Monday

Bush craft



I have neither friend nor loved one
To welcome me, nor home;
And lonely through the wide world
As stranger I must roam;
I know not where tomorrow
To procure my daily bread,
And tonight the waving branches
Must canopy my head.

FROM 'I FEEL THAT I AM FREE  by the convict and bushranger Owen Suffolk

The Australian bushrangers needed to survive in the rough terrain of the natural environment and move around in it frequently. They used the bush as a refuge to hide from authorities.  They would have benefited greatly by knowledge and use of survival skills which came to be called bush craft. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of bush craft is "skill in matters pertaining to life in the bush".

The skills of bush craft include fire making, tracking, hunting, fishing, shelter building, foraging for food and wood carving. These are the kinds of skills well known to our ancient ancestors who lived on the land in all parts of the world.

Many bush craft skills are still practiced today, as an everyday skill, amongst aboriginal and native peoples around the world.  
                                                                                                                                                                

bushrangers and bushcraft
Miniature bow drill kit for lighting a fire.









Wednesday

Bushranger's Ballad: Van Dieman's land

convicts Van Dieman's land

This ballad is about poachers deported to Van Diemen's Land now called Tasmania.  The author of this sad ditty is not known.

Come all you gallant poachers,
That ramble void of care,
That walk out on a moonlight night
With your dog, your gun and snare.
The harmless hare and pheasant
You have at your command,
Not thinkin' of your last career
Upon Van Dieman's land.

Twas poor Jock Brown frae Glesca,
Will Guthrie and Munro,
We were four daring poachers,
The country well did know;
By the keepers of the land, my boys,
One night we were trepanned,
And for fourteen years transported
Unto Van Dieman's land.


Read the rest of the Ballad

Image source

Sunday

The early streets of Rocklea, Brisbane

Brisbane 1899
Horses and riders outside the Crown Hotel, Rocklea, Queensland in 1899.
John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland
 The town of Rocklea is nine klms south of central Brisbane. It was named after a watercourse - the Rocky Water Holes - where there was good farming land. The Crown Hotel was licensed in 1862 to Edward Barnacle, the name above the entrance.
This way of placing the licensees name prominently can also be seen in the 1880 photo of The Glenrowan Inn, site of the Kelly Gang shoot out in that year.

Wednesday

Martin Cash Bushranger - his early life

Martin Cash bushranger
Martin Cash (1808-1877)

Martin Cash was born in Ireland and became one of Tasmanian’s most notorious bushrangers. He was born at Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland, the son of George and Margaret Cash.
  • Gaoled at Wexford, Ireland March 1827 at eighteen for five months
  • Transported from Ireland to Botany Bay, New South Wales in 1927 aboard the Marquis of Huntley with 170 other convicts.
  • Assigned to Mr George Bowman of Richmond whose property he worked on for 3 years.
  • June 1834 issued Certificate of Freedom a NSW government document given at the end of the convict's sentence. This stated that the convict was now restored "to all the rights and privileges of free subjects" and could seek out employment or leave the colony.
  • 1837 he arrived in Hobart Town.
  • 1840 Trial and sent on vessel Frances Freeling to Van Diemans's Land Hobart. From NSW and Tasmania Convict Musters 1806 to 1849. 
  • Caught and gaoled in Port Arthur, Tasmania.
  • Escaped from Port Arthur in 1842.
  • Led a band of bushrangers which terrorized the whole colony.
  • 200 guinea reward (with a free pardon and passage from the colony, if required) was offered to any person giving information that would lead to Cash's capture.
  • September, 1843, tried and convicted of murder with sentence of death. At the end of the trial after being called "Guilty" of the murder of Constable Peter Winstanley, Martin Cash said the following: "May it please your honor. I am the man that has stopped murder my- self in the bush ; we never acted cowardly to any one. I hope you will not think or consider that I am a man to do any cow- ardly or deliberate murder. Let me get into ever such close quarters, if I should have to fire I would not try to kill a man, but to cripple him so that I could get away. If I had been a man to do violence, there would have been a deal of murders com- mitted since I have been in the bush. I do not beg for my life ; I do not value it one straw." Launceston Examiner 16th September, 1843.
  • Reprieved and sentenced to transportation for life at Norfolk Island
  • Sent to Norfolk Island.

