Wanted poster for Captain Thunderbolt
with a huge reward, date?
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I have written about Ned Kelly and his gang of bushrangers whose stories entered Australian legendary history. For ages the bushrangers’ exploits thrilled the Australian public, and in the most notorious cases, horrified them. Contemporary newspapers fed eager readers with stories of bushranger crimes and deadly police hunts.
The famous bushrangers passed into folklore as romantic subjects of bush stories, paintings and songs. But the reality was often a miserable life of poverty, hiding and being chased by police. Once a bushranger was declared an outlaw, it was legal for anyone to shoot him on sight. Facing inevitable hanging when captured, most cornered bushrangers preferred to fight on, rather than laying down their arms. This was the fate facing most of the infamous Kelly Gang at Glenrowan Victoria, in 1880.
New South Wales also had plenty of notorious bushrangers. In fact, it was not long after the First Fleet arrived that ex-convict bolters like John Black Caesar fled into the bush around Sydney. Later, during the Gold Rushes, bushranging hit its height as robbers jumped on diggers returning from the goldfields with treasure.
As a young man, Frederick Ward became an expert horse-man while working as a horse-breaker and drover on the Tocal Run on the lower Paterson River. With his strong self-reliance and physical endurance, Ward could survive in the bush for long periods. His first arrest in Apr 1856 was for attempting to drove 45 stolen horses to the Windsor sale-yards. Found guilty, he spent 4 years gaoled on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour, before being freed on a ticket of leave for good behaviour
In 1860, he met Mary Ann Bugg and when she became pregnant, Ward settled her in the Dungog area. He was soon in trouble with the authorities again and was arrested for breaking the terms of his parole and for horse stealing. Ward was sent straight back again to Cockatoo Island ☹
Wanting freedom in Sept 1863, Ward escaped Cockatoo Island with another prisoner Fred Britten by swimming ashore. Travelling north toward New England, Ward went on a robbing spree. Enduring bushranger mythology claimed that Ward took the name Capt Thunderbolt when Ward entered the tollbar house on the road between Rutherford and Maitland and shocked the customs officer from sleep. The startled officer remarked: 'By God, I thought it must have been a thunderbolt'.
Thunderbolt roamed across NSW, from the Hunter Valley to the Queensland border. A crime spree in Dungog started in Nov 1863, when the police and volunteers chased them through rugged hill country. The family escaped! For 6+ years from early 1865, Ward and 3 other men robbed mail coaches, travellers, inns and stations across much of northern NSW. But the gang disbanded after John Thompson was shot and grabbed near Moree.
In 1870 after a dramatic showdown, off-duty policeman Constable Walker shot Thunderbolt’s horse out from under him in swamp land near Uralla. The bushranger refused to surrender and was shot dead.
Hundreds flocked to see bushranger Capt Thunderbolt’s body after his death and they bought shilling postcards of his bullet-ridden body. It was a sad end to the last of NSW’s professional bushrangers. Ward had become something of a folk hero in his short life.
And Cockatoo Island? From 1839-69, it operated as a penal colony where convicts suffered harsh living conditions and backbreaking labour. Although it was a brutal part of early European life in Australia, the island’s remaining convict structures invite visitors to examine an era when men were put to work on the colony’s building projects.
The famous bushrangers passed into folklore as romantic subjects of bush stories, paintings and songs. But the reality was often a miserable life of poverty, hiding and being chased by police. Once a bushranger was declared an outlaw, it was legal for anyone to shoot him on sight. Facing inevitable hanging when captured, most cornered bushrangers preferred to fight on, rather than laying down their arms. This was the fate facing most of the infamous Kelly Gang at Glenrowan Victoria, in 1880.
New South Wales also had plenty of notorious bushrangers. In fact, it was not long after the First Fleet arrived that ex-convict bolters like John Black Caesar fled into the bush around Sydney. Later, during the Gold Rushes, bushranging hit its height as robbers jumped on diggers returning from the goldfields with treasure.
As a young man, Frederick Ward became an expert horse-man while working as a horse-breaker and drover on the Tocal Run on the lower Paterson River. With his strong self-reliance and physical endurance, Ward could survive in the bush for long periods. His first arrest in Apr 1856 was for attempting to drove 45 stolen horses to the Windsor sale-yards. Found guilty, he spent 4 years gaoled on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour, before being freed on a ticket of leave for good behaviour
In 1860, he met Mary Ann Bugg and when she became pregnant, Ward settled her in the Dungog area. He was soon in trouble with the authorities again and was arrested for breaking the terms of his parole and for horse stealing. Ward was sent straight back again to Cockatoo Island ☹
Wanting freedom in Sept 1863, Ward escaped Cockatoo Island with another prisoner Fred Britten by swimming ashore. Travelling north toward New England, Ward went on a robbing spree. Enduring bushranger mythology claimed that Ward took the name Capt Thunderbolt when Ward entered the tollbar house on the road between Rutherford and Maitland and shocked the customs officer from sleep. The startled officer remarked: 'By God, I thought it must have been a thunderbolt'.
