Short=Lived Bushrangers.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXVI, Issue 46, 19 November 1909, Page 7

Short=Lived Bushrangers.

' /fly Charles White, Author of "Australian Bushrangers," "Old Convict Days," v Etc.) i . CHAPTER 111. £ RAID WITH A TRAGIC ENDING. The majority of the diggers who had been successful in their search for gold, and who desired to visit their ■ hemes (for in the early days wife and family remained in the town or on : the farm while-the husband went gold [ taking with them their little chamoise-leather bag with some of the gold-dust and . nuggets won on the geld, generally travelled by coach ; and occasionally the mail coach—as a rule the .only vehicle plying between the towns and the diggings—would contain only passengers of. this class. Jfaiurolly. therefore, the footpads and bushrangers generally looked out for mail day, and the "sticking-up" of , the mail coach when it had reached a lonely part of the road became a tiling of freipient occurrence. The Jew South Wales "rangers" were the first to ojierate in this direction, and so troublesome did they become that every journey by mail came to be looked upon as dangerous, and various devices were resorted to by those compelled to travel to save their property from confiscation. The Government, also, was moved to action, and sought in many ways to make the journeys less hazardous, and to secure a safe passage for the mail : ban?, which generally contained I money, letters, and other valuables, fo this end, in November, 1853, the : following proclamation was issued :

Colonial Secretary's Office, Sydney, 21st November, 1853. "Whereas it has been represented to the Government that the mails on certain roads have been repeatedly robbed, and it is considered expedient to establish a fixed scale of Rewards, applying to all cases of 31 ail Robberies ; His Excellency the GovernorGeneral directs it to be notified that Jor such information, within sijg calendar months after the commission of the offence, as shall lead to the apprehension and conviction of those implicated, a reward will be paid in each ease of mail robbery unattended by violence, and a reward of fifty pounds in each case in which the guilty parties have been armed and have used violence, and that in addition to the above rewards respectively, application will be made to Her Majesty for the allowance of a Conditional Pardon to the person giving the information, if a prisoner of the Crown.

"By His Excellency's Command,

"E. DEAS THOMSON." The last clause in this proclamation shows that the shadows of the 1 old days of convictistn still rested i upon the colony. A similar clause | was invariably inserted in proclama- | tions relating to convicts who were ■ classed as runaways or who had j committed 'offences and disappeared, | during the days when the clank of the chains and ' the switch of the "cat-o'-nine-tails" formed the daily accompaniment of that "service under Government" to which so many thousands had been condemned. But although many conditional pardons were tron by convicts through "peaching" on their "pals/' it is not on record j that any prisoner of the Crown earned i liberty by giving "information" a- I gainst mail robbers in the golden i days. As a matter of fact, the sys- I tern of convictisni was in its death : throes when the golden era set in, j and although the worst of the ex- j convicts took full advantage of the opportunities offered on the roads and | the goldfields to enrich themselves at j the expense of others, they were not j ;responsible for half the mail and j 'otW robberies laid to their charge , in Xew Soutli Wales, whatever may ! he said concerning Victoria, to which I place there was so large an influx j from that prison-land of "worst-class ! prisoners"—Tasmania. Some of the! j cases of mail robberies and other of-ienc-i-j on the highways which are here clironi'.ied were not less sensational than those committed on Hounslow j Heath and other resorts of highwaymen of the Dick Turpin class in the Old Country ; yet all the perpetrators were not of those who, in the words of the old-time verse, had "left their country for their country's good." In the early sixties a very bold raid was made upon a mining camp right in the heart of a populous goldfield, by two young fellows who essayed the role of bushrangers. They had stolen two horses, one of them a racer, and at de.ybreak on a fine Sunday morriintf uavlaid the mail coach from Orange" to Wellington (N.S.W.) when, aiter a night journey, it was nearing its de-tination. Having overhauled the liiailbags and taken therefrom whatever money-letters , they could End, ;hey gave the mail-driver permission to resume his journey' with the 'three passengers (one male and two : females) on the coach, and then galloped off in the direction of Ironhark-, a flourishing mining township distant a few miles from Wellington. They appear to have remained in hidin? somewhere in this locality until the following Thursday, when they suddenly made their appearance tn the township in a manner at once "Sensational and alarming. The shareholders in one of the rich quartz claims had finished "cleaning-up" at the battery where their golden stone had been crushed, and having retorted the gold, were carrying the cakes , (valued at between £4OO and £500) U P to the jstore, some four hundred yards distant, when they were startled "}' the sudden appearance of two Norsemen, who galloped up to them and demanded the treasure. How they got it and the double tragedy, fhat was attendant upon its getting, is he-t told by one of the parties conn ternwl—James Osborne, a publican at [lie "Barks," and one of the shareholders. And here is his story:—' "I and the rest of the shareholders" "-Daniel Hosling, a German, Peter Du fay, a Frenchman, John Caugherty and Robert Hutton—were retorting «om« gold at Smith's crushing ma-. thine. We got about 130 ounces in too cakes, which Caugherty was earning in an earthenware basin. When , w <! were about a hundred yards from .Jte machine, we saw two men gallopin? down the hill towards us. When they came within four or five yards W us ttag piled out gad

