Former rugby league player Billy Tulloch took to his grave what he witnessed on a summer’s night in 1964, but the testimony that his neighbours provided to a suburban history group links a 57-year-old unsolved murder to the most powerful crime boss of the era.
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There are communities that die slowly, with the closure of a mine or the re-routing of a road, and those that are erased with the speed of a bushfire. The obliteration of Randwickâs Eurimbla precinct, wedged between UNSW on one side and Prince of Wales Hospital on the other, was perfunctory.
In 2017 officials started knocking on the residentsâ doors. A date was given. They were promised fair prices for their homes, but there was no negotiating about the fact they had to move out. After all, the hospital was expanding and who could argue with that?
Sam Sarkis, pictured outside his home in Eurimbla Avenue, in 2018.