complexion very ruddy, head small and round, hair curly and carroty, whiskers red small, forehead low, eyebrows red, eyes blue small, nose small, mouth large, chin small.  Remarks remarkably long feet, a very swift runner. Police Department description of Martin Cash, Hobart, 1st March, 1843, in The Hobart Courier Friday 3 March 1843 when M. Forster, Chief Police Magistrate, was offering rewards for his arrest.


MORE ON MARTIN CASH:
REFERENCES:
Trove Launceston Examiner 1st September 1877
Trove Clarence and Richmond Examiner (NSW), 11 September 1877
Trove Launceston Examiner 16th September, 1843.
All New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia Convict Musters, 1806-1849

Tuesday

Tasmania's Bushrangers

timeline of Tasmania's Bushrangers
Van Dieman’s Land from Geographicus Rare Antique Maps

A rare and unusual example of John Dower’s 1837 map of Tasmania or Van Dieman’s Land. Depicts the island in considerable detail with good notes on geographical features, especially along the coast. Maps of Tasmania are exceptionally rare and this one is no exception. Prepared by John Dower and published by Orr and Smith in 1837.

White man's history of Tasmania relating to bushrangers
1642: The first reported sighting of Tasmania by a European the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman.
1804: Settlement established by Capt. David Collins in Sullivans Cove on the western side of the Derwent River. It became known as Hobart Town or Hobarton, later shortened to Hobart, after the British Colonial Secretary of the time, Lord Hobart.
Early settlers were mainly convicts sent to develop agriculture and military guards sent to watch over the convicts.
1812: Michael Howe (later a bushranger) among first convicts to arrive directly from England in HMS Indefatigable.
1814: Governor Lachlan Macquarie offers amnesty to bushrangers.
1815: Michael Howe's bushranging gang kills two settlers in New Norfolk.
1815: Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Davey declares martial law against all bushrangers, escaped convicts and military deserters; Governor Lachlan Macquarie later revokes order.
1818: Soldiers and convict kill bushranger Michael Howe on banks of Shannon River.
1821: Establishment of Macquarie Harbour penal settlement at Sarah Island.
1821: Establishment of Maria Island penal settlement.
1823 - 1824: Musquito, Black Jack and other members of the Oyster Bay tribe made raids on the east coast.
1824: Matthew Brady escapes from Sarah Island with 13 others, and begins a crime spree at homesteads and villages throughout Tasmania.
1826: Matthew Brady hanged on 4 May, at the old Hobart gaol. Four other bushrangers were hanged with him, including Thomas Jeffries the cannibal.
1832 - 1833: Britton's gang of four escaped convicts, himself, Beaven, Jefkins and Brown terrorised Tasmania's countryside.
1840: Start of economic depression which continues until 1845.
1840: Bushranger Martin Cash captured in Hobart, his death sentence was commuted and he was later pardoned.
1842: William Westood (Jackey Jackey) escapes from Port Arthur 3 times in one year.

REFERENCES:
the companion to TASMANIAN HISTORY Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies.
Trove 16th August 1873.

Monday

Bush School 1872

school house in the bush australia
Logan/Beenleigh area, Queensland

This is believed to be the Logan non-vested (non-Government funded) school, established in 1870, in what school inspectors described, at the time, as a 'new, well-ventilated, and roomy building'.
The structure also was used as a place of worship.
One teacher was employed to teach 58 children. He was reported to be 'painstaking and conscientious', but the level of attainment was regarded as very low, caused by the irregular attendance. Among the subjects offered, geography, writing and spelling were regarded as 'especially imperfect'.

Thursday

Lunch in the bush

vintage australian photo
Lunch in the bush, near Warwick, Queensland, ca.1893.

