Life as the son of a bank robber

Peter Norris is the son of one of Australia’s most notorious bank robbers. What was it like to live on the run?

Peter with his sisters, Kelly and Tina Norris, before their father busted out of jail

A couple of months after we arrived in Willoughby, it was time to leave again. Dad didn’t tell us why, but there was no rush. We had plenty of time to pack our bags, and my sisters even got a chance to say goodbye to their friends and teachers. I hadn’t been to school yet, so I spent the day before we left helping Dad clean the house.

As we drove away, I felt only a slight pang of remorse: it didn’t matter where we lived so long as the four of us were together. Our next house was more basic than the last – smaller, with chipped lino floor in the kitchen and a tiny toilet that always smelled.

The Bank Robber's Boy by Peter Norris

I went to the local school, and was surprised when another boy teased me for living in a commission house. I said I didn’t live in a commission place, but he insisted, so that night I asked Dad whether this was true, and he told me it was.

He was slightly red-faced, from embarrassment rather than anger, when he explained that it wasn’t easy to find a good job when you’d been “inside”.

I think that must have been the first time he actually said the word, but of course my sisters had told me he’d been in prison. They didn’t know how many times, and I didn’t ask Dad.

Despite having my own bedroom, I spent every night in Dad’s bed, cuddled up against his warm, hairy shoulder. Sometimes, my hand would find his during the night, and we would still be holding hands in the morning.

It was only because I slept in his bed that I knew how often Dad left the house at night. At least a couple of times each week, he would go out for hours, returning just before the girls awoke.

Instinctively, I knew not to ask where he went. I knew, too, not to ask why nice bikes would suddenly appear in the house, or why we were not allowed to ride them in the street.

I knew not to ask why one week we had a brand new TV which was gone a week later, only to be replaced by another new one in time for The Wonderful World of Disney on a Sunday evening.

Peter Norris's dad, the notorious bank robber Clarence Norris, and his Mum, Rose Marie, in more stable times.

Dad didn’t seem to have many friends at this time, although there were a few who showed up now and then. One was a tall, thin, clean-shaven man with mutton chop sideburns and low, dark eyebrows. My dad introduced him as Coxy. It was only when I researched Dad’s life many years later that I realised who Coxy really was: “Mad Dog” Russell Cox, one of Australia’s most notorious criminals. He and Dad, I discovered, were incarcerated at Tamworth Boys’ Home in the mid-1950s, an institution that was designed to house boys who had escaped from other ­institutions.

Walking through Tamworth’s doors meant being flogged by the guards, who wanted to let every new inmate know who was boss. Dad never mentioned it to me, which I think is the best indication of how horrible it must have been.

Coxy would visit late at night, long after my sisters had gone to bed and I was meant to be asleep. Then he and Dad would sit in the kitchen, drinking tins of VB and speaking in hushed tones. Quite often there was another man who would turn up at the same time; Dad called him Wombat. He was always kind to us kids, bringing small gifts or bags of lollies, and leaving them on the bench for us to find after he left. Sometimes when I woke up early, one or both Coxy and Wombat would be asleep in the ­living room.

One evening, we were watching the news. Kelly and I were sitting on Dad’s lap, while my sister Tina was curled up on the couch beside us. The crime report focused on a man who had been stopped at a traffic light in downtown Sydney when a ­gunman shot him in the back of the head. Then the screen changed to show a photograph of the victim’s smiling face. It was Wombat. Shocked, I looked at Dad, awaiting his reaction, but his face remained calm. He never mentioned Wombat again.

■ ■ ■

It was after we returned home from Dural one evening that everything changed once more. Tina’s birthday was only a ­couple of weeks away, and she was convinced that Dad had a present for her hidden somewhere in the house. While he took a nap in the living room, Tina, Kelly and I searched the whole place as quietly as we could. We had found nothing, and were preparing to give up our search, when I remembered the top of Dad’s wardrobe. I had seen him put something up there after he’d returned home early one morning.

Quietly, we took a chair from the kitchen, and I volunteered to climb on it, because I was the tallest. Despite my height, I had to stand on my toes and stretch my fingers as far as they would reach before I touched something. It was plastic. A bag, I figured. Grasping the edge of the plastic with my fingers, I pulled it ­towards me, and just managed to catch it as it fell from the ­wardrobe.

I placed the bag on the bed, and the three of us opened it together. We gasped. Inside were bundles of cash, neatly bound with thick red elastic bands. And there were three handguns, like the ones cops and robbers had on TV.

With a loud yawn, Dad stirred. The couch creaked as he sat up, and he called out, “Kids? Where are you?”

I picked up the bag and wrapped it up the best I could, then climbed back onto the chair. It wobbled as I put the plastic bag back where I’d found it. As we ran back to the kitchen and replaced the chair under the table, Dad came out of the living room, stretching. “Sorry,” he said. “Must’ve nodded off.”

We must have looked guilty, because he said, “Something wrong?”

I froze. I couldn’t lie to him. I didn’t have to.

“Nope,” Tina said, her voice confident. “What’s for dinner, Dad?”

As Tina and Dad scoured the pantry, I glanced at Kelly. She looked as scared as I felt. I knew right then than none of us would ever mention the money or guns again.

Later that night, Dad woke me up by shaking my shoulder. I had no idea what time it was, but I knew it was late. I winced as Dad snapped on the light.

“Get up, Pete!” he said, his voice sharp. “Pack your things. You’ve got two minutes.”

Then he was gone, and I could hear him telling the girls the same thing.

Several times over the last couple of months, Dad had told us that we might have to leave in a hurry one day.

He had told us to think about what we would take and what we would leave behind.

I placed Tom the Turtle gently into my bag, along with a few items of ­clothing. Then, thinking that Tom might not be able to breathe inside the bag, I unzipped it a little and pulled his head out.

When I turned around, I saw Dad reaching for the top of the wardrobe and heard the rustle of plastic. Then he was stuffing the plastic bag into a large black rucksack.

Wiping sweat from his forehead, Dad gave me a tense smile. “You ready, Pete?” he asked.

“Yes, Dad,” I said.

“That’s my boy.”

Extracted from The Bank Robber’s Boy (Big Sky Publishing) by Peter Norris, out now. RRP $34.99

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Norris

Peter Norris grew up with one of Australia’s most wanted men. His father was the bank robber Clarence Norris who stole millions of dollars between 1965 and 1985.

Clarence was notorious not only for his robberies, but for his prison escapes (he was one of the first to bust out of Sydney’s Long Bay jail). For years, Peter and his siblings were “unwitting accomplices, dragged along in the cross-country crime spree”. Peter was occasionally separated from his siblings and sent to the notorious Baltara Reception Centre for boys in Melbourne, until his father suddenly reappeared to take him on the run again.

Then one day, Peter said: “No, Dad. No more adventures.”

He stayed with his supportive foster family, the Dullards, and knuckled down at school, graduating from La Trobe University with a degree in tourism and hospitality. Today he is a CEO running a multimillion-dollar hospitality venue, giving back to the community and fostering children himself.

The Bank Robber’s Boy is Peter’s story of his childhood and the long journey to escape his father’s criminal enterprise, while coming to terms with the loyalty he felt, both from and for his father.