A posse of mounted police, aboriginal trackers and district volunteers.
They will hunt for a gang of bushrangers.
State Library of NSW
In 1870 after a dramatic showdown, off-duty policeman Constable Walker shot Thunderbolt’s horse out from under him in swamp land near Uralla. The bushranger refused to surrender and was shot dead.
Hundreds flocked to see bushranger Capt Thunderbolt’s body after his death and they bought shilling postcards of his bullet-ridden body. It was a sad end to the last of NSW’s professional bushrangers. Ward had become something of a folk hero in his short life.
Cockatoo Island,
Sydney Harbour
The Art Newspaper
The barracks, planned to accommodate 328 men maximum, actually housed up to 500 men. Solitary confinement cells were carved into the exposed sandstone foothill still reminds the modern visitor of the exhausted convict inhabitants’ life: the claustrophobic individual cell and thick rods that half closed the small window. The other convict structures were Fitzroy Dock, the only extant convict-built dry dock here. Other convict landmarks are the Island’s Guard house, Mess Hall, Grain Silos, Solitary Confinement Cells and Biloela House, all built from sandstone quarried by convicts.
Cells for solitary confinement,
Cockatoo Island
Sydney Uncovered
From the mid-1850s, Cockatoo Island developed as a ship building and ship repair facility, contributing significantly to Australia's maritime affairs. In fact shipbuilding increased so much that by 1913, the island became the official dock yard of the Royal Australian Navy.
Meanwhile, prisoners were transferred from the island to Darlinghurst; the prison buildings became a tough industrial school for girls and in 1871 it became a tougher reformatory.
In July 2010, Cockatoo Island Convict Site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The sites of the Australian Convict Sites World Heritage Property feature notable examples from the convict era. The island has also been inscribed on the National Heritage List since Aug 2007. The Harbour Trust’s role is to display heritage conservation works that reveal the island’s convict legacy.
You may like to read a biography of Capt Thunderbolt
Meanwhile, prisoners were transferred from the island to Darlinghurst; the prison buildings became a tough industrial school for girls and in 1871 it became a tougher reformatory.
In July 2010, Cockatoo Island Convict Site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The sites of the Australian Convict Sites World Heritage Property feature notable examples from the convict era. The island has also been inscribed on the National Heritage List since Aug 2007. The Harbour Trust’s role is to display heritage conservation works that reveal the island’s convict legacy.
You may like to read a biography of Capt Thunderbolt
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20 comments:
Hi Helen. Were the bushrangers ex-convicts who were angry with the brutal way they had been transported and treated? They probably could not find proper jobs.
I began to wonder why I had not heard of Frederick Ward until you mentioned his more familiar moniker.
It beats me why they become folk heroes. Robbing the landed gentry, banks etc is one thing, but robbing hard working miners of their possibly small finds isn't heroic in my opinion.
Deb
there were a few bushrangers in the first generation of convicts who had finally ended their time, but we are much more familiar with the Gold Rush era (1850-80). Thus the best known bushrangers could have been the sons or grandsons of the original convicts or they were free settlers who voluntarily decided on an alternative lifestyle.
Andrew
Because bushrangers broke rules and challenged the police, banks and upper class English law, many working class, Catholic (and often Irish) families openly admired them. Yet you are correct. Bushrangers were criminals with guns who used the bush to hide and escape after committing a crime. Perhaps they didn't expect to be violent at the beginning of their careers, but their violence quickly showed its terrible consequences.
Hello Hels, The parallels between Australia's outlaw period and the American West's continue to amaze me. I never understood why there should be any popular support for these criminals--it was mostly ordinary people who were robbed, even if it was via their payroll in the bank. Incidentally, I am pretty sure that that wanted poster is a fantasy item--not only does it look like every other fake Wanted poster, it doesn't even say who is offering the reward!
--Jim
Parnassus
I too suspected that the Wanted Poster was not real. Even the Captain Midnight wanted poster had the reward money written in dollars, instead of in pounds ha ha.
Australia's connection with British highway men who travelled by horse and robbed travellers in carriages seemed historically inevitable. Australia's connection with American outlaws in newly populated West seemed more popular in the underclasses and more violent. But the thing in common in all three societies was execution, at a young age.
Hi again, The great thing about research and discussion is that it always leads off to some new tangent. Your comment above made me look up Australia's conversion to dollars, which turned out to be February 14, 1966. I'm sure that you knew that, but it is useful new knowledge to me.
