Bushranger

“ The boy galloped away and the man started to follow him, when he caught sight of the other travellers, who had just appeared round a bend in the road. The bushranger stopped his horse, turned to meet them, and ordered them to dismount. They did so. The bushranger also dismounted and came towards them. He demanded their money, and they felt in their pockets to get it out. Just then Peter Clarke made a rush, threw his arms round the bushranger, and tried to throw him. There was a short struggle, and a pistol went off. Peter Clarke fell dead, and the bushranger broke away from him. ”

“ A rumour had started that 'Bower the bushranger was killing a man outside the Wax-works,' and before many minutes the street was blocked with men, women, and children, lured to the spot by the expectation of seeing a real live bushranger in the exercise of his bloodthirsty vocation. ”

“ He declared that even if a man was a bushranger he might be a gentleman, and added that he would never see a woman insulted. He threatened to shoot Curran unless he left at once, and stripped him of his horse, arms and ammunition. This story furnishes the key-note to Jackey Jackey's character. To the old hands he was always the gentleman bushranger. The stories told by them about the Jewboy and other bushrangers, and even about Mathew Brady, were generally coarse and sometimes brutal, but Jackey Jackey was always polite and well-behaved. ”

“ It was Sunday morning, January 11th, 1866, and very few people were about in the little town. The tracks were lost among the number of tracks in the roadway and there was no one to give the police any information as to the direction in which the bushranger had gone. Search parties were organised and sent out in all directions.
About two miles away a brickmaker was watching his kiln and gathering brushwood for his fire, although it was Sunday morning, when a man crawled out from behind a log and begged for a "drink of water, for God's sake." ”

“ Even the cannibal Pierce was a good man from their point of view, however strongly they might condemn his methods. But Jackey Jackey, although he continued the fight to the bitter end, and ended his life on the gallows when he was only twenty-six, never did anything mean or brutal or unworthy of a gentleman bushranger, until he was almost goaded to madness by the cruel discipline of Norfolk Island.
Paddy Curran was "out in the bush" several months before Jackey Jackey joined him, and he was not the only bushranger at work in the district. On December 31st, 1839, the station of the Rev. Mr. ”

“ Whether the threat frightened the men into quietness, or whether the bushranger thought better of his purpose, is not known. Morgan, however, rode away with his plunder without using the branding-iron.
Under the heading—"Comforting Bushrangers," the Deniliquin Chronicle of the 18th December said:—"Mr. —— we hear has given orders that whenever Morgan calls at his station he is to be given everything he wants, and when he does not call food is to be taken into the bush and left for him." The paper goes on to accuse the unnamed squatter with "holding a candle to the devil." ”

“ Among the residents on the diggings was Frank Gardiner, who opened a butcher's shop on Wombat Flat. Gardiner was born at Boro Creek, near Tarago, in the heart of the district in which Jackey Jackey had first won his notoriety as a bushranger, and the morals of that district were very similar to those I have described as prevalent in the Burrowa district. Gardiner went to the diggings in Victoria in the "Fifties," was arrested near Ballarat, and tried at Geelong for horse-stealing. He was sent to gaol for five years. He escaped from the Pentridge stockade and returned home. ”

“ The violent deaths of Lowry, Burke, and O'Meally, in so short a time, seemed to have very little effect on the gang, which continued its depredations. Neither did these deaths prevent other young men from adopting the "profession of bushranger." In fact the deaths of a few bushrangers appear to have had less effect in deterring the criminally disposed from taking to the roads than the immunity enjoyed by the leaders offered encouragement. Bushranging was increasing instead of diminishing, although for a few months very little was heard of the Hall and Gilbert Gang. ”

“ Two armed men endeavoured to stick up the Chinese Camp at Gilmandyke Creek, near Rockley. The Chinese fought bravely, returning the bushrangers' fire in a spirited manner with shot guns. A bushranger named Clayton was wounded and captured, when the other man rode away. [Pg 240] The Chinese were highly commended for their pluck, and several of the newspapers said that they had set a good example for white men to follow.
Hall and Mount went to Mr. Jamieson's station on the Bland River, and informed the proprietor that they intended to stop for the night. ”

