This is the view from the bridge above Dulwich Hill train station in Sydney's inner west. I grew up around the corner in a house where my brother was born in the lounge room.

When my mother went into labour all my aunts came over to witness the birth, as they had when I was born in another inner western terrace house. Early in the evening I was given an option: stay home and watch the baby being born or go to the Bangarra Dance Theatre production with my aunt and watch some of Australia's best Indigenous performers. I remember weighing this up in my five-year-old brain. I had never seen a baby come out – maybe it would be cool. But then I realised there might be blood. And it might take a long time. So I went to the dance and fell asleep in my chair and was carried out to the car at the end of the night.

When I got home my mother was sitting on the day bed with a bundle in her arms: my little velvet-faced brother. Mum said that when he came out she felt that she could die happy because she'd seen what he would look like as an old man.