The Bushranger-Matthew Brady

Gunn, and a magistrate named Garrett came into Sorrell looking for Brady. Garrett was grabbed by the gang and thrown into a jail cell, while Gunn was wounded in a shoot out that resulted in him losing an arm at the elbow.

Now, the entire colony was in turmoil. Armed patrols were closing the gaps in the mountain tracks. Men were firing at shadows. Men were calling for Lieutenant Gunn, now the one arm giant. But another bounty hunter got in first.

John Batman was a farmer, a freeborn settler. He was later to be one of the founding fathers of the city of Melbourne. Now he armed himself and set of to capture Matthew Brady.

At four thousand feet into the Tasmanian Alps, John Batman came upon a wounded Brady, shot through the ankle. The two men stared at each other.

'Soldier?' said Brady, and when Batman shook his head, he said 'Then I surrender.' It was March 17, 1826. He was taken down to Hobart town in chains where baskets of flowers and fruit were sent to his cell.

'Under other circumstances', wrote the historian James Boswick in 1856, 'Brady might have been a successful explorer in savage lands, a distinguished warrior or a prominent chieftain in some revolutionary struggle.'

At the last, they denied him the right to be executed alone. The gallows had been built for six men, condemned to die that day.

As he reached the scaffold, he bowed to the crowd. Ladies buried their faces in their handkerchiefs, and Matt Brady danced for the last time.

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