“ The people who had been detained in the dining-room speedily made their escape and collected on a ridge a short distance from the scene of battle, other persons, attracted by the sound of the firing, rode up from the stations round until some three hundred spectators of the fight were collected on the ridge, but they left the police to do the fighting unaided. Constable Bowen, who had already shot a bushranger in the Thunderbolt rising, was the first to make any impression, and a great cheer went up as one of Moonlite's men was seen to fall. ”

“ The estimates of the strength of his gang vary extremely from time to time. Sometimes he is said to have a hundred or more followers, while frequently he is represented as acting alone or in company with only one or two others. The facts appear to be that many men, who merely "bolted" into the bush as a relief to the monotony of their lives, became bushrangers; and, when hard pressed, or when they tired of that pursuit, returned to the town, gave themselves up, and were punished as ordinary bolters. ”

“ The death of Ben Hall no doubt had a depressing effect on the bushrangers generally, but it by no means put an end to their depredations. On the 11th May, a horse was stolen from Murrumburrah, and on the following day the horses at Mr. Furlonge's station were rounded up and a racehorse taken away, the Murrumburrah horse being left instead of it. Information was immediately sent to the police, and a party, with the aid of a black tracker, followed the tracks toward Binalong. ”

“ On reaching the elephant track a bushranger is procured. The best to be got are from the Macatee tribe of Kaffirs. He starts on a hunt for the spoor or footprint of the beast. We had two of these men, who now took us to the ground most likely to find the herds. On reaching their feeding ground we outspan the oxen; two men stop to guard the waggon, the remaining four start in pursuit of game. As soon as we came on the herd, browsing in a sort of park or plain, the males were on the outside, the females and young in the centre. ”

“ Constable Refuses to Leave His Work to Hunt Bushrangers; Saved by his Wife; Robberies in Maitland; Bushrangers in High Hats; The Bullock-driver Captures the Bushrangers; An Attempt to Reach the Dutch Settlements; Mr. E.D. Day Captures the Gang; Assigned Servants' Attempt at Bushranging; Some other Gangs.
One of the most notorious of the early bushrangers of Australia was Edward Davis, commonly known as The Jewboy. Next to Jackey Jackey and, perhaps, Mathew Brady, more yarns have been told about this hero of the roads than of any other bushranger in the pre-gold digging era. ”

“ A Pseudo Morgan; Morgan Threatens to Brand all Hands; He Shoots Sergeant Smyth; Challenged to Visit Victoria; He Accepts the Challenge; His Death at Peechelba.
Daniel Morgan began his career as a bushranger shortly after the Great Escort Robbery, by sticking up travellers on the roads about Wagga Wagga. His head-quarters generally were said to be in the huge patch of scrub, which stretched away southward, from the Murrumbidgee River across the low ranges between Wagga Wagga and Narrandera. He was credited with being the most bloodthirsty of the New South Wales bushrangers after Willmore. ”

“ The boast of the Otago Witness that there were no bushrangers in New Zealand did not hold good for very long. Henry Beresford Garrett, who was arrested in London on the charge of robbing the Bank of Victoria at Ballarat as already related, and who was convicted in August, 1855, and sentenced to ten years' hard labour, was liberated from the Pentridge Gaol, Melbourne, in August, 1861, on a ticket-of-leave, after having served six years. Early in 1862 he made his appearance as the first bushranger on record in New Zealand. ”

“ Nothing is too horrible or obscene to have been true of the convict times. The stories, however, which appear to have had the greatest influence over the minds of a certain class of Australian youth were those told of the bushrangers. In these stories there was of course much that was apocryphal, to put it mildly. Many of the exploits of the historic highwaymen of old were told as actual facts in the careers of some Australian bushrangers, with just sufficient variation to adapt them to local purposes. ”

