That changes the directory of my life, and no doubt without that choice, my feeling is I either would have been in jail or Dad, I think. And for Dad it was, you know, he'd kept his promise when he'd come back to get me, and he just looked me in the eyes, and obviously the expectation was that we would just go and I didn't answer him straight away. When we continue to just stare at each other across sitting on different couches.
I'm Andrew Rulis's Life and Crimes. This is our third final episode of the reminiscences of Peter Morris, whose book The Bank Robber's Boy is the basis of three episodes of Life and Crimes. In this final episode, Peter is going to talk to us about how he ended up being reunited with his sister in Sheperdon and then embarking on a bit of a crime spree which led him to a fork in the road.
Andrew, great to be back, and yeah, let's get this going again.
Peter. When we last spoke, you'd worked at a kmart and you become a manager at the ripe old age of eleven nearly twelve. Then you were with a group of homeless kids in Perth living on the streets. But that didn't last either. You'd got back to Victoria and was reunited with your big sister Tina in Sheperdon.
Tina enrolled me into Sheperdon High School, did you. Yeah, tried to do the right thing, and I went for a day one day, and then I day two, I decided that I would just start breaking into houses wish I had. Oh And the reason for that was that I knew that Dad would come back, so I was collecting as much money as I could to ensure that we had some money when Dad arrived, that we could just go back on our adventures. So at that start planning, I was planning.
You weren't as keen on going because he had been.
Nah, Look, I didn't think you know that. Certainly my sister at the time felt like going to school was was probably a better path, rightfully.
So, and funny your dad had been keen for you to work in port Headlands, Yeah, rather than embarking a life of crime.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that wasn't always the case, you know, if you go into sort of earlier life in you know, certainly we were in Melbourne and we stayed at a flop house for a short while.
At Gordon House.
He'd encourage me to commit a few crimes back then just to get us out of there.
So what sort of stuff the teachers teacher things he did?
Yeah, so Melbourne baths, if anyone remembers that. So he had told me that I would be able to go into Melbourne bars, and he was spot on, and that the suits of the time would put all their belongings able to locker and they would connect their locker key,
which was on a safety into their towel. Right, so while they were swimming laps, I could walk along and just rip these rip these safety pins off the towels because I had a locker number on it, Yes, and go in and all their wallets and all their belongings
were in there. And in a matter of five minutes I got out with would have been about eight wallets that I had any little backpack goal and just walked back out and yeah, said good a to the lady out the front, walked out the door, brought the wallets back to Dad, and we had a heap of cash which helped a bit.
Longer, I see. So it was a mixture of motives and motivations. So life, we've teen up school last one day. There's a couple of things here. You've ended up being a reader. You were a reader who's written a book. At what point did you sort of learn to read and become that person that likes to lose themselves in a book and to read. Where did that happen and who influenced you?
I think it was the gift, Well, certainly the use of the never ending.
Story, right, the one that that lady gave.
Yeah, the one that she'd let me let me use, which is one of her son's books that had never been touched.
Do you remember the son's names?
No? I don't know her husband, No, not really, but yeah, so anyway, she'd let me read this story.
Yeah.
And I do remember that when Dad turned up to get me out that window, that I had considered taking that book with me. And this is another moment, because I had that in my hand because I'd loved it so much. But then I had her enough respect for her for her to put it back on the bed.
Good boy, but ignited something in you?
Yeah, it did.
Yeah, since the story could be written and Jesse, you could lose yourself in that in that infected you. It did, and it never really got disinfected.
No, no, And this is why, you know, the only thing that I wanted to you know, when I was working at Game Out, the only thing I wanted to buy was something to read. And at the time it was comic.
Book, which is fine as long as you read stories, doesn't matter what they And when you were at Shep, when you're out pinch and stuff, did you pinch books?
I didn't pinch books, but whenever I had money, I used to go to the secondhand bookshop and buy copies of foot Rock Flats and all those sort of yeah, so, you know, and at the time they were obviously that was a good yeah, but they were great. So I was always buying something from the bookshop.
I interviewed him.
Oh really, yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.
And how do you sort of negotiate that from twelve to adulthood?
Where so I got caught breaking into a detective's house. So that was a really great choice. I don't know in Shep in Shep.
Not Norm Gillespie, not ken Mansell.
