He spent two years terrorising country banks and TABs across Victoria. He shot a police officer. He robbed the same bank three times. And he did it all as one half of Australia's most audacious criminal duo — the After Dark Bandits.

Peter Morgan is the lesser-heard voice of the infamous Morgan twins. While his brother Doug has told his side of the story, Peter has stayed largely silent — until now.

In this first of a two-part conversation, Adam Shand sits down with Peter for an afternoon-long interview months in the making. They go back to the beginning: a hard-working, hard-living builder father who moonlighted as a bank robber; a childhood steeped in tough love and frontier masculinity; and the twin upbringing that would eventually see two identical brothers take turns behind the balaclava across 27 armed hold-ups — without police realising there were two of them.