FIRST N.Z. BUSHRANGER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 99, 29 April 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

FIRST N.Z. BUSHRANGER.

GOLDFIELD HOLD-UPS OF THE 'SIXTIES.

NOTORIOUS BANDIT WHO PREYED ON OTAGO DIGGERS—TWENTYTHREE ROBBERIES IN ONE DAY—LIFE OF CRIME OF HIGHWAYMAN GARRETT — BUSHRANGING ODDITIES — ABORIGINE BANDITS AND CHINESE DESPERADO.

(By B. CROXIN AND A. RUSSELL. —All Bights Reserved.)

In any account of the outstanding per- i tonalities of bushranging then is a danger that some of the lesser lights—no less interesting' in their modest way—may be overlooked. Opportunity will, therefore, be taken in this chapter to tell of some of the oddities of the bushranging era. In an account of an attempted escape from Pentridge Stockade in 1559, it is related that on the day after the escape — in which one of the convicts had been ehot dead by a warder—the notorious Garrett made himself very conspicuous by addressing his fellow prisoners in the mess room. In this address Garrett accused the warders of having committed wilful xnurder, and suggested that they should be tried and hanged. He remarked that apparently the deity had no jurisdiction beyond the equator, and that people could evidently do much as they pleased in that part of the world. This speech ■was reported by one of the warders, and Garrett was sentenced to twenty days' 4 solitary confinement on bread and water. This curbed the hotheadedness of other prisoners, and the excitement which had followed the attempted escape gradually cooled down. Garrett gained notoriety among bushrangers on account of two things—his complicity in- the robbery of the Bank of Victoria in 1854, and the fact that long afterwards he gained an unenviable reputation as the first bushranger on record in New Zealand. The facts relating to the Bank of Victoria robbery are these:—On December 14, 1854, a stonemason named Quinn rode to Ballarat from Geelong. There he etopped at the tent of one, John Boulton, where he played cards with Boulton and a man named Henry Marriott. Having finished their game, they called at the tent of Henry Garrett. The four men walked across Main Street to Bakery Hill. Outside the Bank of Victoria they put caps on their pistols, but forbore to load, the arrangement being that no violence was to be used. While Marriott stopped at the door, and Quinn remained to watch in the street, Boulton and Garrett entered the bank and bailed up and bound the cashier and teller. They then robbed the bank. Later they met at Garrett's tent and divided an amount of approximately £16,000, of which 350 ounces were of gold. Then they scattered, Garrett going to Melbourne and taking chip for London. All might have been well had not Boulton some weeks later, apparently in a spirit of bravado, gone to the very bank which he had helped to rob and requested & draft on London for £1450. For this he was actually foolish enough to tender eome of the stolen bank notes. The police were sent for, and he was arrested. A little later Quinn and Maiyiott were ■ arrested, and Quinn turned Crown evidence. Marriott and Boulton were sentenced to ten years' penal .servitude. Garrett was now followed to London by Detective Webb, who discovered him dressed as a man of fashion, under an assumed name. Webb was uncertain at first _if this splendid-looking individual was indeed the ruffian on whose account he had travelled 13,000 miles over the seas. So,. one day, he resorted to a trick. Going r*» behind Garrett as he walked along, Webb suddenly shouted "Garrett!" The bushranger, taken by eurprise, stopped and looked round. The detective's doubts immediately fled. He walked up to Garrett and said: "You've just arrived from Melbourne in the Dawstone. I've a warrant here to arrest you on a charge of robbing the. bank at Ballarat. Are you coming quietly?" Garrett saw it was no use protesting, and gave himself' up. Detective Webb, arrived in Melbourne with his charge in August, 185S, and Garrett was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude. He was released from Pentridge in August, 1861, on ticket-of-leave. He had then served six years of bis sentence. The following year he went to New Zealand, and ranged the bush betwe'-- Otago Roldfields and Dunedin. It is said that one dav he actually bailed up and robbed as many as 23 persons. But, in the end he was captured and sent to gaol for eight years. Thereafter, nothing more was heard of him. Notorious Morgan Gang. One of the notorious Morgan gang was a man named Smith, a very expert cattleduffer, and horse-stealer. He was a past master at faking brands—that is, altering or forging brands by means of a hot iron or acids. He was a remarkably fine horseman, also. He found a ready helpmeet in his wife, who was not only a very daring horsewoman, but,,as it would seem, had a much readier wit than her husband. Morgan's success, and his own, emboldened Smith, who in time grew careless. One day he grew a too careless and was caught. He was sent off under the charge of a well-armed mounted trooper to attend the Court of Sessions. ' : Mrs. Smith was naturally very perturbed over this. After pleading a great while she was allowed to accompany Smith on his journey. Smith vras handcuffed, and his accomplices had gone into hiding when he was arrested, so it was not thought that any very great harm cculd come of this permission. But the authorities had reckoned without M\s. Smith's duplicity. She pretended that she had askei to accompany the party not so much on account of her husband, but because she had found a violent attraction lor the trooper. Troopers are, after all, but men and are susceptible to< flattery. At any rate, Mrs. Smith so succeeded in diverting the trooper's attention that her husband was able to make his escape; she making hers as early as possible afterwards. Some weeks later, Mrs. Smith very daringly paid the police authorities a visit, bringing with her the horse on which her husband had ridden away. She explained with a smile: "They're Government property and of no further use to us." A Bushranging Comedy. ' 6 Bushranging comedy would be incomplete without some mention of the aborigine who bailed up the coach at Richmond Range, New Soiith Wales, during the reign of Ned Kelly. The coach was approaching Sandy Creek when a man with a black face—quite obviously a native—sprang from the bush. "Bail up!" he thundered. In his hands was a gun and; so the driver promptly obeyed. At a second order the passengers alighted. "Gib it all the money you've got," said the bushranger. "Gib it plenty quick. Me Ned Kelly. You gib it plenty quick." Taking off his hat he dropped his gun and walked down the line of grinning paseengers, who were content in their relief to keep the joke moving. "Gib it uenny each," he said solemnly. The men, pretending to believe the Ned Kelly fiction, handed over the coins. One of them said: "I'll give you two bob for the pistol, Ned." "No good, that feller. Him broke," said the bogus Ned Kelly. And, having bitten his collection of pennies to make sure they were all "ight, he put on his hat and. faded with dignity into the scrub with his profits. An All-Aborigine Gang.^ An aborigine bushranger of more genuine purpose flourished in Van Diemen's Land in 1825. He had been transported there from Sydney for the murder of a black gin. On arrival, he was employed aa a black tracker to assist the soldiers in capturing bushrangers, but in this lie was so persecuted by his fellow convicts ■ tha'; he was forced to appeal to the authorities for protection. They merely ign.-.ed his appeal, and so '* Mosquito,'' as -he was called, became a bushranger hinrseif. He had the advan 1 "- kr.ow- :■&

