For six decades, brothers Steve Cross and Grant Bailey lived apart, unaware of one another. They both learned of their adoption at a young age and for the first two decades of their lives they had no interest in finding their birth parents.
As time passed, both Cross and Bailey initiated the search for their birth parents. But, they were not anticipating what they discovered.
Bailey’s search
Bailey, now 60, was the first of the two brothers to search for his birth parents, crediting an uplifting news story on long-lost relatives as the decisive push.
“I was happy and married at that stage, but I got interested,” said Bailey, who started his search in the late eighties.
After gaining access to his original birth certificate, he had only his mother’s maiden name and the suburb where he was born to work from.
My wife told me I had to watch this Insight episode ... Watching the program gave me the incentive to do something.
With the help of his wife, he looked through electoral rolls asking anyone to help steer him in the right direction.
He eventually found his mother and the pair wrote to each other sporadically for five years but Bailey stopped when he felt he was the only one showing interest in maintaining contact.
As far as he knew, he was the only child his parents had together.
Cross’s search
Although Cross describes his adopted family as “nothing but loving,” he says he could never escape his feelings of loneliness.
Cross searched for his birth mother by writing a letter to the Department of Community Services, who allows adoptees to send written correspondence, which is then passed onto the birth parents.
“I was really excited and all it was, was a little slip of paper that said ‘immediate family doesn’t know of adoption. No health problems, nothing hereditary’ – and I was just guttered,” said the 61-year-old.
The unanticipated discovery
In late 2016 Cross decided to take an online DNA test, hoping to gain more information about his mother’s identity. His results revealed very little about both birth parents.
I messaged him and said, ‘You could be my little brother’ - we were both freaking out.
For over a year, nothing came of the test until December 2018 when his brother Bailey watched Insight’s episode DNA Surprises.
“My wife told me I had to watch this Insight episode ... Watching the program gave me the incentive to do something,” said Bailey, who took the online DNA test hoping to find his birthfather.
DNA Surprises explores the use of commercial DNA test kits which have exploded in popularity over the last few years. An estimated 12 million people worldwide have sent their saliva off for testing. But as Insight discovered, the information people receive can be life changing.
From an Italian woman who discovered she wasn’t actually Italian, to a father discovering he had a daughter he never knew existed to individuals realising they had been adopted.
Fortunately the news was welcome for Cross and Bailey who discovered they were brothers.
“I messaged him and said, ‘You could be my little brother’ - we were both freaking out,” Cross says.
Through calls, messages, emails and a video call, the siblings spent the month of December recollecting the six decades they had spent apart. “It was like catch up, but it was 60 years of it,” Grant said.
On January the fifth they met for the first time. And both say it was a moment of big hugs and tears.
“There’s no instruction manual for this, it is the weirdest feeling, all of a sudden I have a blood brother, I couldn’t ask for anything more,” Cross explained.
Bailey added: “Without Insight, I definitely would not have found my brother.”
