to be put and ahead of him was a big adventure where yet again his dad finds him and they leave town.

And that is what we will hear next week when they head west.

Thanks Andrew, look forward to when you're covering all that off next week.

Thanks for listening.

Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia.

Our producer is Johnty Burton.

For my columns, features and or go to Haroldson dot com dot au forward slash Andrew rule one word.

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