The reason I don't know is because I got caught by his son. So I got caught in the house, so there was nobody home and his wife and his son came home. So I remember I was in a room which was clearly a boys room, and there was some martial arts trophies and things in that and it was strange because.
It was a nice house out in the edge of town.
It was yeah, And I remember Dad had always told me to have an escape, make sure you know if you and that was one thing, you know, always make sure you've got a way out before you you know. And this house had a deadlock on the back door, which I didn't know at the time, and I'd broken some louvers to get in in the around the backyard, and I'd completely forgotten about how I would get out
of someone come home, just just completely forgotten. And anyway, a car pulled up in the driveway and I heard a front door opening, and I ran to this back door. It was deadlocked. I had no way out, ran straight back into the bar room and there was a small window which I had to stand on the vanity to get out of, and by then this boy had flowing into this bathroom. I got out, and he ran outside and pulled me down off the fences. I was climbing over.
But anyway, this lady sat me in the backyard on a chair and rather than being angry man that I think the young fellow wanted to punch me in the nose. And she just looked at me and said, you know, what's what's a boy? Your what are you doing? And I was just probably a little bit defeated at the time, and just said, look, I'm just waiting for dad. I'm just stealing some things until Dad gets back. And then
the way they really police turned up. They called the police and they called her by name, oh right, and then things started a click, and then they put me in the police car and they went, yeah, well done, an idiot. That's a detective's house. And they drove me around shepherd In for a bit because they'd been this breing of breakings.
This would be about eight mid eighties. Yep.
I should look because I've got all these five and I haven't actually been through them. So I've got my state ward case file, so all the police officers involved in this will be listed in that. That's amazing, So I just need to probably open them up. Man, It's yeah, it's all in there, so I will be able to know who it was and who interviewed me when I got back to the station, and all those sorts of things.
So it was the son of big strong, redhead sort.
Of black's fair haird I remember that. I don't know about red hair, but he was a really strong I knew I had not all.
These red head, reddish fair head boys, blue eyed, big strong, cuugh floks right, and all footballers. And one of them, I'm for murdering Perth. Yeah's doing time over there now, the cropper's bad son. Maybe I was lucky, So you're getting the stripe over that. Did you go into an institution?
No? No, no, I didn't actually, So what happened was this wife of the detective. She knew of a foster family who potentially would take me in for three weeks. It was just not a predetermined term at that stay. She just said, I think it's you know, rather than being too hard on him, yeah, or rather than go back to Tina, let's send him off to this family
and just see let him cool down. Was a bit of a hot head as well, and I yes, I was sent to a family on a dairy farm in a small dairy farming community of Gagary, which is small small town outside of Abram, not far away from Sheperdon.
How was that look?
It was meant to be three weeks beautiful family. They had six biological children of their own, two girls and four boys, ready to take another one in. And in that three weeks I stole their car. So one night wieldered out of the push out of the driveway and took it for a driving into Kyabran, which was about twenty kilometers away, and took it for a spin and
was just a need. It got caught doing that by the police a few other things in that three weeks, and so when that three weeks was up, I'd expected that they would have been pretty happy to see the end of me. But Joan Dullard was her name, the mother and Jack Dullard and the dairy farmer sat me down and said, would you like to stay and go to school and start to live a normal life, play
forty and do all those things? And I think it was probably at that time, when my brain was starting to tick a little bit differently, that I knew it was time to make some better choices. So I said yes, and you did, and I did. You stayed with the dull Art and I stayed there.
How good is that? How long did you stay there.
For the rest of my childhood?
That was it? You're still friends? Yeah?
Oh yeah, absolutely? Ye Jack Dulla my foster father died of cancer. She's she's in her nineties and living on our own in a little, a little unit in Abram. Blind but still kind.
Of still says hello when you're got Yeah, it was yeah, due to go back. Are you younger than her children?
I was that she had one child, Elizabeth, younger than me, so we're all about Yeah. So I went to year eight at Saint Augustin's in Kyabram. That's where they sent me. The youngest daughter was in grade six at the times. Okay, good, great family.
And so you went to which school?
St.
Augustin Agustine? You just said, I'm sorry and you went there to what level?
So that that school finished in year ten and then we all transferred across to cai Abram High School where I finished. You Yeah, Kai Hi Kai High played played foot you cay Abron Bombers.