A man and woman stopping for a meal and a billy of tea. The horses have been unhitched from the double buggy. The double buggy was advertised as 'a must for squatters' as it was admirably adapted to travelling over huge logs and rutted ground. Travel in Australia during the late 1800s would have been very difficult.

RESOURCE: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.

Friday

Mad Dog Morgan

Daniel Morgan bushranger
1830 – 1865

We know him as Mad Dog Morgan but he was a man of many aliases: Billy the native, Down the river Jack, Dan the breaker, Jack Morgan and Mad Dan.

His known criminal record began in 1854 when, under the name "John Smith", he was sentenced to twelve years' hard labour for highway robbery at Castlemaine, Victoria.  When he was released from jail he had a hatred of authority and become Australia's public enemy No 1.

BLOODTHIRSTY MORGAN By SIR SOLOMON in The Singleton Argus 14th June, 1924.

A study of the characteristics of the Australian bushrangers operating during the great bushranging era—1860 to 1880—will disclose the fact that the methods and tactics of some differed considerably from those adopted by others. Unfortunately, all brought into prominence the traits of the ruffian, but even in this there was a graduated scale of viciousness, in which Daniel Morgan shone as the high priest of infamy.
An extract from the Victorian Police Gazette of 23rd February,1865 describes Morgan: "The following description of the NSW bushranger Morgan has been obtained from a reliable source:-  Aged 35, 5 feet 10 or 11 inches high, dark swarthy com-plexion, black hair worn down to his shoulders, black moustache, and black beard, the latter rusted about his mouth, cheeks covered with hair up to the eyes, straight nose, blue eyes, slouching gait, round shoulders, inter-lards his conversation with the words of course; insolent and overbearing in his manners."

After his 3rd murder the reward for Morgan's capture was raised to £1000 and police were sent to track and capture him. He was shot and died on April 11, 1865 near Wangaratta, Victoria.

Monday

Aboriginal encampment

Australian aboriginal camp
A 19th century engraving of an Australian aboriginal encampment.

What does a bushranger look like anyway?

images of bushrangers

Here are just some of the cads you will find on this site. They were all bushrangers.

The Term 'Bushranger' was first used in February 1805, in the Sydney Gazette which mentioned men "whose appearance sanctioned the suspicion of their being bushrangers". From this time, the term was used to describe those who attacked people on the roads or in the bush. Over 2000 bushrangers roamed the Australian countryside, from the convicts who escaped until just after the Kelly Gang's last stand.

Besides being called bushrangers (and all being dead) what else do all these men have in common? Oh yes they lived in AUSTRALIA but what else?

Well we all know Ned Kelly came from Irish stock and he had a gang and one of the gang was his brother. We also know he was tried and hung. So what about the others?
 
Henry Johnson was from Ireland, was convicted for stealing a pair of shoes and changed his name to Harry Power.
 
Thomas Rogan (middle row at left) had stolen horses before the age of 22 when he joined a gang of bushrangers, and he was later tried and hung.

Ben Hall's parent's were sent to gaol for minor stealing offences, he loved horses and died in a shootout with police. He was at one stage called 'Brave Ben Hall'.

Frederick Wordsworth Ward's father was a convict. He had worked with horses and went to prison for receiving stolen horses. There is mystery about his death with some thinking he died in a police shootout and others saying it was his relative. He was called Captain Thunderbolt.

Steve Hart was born to Irish parents, he worked as a jockey, he was in the Kelly gang. He may have died at the Glenrowan Inn shootout but some say he and Dan Kelly escaped.
 
So there seem to be some common threads such as Ireland and convicts and stealing but no one thing they all had in common. Maybe it was falling on hard luck.

What is a cad?
  Origin: 1780–90
  Meaning: bounder, rotter, rascal, rogue; heel.

Wednesday

The Glenrowan Inn

The Glenrowan Inn site of the Kelly Gang siege in 1880
This photograph shows the burnt remains of the Jones's Hotel, the scene of the final confrontation between Ned Kelly and the Victorian Police.
A sign still stands: "The Glenrowan Inn, Ann Jones, best accommodation".
Source: State Library Victoria
Taken by John Bray 1880

This is where Ned Kelly, dressed in home-made plate metal armour and the infamous helmet, was captured and sent to gaol.  Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne, and Steve Hart were with him and also had suits of armour.

