Austral English / A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia

by Edward Ellis Morris

"Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen
In murders and in outrage, boldly here."
(`Richard II.,' III. ii. 39.)

"Ranger" is used in modern English for one who protects and not for one who robs; as `the Ranger' of a Park.

1806. May 4, `Sydney Gazette' or `New South Wales Advertiser, given in `History of New South Wales,' p. 265:

"Yesterday afternoon, William Page, the bushranger repeatedly advertised, was apprehended by three constables."

1820. W. C. Wentworth, `Description of New South Wales,' p. 166:

[The settlements in Van Diemen's Land have] "been infested for many years past by a banditti of runaway convicts, who have endangered the person and property of every one. . . . These wretches, who are known in the colony by the name of bushrangers. . ."

1820. Lieut. Chas. Jeffreys, `Van Dieman's [sic] Land,' p. 15:

"The supposition . . . rests solely on the authority of the Bush Rangers, a species of wandering brigands, who will be elsewhere described."

1838. T. L. `Mitchell, `Three Expeditions,' vol. i. p. 9:

"Bushrangers, a sub-genus in the order banditti, which happily can now only exist there in places inaccessible to the mounted police."