Even though you're from the north, turned into an a play. Yeah.
I hadn't sort of touched a footy until year eight.
About that age.
You got the right bill for it, got the right bill for it, and I played center for it, Kai.
Did you. Yeah, that's the that's the big position. Yeah.
Now, you know, as a six foot one or whatever, I wouldn't you wouldn't hold that down these days, you'd be lucky to be your midfield of it.
Yeah. Well that's good, Peter.
You are managing what CEO of Club Coora, which is you know, a licensed club license hospitality venue with poker machines and bars and restaurants.
How many staff are you running there?
Almost one hundred.
So this means that Warren't import Headland had you pegged as an eleven year old as that sort of guy. He did. He worked it out. How many years it to take you from eleven to when you got the big gig at Coroa y Corral.
Yeah, took a little while. The Dullard family, who were so nice to me, you know, had to take me to court for all those break ins that i'd performed, And I remember the judge at the time said to me, I don't know whether you're the worst twelve year old criminal I've ever come across, where you're just a kid who's had a bad starting life. And again that was a bit of a pivotal message for me that it was time to make some changes.
Was that in Shep?
I was in Shep?
Yeah, and that was that Magistrate's caught a ship magic. Yeah, that was a good thing. It was a good thing you gave you. I looked at you, and you didn't look like a complete reptile. Yeah.
I don't know. Yeah, I think probably saw something in me that, well.
You've got us have an open face. Yeah. Yeah, you don't look as if you're going to walk up knife somebody. No. No.
So I received a good behavior bond for that, and yeah, and some money that I sort of had to pay back restitution for the broken windows and things of it that I had just stole along along the way, which was about fifteen sixteen hundred dollars at the time. When I had a job cleaning up a butcher shop on a Friday night. That gave me ten bucks a week, so I was meant to put half of that away and gradually pay that.
You've always been a worker, So the total some lesson is that over the journey you've had some very bad treatment and awful things happened to you, but you've also had these moments where people have been very good and very kind, the waitress with the muffin. You've had a few lucky breaks as well as unlucky breaks.
I've had plenty of lucky breaks. And I think it's just that ability to see the light in the darkness. Sometimes, even when I was sitting in Baltara, you know, and on the receiving end of some pretty horrific abuse, I still manage to know that there were better days ahead. Is just just in my psyche. Whether they can't really explain that, but kept constantly finding the positives in any situation. I still do.
Now you're to be sort of bruttal about it or practical about it. Your father's troubles to some extent would probably go back to you'd say, gamling, gamling addiction. A lot of people have different addictions. That was his. It wasn't a heavy drinker, no, definitely not. You haven't been saddled with an addiction, yep, I.
Reckon I have you have? Yeah? Well, and I think mine is. It's mine's a different addiction. Mine is trying the best way to put to say this, My addiction is if I'm going to do something, it has to be done to the absolute top, maybe not even my ability at the time. A good example is I was doing some running on a running track and I run past. There's an athletics coach there and I'm watching him teach people how to do pole volt and he says, do
you want it? Do you want to try this? And now I'm in my forties at the time, do you want to crack? And I went, oh, yeah, I'll try. And as terrible as you would be, Popot's not an easy thing to learn, you know. So I spent the next year just turning up and pop voting and pole woding and pole voting until I went to New Zealand and competed in a pole voting competition and won a gold medal.
You know.
In twenty twenty three, I decided, after COVID i was a runner, that I'll try bodybuilding. Yeah, and I so turn up at a bodybuilding comp in Melbourne actually and you know, won some silver medals, and I'm not done.
Oh I need to wring gold.
I need to engulf. So went back here, went back last year and won six gold medals and bodybuilding and I said, now I'm.
Done now I'm done. Now I can write books.
So that's one thing that I have realized is for me years to identify the thing we're not just for me, for lots of people, to identify the thing that you want to achieve the most. You know a lot of people have these, you know, multiple things floating in their life that I like to do, and I think I'll pick one off and do it. Good good advice is to pick one often do it.
Is that right? That's that's what we've got everything out of this interview. You know how to be a crook, can not to be a crook? You haven't forgot the lot?