I do not say what brought me to Glenrowan, but it seems much. Anyhow I could have got away last night, for I got into the bush with my grey mare, and lay there all night. But I wanted to see the thing end. Part of Ned Kelly's statement to the press.

The Glenrowan Inn, owned by Ann Jones, was burned to the ground by the police after the Kelly Gang siege in June 1880.

See also: The Demise of the Kelly Gang

Thursday

Demise of the Kelly Gang

Kelly gang's armour
Dan Kelly's and Steve Hart's armour
recovered from the hotel at Glenrowan after it was burnt.
Oswald Thomas photographer
State Library of Victoria.

The siege at Glenrowan

The Kelly gang (Ned and Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart) were surrounded at the Glenrowan Inn by the police on June 27, 1880 .  The gang had suits of armour to protect themselves, made by a local man, which were made of heavy iron and weighed about 44 kilograms each.  Probably made from plough shares and forged in a low temperature bush fire, the armour was tough enough to repel bullets but the men's legs and arms were not protected.  Joe Byrne was shot in the groin and died.
Ned Kelly's refusal to surrender, and his loyalty to his mates, when he could have escaped, is part of what created the Kelly legend.

When the siege was over, the bodies of Steve Hart, 21, and Dan Kelly, 19, lay side by side, in a back room of the inn.  A priest, Father Matthew Gibney, entered the burning inn and found them together, dead, with their helmets removed.  It is believed they shot each other.

See an original photo from after the siege.

RESOURCES:
Bushrangers at State Library of Victoria
The National Museum of Australia
NSW: National Library of Australia
Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation

Monday

The Clarke brothers

Braidwood NSW and the clarke brothers
BRAIDWOOD AREA
Thomas Clarke was born in September, 1840 in Braidwood, NSW and his younger brother John Clarke was born in July, 1844 at Mount Erlington, NSW. Their parents were John Thomas Clarke and Mary Ann Connell both from Ireland.

When the Clarke brothers, Thomas and John, were sentenced in 1867, the Chief Justice described the bushrangers as 'the scum of the earth, the lowest of the low, the most wicked of the wicked [and yet] are occasionally held up for our admiration....It is the old leaven of convictism not yet worked out'.

The Clarkes' territory ranged from Yass to Goulburn and over to Braidwood, and their crimes included thieving horses, nine robberies in two months, and feloniously wounding a black tracker.

In 1866, under the Felon's Apprehension Act 1865 (NSW) the Clarke brothers were declared outlaws for reasons of 'robbery, violence and murder'.  In 1867, four 'special' constables sent to capture the bushrangers were found shot dead near Jinden Station.

Bushrangers Thomas Clarke and John Clarke
THOMAS CLARKE AND JOHN CLARKE. 

From History of Australian Bushranging, Volume II by Charles White.

Although charges were never laid for the shootings, shortly afterwards, the reward for the Clarke brothers' capture stood at £5000, second only to the Kelly brothers. They were hanged together at Darlinghurst Goal on the 25th June, 1867.

Braidwood had became a haunt for many bushrangers as well as the Clarke Brothers. The town was the subject of Australia's first Royal Commission in 1867, inquiring into the state of crime and the activities of police officers, following allegations that bushrangers were being allowed to operate freely within the district for years. The Commission identified several instances of misconduct and found the superintendent of police had failed to exercise 'strict and proper control over his men.' Report of the Commissioners, State of crime in the Braidwood District, 30 July 1867.

RESOURCES:
cultureandcreation.com.au
Australian Dictionary of Biography

New South Wales, Australia, Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930
History of Australian Bushranging, Volume II by Charles White.
Ancestry

Tuesday

Hyde Park Barracks

drawing of Hyde Park Barracks
Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney,
drawing by Hardy Wilson in 1914.
National Library of Australia image.

