2004 – The loss of his brother James
A rockfall claimed James’s life, marking the beginning of Dallas’s painful journey with workplace tragedy.
In 2004, Dallas’s older brother James was killed in an underground rock fall at the Dartbrook Coal Mine in the Hunter Valley. It was a sudden, devastating event that exposed Dallas and his family to the harsh realities of unsafe working conditions. For Dallas, it became the first lesson in how fragile life is in high-risk industries, and how one incident can alter a family’s story forever.