covered us, one of them ' called out to I Caugherty "Drop that !" We hesitated a little, when he called out that if we didn't drop it at once he would blow our brains out ! I told Caugherty that he had better put it down, as it was ho use holding out. Ho put the gold down, and then both the bushrangers called out "Stand back !" We commenced stepping backwards, and they ordered us to keep together. They then urged their horses with the intention of dismounting' to get the gold, when wo made a simultaneous rush forward to frighten them away. Our sudden action startled the horses, and we kept throwing up ouu hands and calling out ''Help !'' when one of the horsemen sang out to his companion "'oiioot them !"' and himself fired at the Frenchman, but the shot went wide. The other bushranger then fired at the German, who was nearest to the gold, and I saw him put his hand 1 to his leg as if he had tA'en hit. One of tiie bushrangers then hurriedly dismounted close to the gold, and when iji the act of lifting it tip the German made a rush at him, and when he had got within three or four yards of him the bushranger presented his rifle, fired and shot him through the breast. The German staggered" back, ■'•ryin« f "I'll die ! 1 II die?' and drew back* I then saw the bushranger get on his horse with the gold and gallop away up the hill with his mate. I then looked avross the. creek and saw William liragg, a butcher, taking ;iint at the bushrangers from near his shop with a rifle, and turning again to watch the bushrangers I heard the report of the rifle, and saw the horse the man was riding flinch as if he had been hit, but he did not fall, and the two moil gall opal over the hill out of sight. Both men had their faces blackened as if they had been nibbed over with a black rag. and their beards had also been blackened in the same way."

The wounded Gorman was carried up to the store, whore the bullet (which had entered below the breast and lodged in the baek)was extracted by Dr. Rygate ; and to the surprise of everyone he made a rapid recovery. The bushrangers were about a hundred and twenty yards from Bragg when he fired, but the effectiveness of the shot was not immediately seen, and it was thought they had got clean away. The bullet had found its billet, however, having passed clean t'—ough the body of the man who carried the. gold, but who, nevertheless, retained his seat in the saddle until his horse had covered another three, hundred yards, when he fell. His robber companion, seeing that he had been stricken to death, at once dismounted, seized the buttons of gold which he had been carrying, and then galloped away into the bush. The man had not been seen to fall by any of the diggers or the people at the store, who were pleased as they were surprised when the d'ead body was discovered lying on the road, with riile and rerevolver beside it. The- dead bushranger was identified as a man named Garvev, who up to a few days of the robbery had been working at the public crushing mill, and who doubtless knew that Osborne's party would have their gold ready for taking when he ami his mate visited Ironbarks. Garvcy's body was interred in the bush near the camp, after t\\f usual magisterial inquiry into the cause of death had been hekl Three weeks after the robbery a young man named George Bell was arrested on the Turon diggings, some sixty or seventy miles distant from Ironbarks, on suspicion of being thesecond principal in the outrage. He was brought to Bathurst and charged, at the police court with shooting at ami wounding the .German with intent to murder him. Witnesses from Ironbarks swore to his identity as one of the gold robbers, and he was remanded back to gaol 'to await trial' at _ the 'Assize Court. But it was ordained thai he should appear before a higher tribunal than an earthly court. Two days after his commitment he was seized with fever, which ran-a very speedy course ami terminated in death before the day arrived which had been fixed for his trial.

The stolen gold was never traced or recovered.