The bushrangers Dalton and Kelly stuck up and robbed the Halfway House near Campbelltown in January, 1853. On the following day they went to Mr. Simeon Lord's house, Bona Vista, near the river, and bailed up about thirty people, including the District Constable of Avoca, the watch-house keeper, and another constable. The watch-house keeper was shot dead. There were several ladies in the house, and these were ordered to go into one room and stay there. The robbers ransacked the house in their search for jewellery and other portable property. They collected between £100 and £200, besides several gold and a number of silver watches, rings, &c. When they had obtained all that they could they compelled Mr. Frank Lord to accompany them to the stables, where they selected two of the finest horses, with saddles, bridles, and spurs. Mounting these horses, the robbers rode away to Mr. Duxbury's Inn at Stoney Creek, where they bailed up twelve men, including two mounted constables. They collected about £50 more and Mr. Duxbury's gold watch. On leaving the inn they went along the road, and met Mr. Sykes, recently returned from Melbourne. They robbed him of about £75, returning the odd six shillings to enable him to continue his journey. They told Mr. Sykes that they intended to rob Captain Creer's and other houses along the Esk Valley, and, when they had collected all they could, to go to the diggings in Victoria. On the following day they visited Vaucluse, but Mr. and Mrs. Bayles were away from home and they got no money. They, however, took some jewellery from the drawers and some provisions from the kitchen. During the following week they continued their depredations and then went to the coal mines on the river Mersey, and stole a whale boat. They impressed four men at work there into their service and put to sea, but the wind was so tempestuous that they were driven back and landed on the coast near Port Sorell, where they were captured.
In February, 1853, a man named Robinson, who had recently returned from the Victorian diggings, shot a shoemaker named William Moonan, while he was waxing a thread. The murderer dragged the body from the hut to the Swan River and threw it in, and then returned to steal what little money there was in the place. The bushrangers Maberley, Hickson, and Poulston committed a number of daylight burglaries in the neighbourhood of Sandy Bay, robbing the houses of Messrs. Stacey, Frodsham, Power, and Dunkley. From Dunkley's they took more than twenty pounds' worth of goods. They had supper at Mr. Winter's and then went to camp in the bush not far away.
Moses Birkett and Peter Perry were captured in a cave about this time. The cave was on the shores of Lake Crescent, and a large quantity of stolen property was found hidden there. Besides the guns and pistols, a couple of sheep shear blades, mounted on long wooden handles were found, and it was supposed that these had been used in the murder of George Kelsey, at Lemon Springs.
Thanks to the activity of the police and the assistance they received from the civilians, such malefactors were gradually captured and dealt with. Some of the Victorian papers charged the Government of Van Diemen's Land with conniving at the escape of expirees from the island to Victoria, but there does not appear to be any foundation for this charge. It is quite possible that neither the authorities nor the public were sorry to be relieved from their company, but we have merely to read the accounts published at the time, to realise that all was done that was possible to suppress bushranging in Van Diemen's Land at this time, and that the escapes of these criminals across the Bass's Straits could not very well be prevented. It was in 1853 that transportation to the island ceased. A few years later, responsible government was established, and the name of the island was changed from Van Diemen's Land to Tasmania, with the object of getting rid as much as possible of old associations. Very shortly afterwards, the papers once more said that bushranging had been stamped out in the island, and this time they were justified in the assertion. No doubt the larger settlements on the mainland offered better chances to the enterprising Tasmanians, whether they were "old hands" or not. Tasmania has, perhaps in consequence of this custom of young men going to seek their fortunes in Melbourne or Sydney, progressed less rapidly than some of the other colonies, but it has progressed, and this progression has been as peaceful and as innocent as possible under present social conditions, and the island which was once infamous has for many years been remarkably clear from criminal offences.
The New Bushranging Era; Fallacy of the Belief that Highwaymen Rob the Rich to Enrich the Poor; The Cattle Duffers and Horse Planters; The Riot at the Lambing Flat; Frank Gardiner, the Butcher; Charged with Obtaining Beasts "on the cross," he Abandons his Butcher's Shop; Efforts to Establish a Reign of Terror in the District; A Letter from Gardiner; The Great Escort Robbery.