Constructed by convict labour in 1819, by order of Governor Lachlan Macquarie, the Barracks design is by architect Francis Greenway. It was built as the main male convict barracks in New South Wales and was lodgings for convict men and boys who worked in government employment around Sydney until it closed in 1848.

Saturday

Thunderbolt's cave



Captain Thunderbolt's cave
Sign pointing to Thunderbolt's cave, one of his hideouts in the New England area of New South Wales.

Thunderbolt's Cave, named for Captain Thunderbolt - Frederick Wordsworth Ward (1835–1870), is off the New England Highway, not far from the village of Black Mountain near the major towns of Armidale and Guyra in northern New South Wales.

I am presuming Thunderbolt used the cave in 1867 and 1868 the years when he conducted many robberies in the Tamworth and New England districts, some with Thomas Mason.

If you are visiting the cave don't forget to call in at McCrossin’s Mill Museum at Uralla, which houses the definitive collection of artifacts connected with the legendary bushranger, Captain Thunderbolt.

READ MORE ABOUT THUNDERBOLT:
FREDERICK WARD (alias "Captain Thunderbolt") by Glen Rowen Cobb & CO

Friday

Thomas Rogan


Thomas Rogan bushranger
Thomas Rogan, alias Brown, alias Baker.
1857 - 1880
Image from 26th November, 1879.


Thomas Rogan was a member of Captain Moonlite's gang and born Thomas Baker in 1857. 
Mr Baker, father of Rogan, living at Moray Street, Emerald Hill said his son served his time - 3 years -  as a boot maker with Cooney, Peel Street, West Melbourne. From SYDNEY MORNING HERALD JAN 21, 1880.

When 22 years old Rogan joined the Moonlite gang. He had already been convicted of larceny and horse-stealing. He was arrested for larceny, or stealing, in St Kilda in1875, and sentenced to 3 months imprisonment in Pentridge Gaol, Melbourne. In 1877 he was gaoled, again at Pentridge, for 2 years and 6 months for horse stealing and larceny at Beechworth.

Thomas Rogan, Frank Johns and Graham Bennett and Captain Moonlite (Andrew Scott)  - were tried at Gundagai and later at Sydney for shooting Constable Edward Mostyn Webb Bowen.

'The trial contained much conflicting evidence and was conducted in an atmosphere of public hysteria with over 2,000 people crowding the courthouse. The judge sentenced all four "to hang by the neck until your bodies be dead..." ' FROM History of Gundagai

Thomas Rogan and Andrew Scott were hung on 20th January 1880 in Darlinghurst Gaol and Rogan was buried in an unmarked grave at Rookwood Cementary in Sydney. There were about thirty or forty persons present consisting of magistrates and gaol officials, the representatives of the Press having been pur-posely excluded. TROVE 

Wantabadgery was a sheep station near Wagga Wagga, NSW, besieged for two days by the Moonlite gang.