“ The Shooting of Lowry; The —— Bushrangers visit Bathurst; They hold the Town of Canowindra for Three Days; Burke Shot by Mr. Keightley; Female Bushrangers; Death of O'Meally at Goimbla; A Newspaper Man and his Wife Stuck Up; Lively Times During the Christmas Holidays.
The chief necessity for a successful career as a bushranger was a good supply of racehorses, and hence it was almost impossible for any person to keep a really valuable saddle horse during this "Reign of Terror," as the newspapers of the district called it. ”

“ Ross, police magistrate, and Constable Roche in private clothes went as passengers, while Inspector O'Neil and Sergeant Edmund Parry rode beside the coach on horseback. At Black Springs, near Jugiong, the bushrangers appeared as had been anticipated, and on emerging from the bush one of them shouted out, "Hullo, here's the bobbies." Hall said, "There's only two. Rush the——." The three bushrangers then rode forward shouting "Come on, you——, fight like men." Sergeant Parry rode forward and encountered Gilbert, and a desperate duel on horseback with revolvers took place until Parry fell. ”

“ When asked what they had to say in defence, one of the prisoners asked the Judge whether he thought they were crows? "Here's one man," he continued, "says we stuck him up at Aitken's Gap, another at the Porcupine, another near Mount Egerton, and others at other places, and the police says they caught us in the Crown Hotel, Buninyong. Why, your Honour, horses couldn't get over the ground in the time." The jury, however, seemed to have formed a better opinion of the power of the bushrangers' horses than the bushranger himself. ”

“ Thomas Willmore; Murder of Philip Alger; Murder of Malachi Daly; Fight between two Bushrangers; Hunting down Willmore; His Capture while Asleep; The Last of the Van Diemen's Land Bushrangers; Wilson and Dido; Some Minor Offenders; An Unfounded Charge; Change of Name to Rid the Island of Evil Associations.
The rush of men of all sorts from all parts of the world to the great goldfields of Victoria, although it no doubt attracted the majority of the desperate characters from the neighbouring colonies, did not entirely free them from bushrangers. ”

“ Hall & Co." took possession of the road between the Fourteen Mile and the Fifteen Mile rushes at Burrangong and bailed up about thirty men, women, and boys. A bridle took the fancy of one of the gang, and he insisted on taking it and giving his own in return. With this exception, and the taking of a quantity of bread and butter found on the drays bailed up, nothing was stolen. The bushrangers explained that they expected some gold buyers along the road, and when they came the camp would be broken up. In the meantime they wanted every one to enjoy the picnic. ”

“ The bushrangers James Regan, William Davis, James Atterill, alias Thompson, and Anthony Bankes having committed a number of depredations on the settlers, the Government resolved to make a decisive effort to capture them. Consequently, on February 21st, 1838, Captain Mackenzie, with three privates of the 21st Fusiliers, two constables of the Field Police, and two prisoner volunteers, went to Jerusalem, where he was informed by the Police Magistrate of Richmond that another house had been robbed by the bushrangers, who had retired to the Brown Mountain. ”

“ Mr. Robert Lowe Makes a Stand; Mr. Inspector Norton Captured by the Bushrangers; A Plucky Black Boy; "Mine know it, Patsy Daly like it, Brudder;" A Brave Boy; O'Meally Shoots Mr. Barnes; A Bootless Bushranger; Capture of John Foley; Something about the Foley Family; Ben Hall.
Next to Frank Gardiner, the man most frequently spoken of in connection with bushranging at this time was Johnny Gilbert, alias Roberts. He was one of the gang charged with assisting in the robbery of the gold escort at Eugowra Rocks, but who had not been captured. ”

“ He Becomes a Reformed Character; He Sticks Up Wantabadgery Station; A Desperate Battle with the Police; Moonlite is Captured; His Young Companions in Crime; Sentenced to Death; The Wild Horse Hunters Turn Bushrangers; An Abortive Attempt to Rob a Bank.
From about June, 1872, to April, 1878, or nearly six years, Australia was free from bushrangers. With the exception of the two or three robberies in the far west of New South Wales, so far west as to be almost out of the colony, the roads were safe; travellers journeyed in all directions without fear of molestation ”