Well, someone said to me the other day, it's just again, not just a lof story. He said, I've been thinking about buying a muscle card. Peete, He goes, but I just I've been thinking about it for bloody years. Why haven't I done it? And I said, well, is that the thing you want to buy? Is that the thing you want to do the most? Or is there other things? And he said, well, now it's probably not at the top. And I said, well that's why you haven't done it.
Identify the thing you want the most and do it.
Do that you're a life coach. You could something you're good for your life coach. Now, we just we mentioned the book here and there, but how did this one come about? When did you start writing it? How did you start writing it? Is it two o'clock in the morning with a laptop or a notebook on top of the grandstand or what.
Yeah, the idea of it came up a few years ago, and yeah, it was. It was generally just just the thought of I could probably write a book about all this and in the hope of telling my story and helping some people around the power of choice and decision making because ultimately, you know, I make a huge choice in that in my story, in my life that changes the directory of my life. And no doubt without that choice, you know, my feeling is I either would have been in jail or dad, I.
Think, absolutely, no doubt.
So, so the power of choice and the reasoning behind that is, you know, without thinking about it, we all face, you know, these multiple choices every day that changed the chrectory of our day, of our life, of our journeys. Just so powerful of something that we don't always think about, you know, we just do. So that was the reason, the how is a little bit different because it wasn't
no writer. I wasn't an author, clearly. Yeah. So I reached out to I've got a mentor, Mark Dobbs and who has helped me along a little bit, just business stuff and a really good bloke and he seems to know everybody. So I reached out to him and said I want to write a book, and he goes, yeah, I can't help you, but I know someone who can. So there's an author, filmmaker, doctor Luke Jackson, who linked me with who helped me plan I think if it was just me, I would have just wrote chapter one
type chapter one and then just started writing. And he said, no, no, no, we need to plan it out, which was the best advice I've ever given. So anyone who hasn't written a book and wants to you.
Sat down with him and said, chatted about it, and then.
Probably for two months on a few hours, await it, white ported it. And by the time we'd finished that, I had this complete plan that whenever you know, so chapter one, I knew exactly what stories I was going to put in chapter one, chapter two, and so on, and every now and again writing and I've writing chapter one, I would just be sort of morphing into chapter two. So then i'd go back to the plank. Go okay, I was actually meant to finish back there. Okay, so
I could see it taking shape. Yeah, So without that plan, I think I might have got there. But you know, it probably wouldn't have been as clean and flowing as it is.
As it is, so that that helped was It's deceptively simple looking, which is what the best writing is. Of course, it's clear, but it pulls the reader through it because it has the appearance of being that natural story, natural, which of course the art of it is to disguise all the joints, all the invisible mendings invisible and the other.
Things that I said to him, I said, I want to keep it authentic. I don't want the facts to change because as I remember them. Yes, so I don't want any kind of creative liberty from your side as an editor. I just want, you know how, I want some help maybe helping it fly or pulling it together, but don't change the story.
And that's to Luke Jackson is in Aubrey or no, No, he's Melbourne based. Melbourne based. Okay, that's interesting. So he's been a bit of a mentor to you.
He was mentor for me.
So along the way you've struck some very good people. Yes, if we leave the bad people out, I guess n Pop Bobby each way maybe, but yeah, they were there, they were there.
They had no hard feelings for them, Heather.
They gave you the book in que and all the way through the footh headline manager to Warren yep. And then and then of course the family.
Family and the Dullard family. You know, the greatest impact of any one on my life.
At a time when you could have got totally off the rails.
Oh absolutely, and you know and quite openly without their evolving in my life. Yeah, it would have been very different. And just that, you know, that just that hand of kindness to say stay, we've got you're part of our family. And and to never feel like I wasn't part of the family. If they bought clothes for their kids, then I got closed as well. If they got an ice cream, I got nice just simple things. But just to felt like, just to feel like you belonged practical Christianity.
Yeah, yeah, has that's given you a sort of a belief system seeing that their example.
I'm not a Christian, but it certainly give me a belief system in kindness, in treating as you treated, and just not missing the yet to small opportunities of kindness that you know, you may not realize the impact that they have on someone's life, as small as they might be.
