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The Bushrangers - 1

© John Harman

To use the term 'bushranger', anywhere else but in Australia, would probably meet with curiosity. The US has its 'Outlaws', the Australians the 'bushranger', blokes that range the bush, up to no good. The similarities are startling. Some were hard done by the law of the time, some were simply desperate for a quid or a dollar, and some were simply plain bad buggers.

While most Australians have heard of Ned Kelly, Ben Hall, 'Mad Dog' Morgan, Thunderbolt, and Captain Starlight, most have also heard of Jesse James, Billy the kid, and who could forget Butch Cassidy. In many ways both countries were in a similar transition period of exploration and settlement when these blokes were around.

Here is part of a proclamation from Governor Macquarie in about 1813:

'And whereas the said Peter Mills and George Williams, and other profligate persons aforesaid, being so armed and confederated together, as aforesaid, for unlawful and wicked purposes aforesaid, and in fulfillment of the same have feloniously and wickedly committed many atrocious robberies and deprivations upon the peaceable inhabitants of the settlements, by feloniously and violently driving away and stealing their sheep and cattle, and violently and burglariously breaking into their homes, and then and there stealing divers of their goods and chattels, to the great damage and terror of his majesty's subjects in the said settlements, and the utter subversion of all good order and government.'

Not only the worlds longest sentence; but the language reads strangely to us today. What most don't know, is that the first serious bushranger types in Australia, was in what was still called 'Van Diemen's Land', now the state of Tasmania. Tasmania had become the harshest of the penal colonies, attracting the most hardened types, particularly habitual escapers.

The courts in Van Diemen's Land though, were not empowered to deal with serious offenders outside of the prisons, and settlers were reluctant to take their cases to the courts in Sydney. Bushrangers virtually went unchecked for some time.

Groups of marauders had formed during the earliest years of the colony, when starvation had forced the Governor to release some of the convicts, who had developed a love of the free life in the bush. They came to know the rugged terrain backwards, and were very difficult to capture.

The number of Bushrangers increased and their numbers augmented by escaped prisoners from Sydney who had been re-convicted, and sent to Tasmania as punishment. Whereas the convict population of New South Wales always included prisoners who never caused trouble, in Tasmania, the population was constantly been refreshed by the most dangerous and hardened criminals from the New South Wales colony.

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