ing something of the white man's civilisation, and his influence among the blacks was very quickly noted.

In fact, he organised what is probably the only band of all-abongme tras'nranjers in Australian history. Some of their attacks on the settfers were so .skilfully planned that for some time the authorities believed they were led by a white man. After some two years of bushranging, Mosquito and his co-leader, known as "Black Jack," were captured and charged with murder. Many people believed that he should have been reprieved and given another chance, in view of the circumstances. But, in spite of all that could be done, he was sentenced to death and ultimately hung. When the sentence was pronounced, Mosquito remarked that hanging was no good for a black fellow. When asked why it was not as good for a black fellow as for a white fellow, Mosquito replied: "Very good for white feller. He used to it.' Aborigine and Chinese Highwaymen. Still another aborigine bushranger was known as " Jacky Bullfrog." He was eventually hanged for murder, and there was one, " Paddy Wandong," a half-caste, known as Patrick Fitzgerald. Paddy Wandong bailed up a free selector named Thomas Goodall, on the Castlereagh River. Mr. Goodall was sitting in his dining room when he suddenly heard his wife scream "Don't kill me! " Mr. Goodall rushed into the bedroom, and there found the half-caste bushranger with his hands about his wife's throat, apparently trying to choke her. With him was another bushranger known as Ted Kelly. This man, on Mr. Goodall's appearance, bailed him up at the point of a pistol. Shortly after this outrage, Paddy Wandong was caught and sentenced to 15 years' .hard labour. There is at least one instance of a Chinaman having turned bushranger. This was in February, 1865. One day Constable Ward was returning from Mudgee to the police station at Coonabarabran, when he was excitedly informed that a number of people in the neighbourhood had been

bailed up and robbed by a Chinese bushranger. Ward immediately set out on the trail of this evildoer, and finally succeeded in reaching his camp in the bush. Here he called upon the Chinaman to come out, but instead of obeying the policeman, the son of Confucius appeared at his tent door, gun in hand, and shouting: " You —— policeman. /Me shootee you," immediately did so. , , Constable Ward, although severely wounded, "was able to reach the nearest farm, and from there news was sent out for help. A party of police quickly hunted the Chinaman down. Although Constable Ward recovered from his wound, the Chinese bushranger was convicted and hanged.

A queer character was a man named | "Black Douglas," who took to the roads in Victoria between Castlemaine .and Kyneton, in the year 1854. His specialty I was robbing the diggers of their gold as they came from the fields. One day the Kyneton police received news that Black Douglas was drinking at the Bobby Burns Hotel, in company with, several doubtful characters. This hotel, which has long since been pulled down, stood at the junction of Wedge and Yaldwin Streets, not far from the Piper Street bridge. The chief constable in charge, accompanied by Constable Koegan and Trooper Rennie and several others, surrounded the place and rushed the bar-room. Here they found the bushranger, and also a menacing crowd of sympathisers. Capture and Escape of Black Douglas. In the fight that followed, Constable Koegan was severely hurt, but the police party succeeded in effecting an arrest. Black Douglas was taken to the police station, followed by a hooting crowd. There enters now a Gilbertian touch. Just before the police station was reached, Black Douglas drew from his pocket a canvas bag similar to that in which the diggers carried their gold-dust, and threw it over the heads of the crowd. There was an immediate rush to obtain possession, and in the excitement which followed the police relaxed their guard over Black Douglas, and he escaped. When the police, greatly chagrined, recovered the bag, they found it contained not gold—but sand.

Then, too, there was the queer old man who was known years ago as " The Hermit of Black Range." Black Range is in North-west Victoria, and is remarkable for its picturesque scenery and the many romantic stories connected with it. On the slope of Black Range is a natural cave, formed by a huge rock which has been brought to rest, apparently by some natural agency, across other huge rocks, so to speak, roofing them. Still other stones have been rolled down by human hands, until there is formed a small but quite habitable compartment. And here it was that the Hermit of Blaek Range dwelt. Nobody knew who he was. Some declared that he was a bushranger in hiding; others that he was a novelist seeking quiet to write a book; still others that he was a European celebrity who had " gone bush " for political reasons. He seemed to have no lack of food, although where he obtained it was a mystery. People visited him, but he ignored them, and was seen always •writing, with a block of stone serving for a table. He never refused food to anyone who asked for it, but declined to accept money in return.

And then, suddenly, one day he disappeared, and nothing has been heard of him since. His secret was never learned, and he remains the mystery man of Black Range. But it is whispered that Joseph Thomas Sullivan—the central figure connected with the murder of poor old Jimmv Battle in New Zealand—had he chosen, could has e made the -v clear.