And that is you know, sometimes it might be for me sitting down with a homeless person who everybody walks past, and I've done that a number of times, and you know, and you know, one of those conversations was a a homeless man who used to be a lawyer who decided one night to drink drive and wiped out a family and that was his punishment to himself, was that he didn't deserve a bed, didn't deserve to be warm. So we were sitting on the pavement punishing himself for the
rest of his life. Where was that was in Melbourne? Yeah, just on Colin Street. So there's moments of kindness and for me just to sit and have a conversation and you know, who knows what the impact that had for him. But that's just one moment. But but yeah, but in terms of the book, it was three or four hundred words.
A night, three or four hundred words a night. That's not a bad telling if the words are okay.
Yeah, that's it. Well, I found after that that the quality would drop off for me. You know, other people I've spoken to other authors who seemed to be able to punch out thousands, but for me.
They don't punch out thousands of very good works of quality. Yeah.
And of course the other part of this was that me finishing a chapter and you know some of the obviously some of the stories in there are quite difficult to I would just flick them to Luke Jackson to edit, and then he would send me a message bloody hell, Pete like this is heavy, and I'm now thinking about the impact of my kids. And I'm like, oh, you know, because I would just write it and then just go that's not my problem anymore, that's yours, send it off
for editing. And he would sit there and not sleep for the night. So but yeah, you know, without his help, Yeah, you know, certainly when I got.
There, Peter. The one thing we haven't approached, and listeners will be wondering this. We know that your mother disappeared, either ran away or whatever, but what happened to your father?
Yeah, so as I was living with the Dullards, you know, and going to school and playing footy and you know, and starting to live a normal life, Dad featured on you know, a TV show called Australia's Most Wanted. For those that remember that Dad was the main, yeah, the main criminal featured to see was first up on that TV show, sitting in the land room with the Dullard family and up pop Dad's face, which was for me obviously a shock to see Dad on TV. But instantly
I knew that he was no longer in jail. I hadn't known that he'd escaped. I hadn't been told that. And you know, for those that get the chance to read my book, The Bankrobbers Boy, you'll see that Dad continues to make this promise that if he gets out, he's coming back to get me. So I knew that would be the case. I would spend every second weekend
at my sister Tina's house. So one weekend, not long after Dad featured on Australias Most Wanted, went to her house and she put me in the car and drove circles around Shepherd and ensure she wasn't being followed, And yeah, took me to this sort of nondescript unit with no furniture in it, and we walked inside and Dad walked out of a bedroom and you know, we hugged and obviously had, you know, just this moment of amazing moment,
I've been back together again. And that went on for a short while and every second weekend, and there was one moment when I went there and I'd been asked to bring some extra clothes by my sister, and you know, Dad sat me down and said, look, it's I can't stay here any longer. It's the police are going to eventually realize that I'm going to be hanging around where my children are. We need to go. And this was
the pivotal decision in my life. And for Dad it was, you know, he'd kept his promise when he'd come back to get me, and he just looked me in the eyes, and obviously the expectation was that we would just go, and I didn't answer him straight away when we continue to just stare at each other across sitting on different couches, and I eventually just looked him in the eye and said, Dad, I can't I can't do that anymore. I can't do
this anymore, and I wanted better for myself. And look, he had tears running down his eyes when he didn't say much, and he gave me a quick hug and walked out the door. And he was apprehended not long after that and returned back to Fremantle jail. It was a few months and you started writing letters to me, and I noticed in the letters that his handwriting was getting a little messy, and his recollection of events was getting a little vague. And yeah, so he had early
on set Alzheimer's. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, was moved to a sort of a jail infirmary and yeah, passed away there he was. I would have been, that would have been in probably eighty no one, I reckon.
Well, you've written a book, The Bank Robbers boy by you, Peter Norris, other people have helped you along the way. You've I think they mentioned nearly all of them. It's a remarkable thing. And I'm pleased I ran into you at that little ride at festival, because had I not done that, I may not have got to read it or to talk to you. Yeah, so we thank you for coming all this way. You've come from Aubridonka via
Tasmania just to talk to us. Yes, and I know that our listeners will be fascinated by your rise and rise from a place that could have been very dark, yeah, and could have ended very badly, could have been yeah.
But again, those those small lacs of kindness along the way have been yeah, been super important to where I am today. So be grateful, fellows.
Thanks Beta, 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 more, go to harold'sun dot com dot a forward slash andrew rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts sold And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description.