Introduction

When Tom first knocked on Dennis’s door the two brothers hadn’t seen each other for over 30 years. Tom had been taken as a baby and had no memory of his older brother. Dennis could remember pushing baby Tom in a pram up and down Redfern Lane at the back of their house until one day he was just gone. In 1960 the Welfare had taken two-year-old Tom and his other young siblings into care and fostered them out. Dennis was 16 years old when Tom was taken. As Tom stood on Dennis’s doorstep, he was nervous not knowing what reaction he would get. ‘To tell the truth I was shitting myself’, he told me the first time I heard the story. Dennis was expecting him – he’d had a call from his brother Jimmy – so when he opened the door he just said, ‘Tom, where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting’. Tey burst into laughter and felt instantly close. ‘Straight from that moment it was as if we had grown up together’, Tom told me. Dennis agreed: ‘As soon as I seen Tom I knew straight away we were made from the same cloth’. Tom and Dennis were part of a complex extended family torn apart and scattered in the name of child protection. After Dennis’s mum had died, his dad had taken up with Tom’s mum. Dennis and Tom shared 15 brothers and sisters from their dad. Tom had at least another 12 siblings on his mum’s side who were born after his parents had separated and weren’t related to Dennis. Most of the children born of these relationships had been taken away from their parents, put in orphanages or fostered out. Tom and Dennis didn’t share the same bond with all the siblings they were reunited with in adulthood. ‘It’s diferent with Tom than the others. When I speak about Tom he’s me brother’, Dennis said. Tom agreed: ‘Te apple didn’t fall far from the tree, and I think that’s why it’s diferent with us. I think we’re so similar, whereas all the others they lived a diferent sort of life’. Some of the other children went to ‘good families’, as Tom put it. But Tom and Dennis had both lived rough and come good. Tey’d led strangely parallel lives 12 years

apart; both survived the cruel irony of being taken into ‘care’, both created mischief and violence in Newtown streets and clubs, both spent time in prison, and both reached a turning point when they started a family. Tis book tells the story of those parallel paths and how they crossed. I spent 18 months on and of interviewing Tom and Dennis in 2018 and 2019. I met Dennis while doing research in South-West Sydney for my PhD. He knew he had a good story to tell and asked if I would help tell it. Tom happened to be in town the day Dennis and I planned our first ofcial interview. He was visiting from his home on the Central Coast so he joined in. After two and half hours sitting in Nugent Park in Chester Hill it was clear that this was a story about the two brothers. I think we all felt it was a special meeting. Dennis said he was walking away happier because he had been able to tell his story. Tom agreed it had been a good day. And I caught the train back home to Newtown – where much of their story took place – buzzing with gratitude and excitement. Dennis and Tom both have a gift of telling a good yarn and I have tried to channel and incorporate their voices as much as possible. Tere may be errors or gaps in detail. Exact dates were sometimes difcult to pin down. But this is their story as they remember it. Some memories have faded with age; repetition has given other memories a life of their own. In order to translate Tom and Dennis’s story to paper I retell it from the perspective of an attentive listener. As I see it, they are the artists and I am the curator.