Hitherto the bushrangers of Australia had been, as the records prove, drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of those who "left their country for their country's good." Those who took the most prominent share in the next outbreak of the "epidemic" were generally native-born Australians. The sequelæ of the old disease were not yet worked out. As I have already said, there were numbers of the "old hands" scattered about the bush, some of them with farms or small cattle or sheep stations of their own who lived fairly honest and useful lives, but even among these, whatever may have been their station in life, there was the old antagonism to "law and order," and their sympathies were all with those who waged war against society. Their children imbibed these ideas, and wherever there was a neighbourhood where this class had collected together, morality was at a low ebb. But besides these settlers there were numbers of nomads, men who worked as shepherds, bullock-drivers, splitters and fencers, shearers, and so on, and as long as the old hands formed a majority, or even a considerable minority of the bush-workers, it was the custom for men to work from shearing to shearing, or from harvest to harvest, and then "draw their cheques," make for the nearest public-house, and indulge in a wild spree, until they were informed by the landlord that the money which their cheques represented had been expended. There were some respectable inns in the back country where they got fair value for their money perhaps, but in too many of these "bush pubs," as they were called, the object of the landlord was to "lamb them down" in the shortest possible space of time. Perhaps when the character of the liquor sold in these places is taken into consideration, this method of cheating was not altogether an evil. It prevented the bushmen from swallowing such large quantities of the deleterious stuff as they might have done if they had received full value for their money. During the time when they were working their principal mode of amusing themselves was telling or listening to tales of the convict days. Some of these stories told by the old hands were of too revolting a character for repetition, but no doubt they were founded on fact. 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. One of the ancient superstitions introduced into Australia by these story-tellers was that the highwaymen robbed the rich to give to the poor. I have no desire to raise any doubts as to the generosity and benevolence of Robin Hood, but I can find no evidence of any such beneficence on the part of any of the Australian bushrangers. No doubt they got their money easily, and spent it recklessly. But they did not pause to enquire whether the person they robbed was rich or poor. There was no such class distinction in the colonies as there is and always has been in England; no very poor class not worth robbing and ready to bless anyone who gave them a penny, and no hereditary wealthy class. Every one had to work somehow for his living, though some were more successful in piling up wealth than others. But the poor had opportunities which have never existed in England, and if they neglected them it was more or less their own fault if they were poor. The tendency in Australia, as elsewhere, is to build up a wealthy class, but this class did not exist in convict times, and is only just beginning to appear now. The Australian bushranger in fact had to obtain money or go under. He was compelled to share his ill-gotten gains with those who supplied him with food and information. He was a mark for the blackmailer, and he was compelled to find money to bribe those who were in a position to lead the troops or the police to his hiding place. But the convict bushranger was not so well off as the native-born bushranger. There was a strong feeling of camaraderie, an esprit de corps, among the convicts, which tended to prevent numbers of men from betraying him, even though they received no bribes. But the new bushranger was more fortunate than the old one. He had his parents, his brothers and sisters, his cousins and his aunts and uncles, who sympathised with him for family and other reasons, and who were bound to help him. It was from among these relatives and friends that the "bush telegraphs," who informed the bushranger of the whereabouts of the police, were drawn, and it soon became apparent that if bushranging was to be abolished these sympathisers and "bush telegraphs" must be dealt with.
There were several localities in New South Wales where the conditions were favourable for bushranging; places where the morality was low and where the police, as representatives of authority, were hated with all the hatred of the "old hand." One of these localities was in the spurs of the Great Dividing Range, in the neighbourhood of Burrowa. All round this district were a number of small squatters, principally cattle breeders, and among these no man's beast was safe. These small squatters were the terror of the big sheep and cattle breeders in the plains, and their principal industry was "duffing." Duffing was not stealing. If a moralist had remonstrated with a Burrowa man whom he found branding his neighbour's beast, the Burrowa man would have replied "I'm only trying to get back my own. He's duffed many a head of my cattle." Sheep could be duffed as well as cattle, but the ranges were generally too steep for sheep. One sheep breeder of the district, however, adopted, as his distinguishing mark, the plan of cutting off both ears, and he was a most successful duffer, because his recognised ear-mark enabled him to remove the ear-marks in his neighbours' sheep. It was no uncommon occurrence for a man to find that a calf sucking his cow had been branded by one of his neighbours, so that it might be claimed as soon as it was weaned. In such a case, if he had complained, his neighbour would probably have accused him of having "mothered" the neighbour's calf on his cow for the purpose of cheating him out of it.