THE WANTABADGERY BUSH - RANGERS.
FROM THE SYDNEY EVENING NEWS, JAN. 3. 1880
The following petition has been prepared, praying for a reconsideration by the Execu- tive Council of the case of Scott and Rogan :—
"To His Excellency the Right Honourable Lord
Augustus William Frederick Spencer Loftus, K.C.B., &c.
"The humble petition of the undersigned residents
of the city of Sydney and its suburbs respectfully sheweth,—
" 1.That your petitioners have read with anxious  interest and care the reports of the proceedings of the Criminal Court holden at Darlinghurst, in reference to the trial of Andrew George Scott, Thomas Rogan, Thomas Williams, and Graham Bennett, and have otherwise made themselves acquainted with particu-lars of that trial.
" 2. That while extremely solicitous for the main- tenance and vindication of law and order, they are more strongly impressed with the supreme necessity of maintaining inviolate the principles on which the British jury system is based, and fully believe that it would be far better that a number of malefactors should escape condign punishment than that one of those fundamental principles should be violated.
" 3. Your petitioners have learned with extreme surprise that at the trial of the before-mentioned prisoners one of the jurymen, named John Stroh, was not only a foreigner imperfectly acquainted with the English language, but was, and we believe still is, of unsound mind, and was then as he is now utterly unqualified to act as a juror, and the fact is, we think, conclusively proved by the said Stroll's conduct at the trial, and the subsequent swom testimony of Mr. John Black, of 110 Kent-street, in the city of Sydney, who, in an affidavit made on the 18th inst.   (December) testified to his insanity, to the necessity of his being kept under restraint, and embodying the following statement of his (Stroh's) wife :—'The said Martha Stroh informed me (the said John Black) that her husband (the said John Stroh) was not a fit person to have acted as a juryman on the said trial (meaning the trial of the beforenamed prisoners) as he had not been "right" for some time, that he had been attended by a doctor, and that she was in dread of her life from him ; and further, that she was greatly indebted to me for my kindness in looking after him.'
" 4. That, in reference to the prisoner Scott, we are profoundly convinced he did not shoot the late Con- stable Bowen, nor do we believe any of those con- victed for the murder of that faithful and intrepid public officer fired the fatal shot. Further, that they were not in the actual perpetration of a felony when  the police came upon them at M'Glede's house, and we believe that the prisoner Rogan took no part what- ever in the affair at that place.
"Taking all these facts and circumstances late con- sideration, and respectfully reminding your Excel- lency that under the ruling of the Privy Council (the Queen v. Bertrand, L.K.P.C., p. 520) a new trial cannot be granted in cases of felony, we earnestly pray and beseech your Excellency to take the pre- mises into your gravest consideration and humbly hope you will be able to blend the Divine prerogative of mercy with human justice by sparing the lives of the four condemned prisoners, more especially as the presumption (now widely spread) that they have not had a full and fair trial in accordance with British law and usage is likely to disturb the public mind, and distress the conscience of the community.  
"And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray."
Rogan's sister, who has been so untiring in her earnest exertions to obtain a reprieve for her condemned brother, proceeds this day to Government-house for the purpose of obtain- ing his Excellency's sanction to the presenta- tion of the above. We understand that many influential citizens who desire the commuta- tion of Rogan's sentence, but who will not commit themselves to some of the statements contained in the above petition, are pre- paring another one, the object of which is Rogan's reprieve on different grounds.
SOURCE: Trove

There is an unusual relic of both Scott and Rogan - death masks which were cast from the dead men's faces.  Sir Henry Parkes, Premier of New South Wales, gave permission for the sculptor and phrenologist, McGill to take casts of their heads. These casts are still on display at the Justice and Police Museum, Sydney. At the time the masks were made there was public interest and belief in phrenology, which claimed that the contours of a person's head showed their character.
See the death masks: at ABC site: Captain Moonlight's death mask is white and Thomas Rogan's is black.

RESOURCES:
Australian Heritage PDF

TROVE: THE SYDNEY EVENING NEWS, JAN. 3rd 1880
Papers Past National Library of New Zealand 
New South Wales, Australia, Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930 forThomas Rogan

Monday

Hard Labour

convict's in Tasmania ploughing the ground
A postcard from1926.
A convict ploughing team breaking up new ground at the farm - Port Arthur - Tasmania.
From 1833 to 1853, Port Arthur was the destination for the hardest of convicted British criminals as it had the strictest security measures of the disciplinary system. These criminals included those who re-offended after their arrival in Australia and those ungovernable convicts from other sites.

Saturday

Melbourne in the 1800's

early Melbourne in the 1800's

Detail from the Cyclorama of Early Melbourne by John Hennings
 
In 1892, the Victorian government commissioned John Hennings to paint a cycloramic painting of Melbourne. Hennings was paid 500 guineas (about A$1000) for his work which took five months to complete.
A cyclorama was a pictorial entertainment that was popular in Europe and America from the late 18th century until the arrival of cinema at the end of the 19th century.
Hennings was born in Germany in 1835 and arrived in Australia in 1855.

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