--Jim
Parnassus,
quite right. Here is the song we sang every day in 1965.
In come the dollars and in come the cents
to replace the pounds and the shillings and the pence.
Be prepared folks when the coins begin to mix
on the 14th of February 1966.
Clink go the cents folks
clink, clink, clink. Changeover day is closer than you think.
Learn the value of the coins and the way that they appear
and things will be much smoother when the decimal point is here.
Dollar Bill Decimal Currency Jingle was sung to the tune of the most well known song in Australia, “Click go the Shears”.
After the new money system was completed, we then changed weights, heights, distances, temperatures etc. The only Imperial measurement I can remember from before 1966 is the height of footballers.
Hello Hels, As soon as you mentioned "Click go the shears" my mind went "Click, click, click!" I think I learned that song in my childhood, but having just listened to the authentic Australian version, we kids must have been given watered-down lyrics--you Aussies!
-
I thought that the dollars-pence song must be on Youtube, and so it is, a memory for some, but fun for the rest of us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZTeWLA1LAs
--Jim
From villains to heroes. I've never understood the interest in violent criminals.
I suppose the name 'bandit' would suit those bush rangers who harassed the settlers, miners, aborigines. In the above poster,Captain Thunderbolt might look like a robber, but hardly a killer. Well, some of them tried to avoid violence, being interested only in the money.
I remember learning about some of the bushrangers in primary school, dear Hels, and it seemed that it was presented as a benign and almost endearing feature to our colonial history, along with Cobb & Co and wool bales and whatnot, and that they often ended their short lives in a blaze of gunfire was rather in keeping with typical playground games. Of course, with age comes a bit of a reality check and in the main, I have no affection for any of these proper scoundrels. The Robin Hood-style of mythology was way off the mark.
Jim, I was born just as the 1966 currency conversion happened, so the jingle predates my memory, and watching the clip just now was the first time I'd seen the whole thing. For some reason, I can think in feet and inches for height and stones and pounds for bodyweight as easily as the metric, like an unfounded ambidexterity for a couple of things. (Actually, it was no doubt because bathroom scales and rulers and tape measures had both printed for decades!) But imperially-measured recipes that call for the mysterious ounces always send me off to an online converter or when an American is mentioned as weighing a hundred and something pounds, I have to figure out the number of stones or else covert it to kilos to get a sense of their size.
Parnassus
I had looked for the youtube, but couldn't find it. So I am very grateful to you.
Fun60
I doubt that normal newspaper readers were excited by violence. But I think they were truly thrilled by the anti-authority position taken by struggling working men who felt exploited by British colonial rulers, courts, soldiers, police and mine owners. There weren't many working class heroes back in the day.
DUTA
I agree... bushrangers were in the struggle for money, not for killing. But Uralla township has a bronze statue honouring Capt Thunderbolt, created with the aid of a $70,000 grant from the NSW Bicentennial Council. The current fight is about attracting tourists to Uralla Vs glorifying a man who shot three policemen.
Pipistrello
in primary school we were taught a lot of historical material that later turned out to be either mildly incorrect or totally outrageous. For example the appalling and racist treatment of aboriginal families was never mentioned, probably because it would have given 10 year olds nightmares.
An example that gave nightmares to me, a mature adult, was the shooting of young Australian WW1 soldiers by their own officers - if they wandered around the battle ground with shell shock.
This was utterly fascinating history to me, and unknown. Growing up in Paris and going to school there we had such long French history to learn, starting before the Merovingians until the 3rd republic including all the kings, battles and history of the rest of Europe that history of the US or Australia was not taught, or barely. I knew about the US far west because my dad took me to watch western films, but that’s about it. But then these were American movies, not a source of history. These outlaws’ lives and exploits make for good books, of course romanticized to sell more copies; then the film makers change the plots even more.
That makes me think about the English author Patrick O’Brian who wrote a series of historical sea novels happening during the Napoleonic Wars. I have his “The Far Side of the World, Master and Commander” somewhere on the shelves in my Atlanta house. A movie was made in 2003 with that title starring Australian actor Russell Crowe. The film received many awards. In the book though the enemy is the Americans warship the USS Norfolk, but this was filmed during the Iraq war period and the producers did not want to “offend” the US audience (not ever liking to lose a battle and loving to put the French down (freedom fries…) so they changed the plot in the movie from the American enemy to the French in the privateer frigate Acheron. Voila, instant enemy to please the public. Another film called Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis had many inaccuracies but the producers said ”it is not a documentary but fiction based on historical events.” However they distributed 37,100 copies to US secondary schools with teaching guides…(why are US students doing so poorly may one ask?) Maybe Australian authors are like their US counterparts, writing fiction based on history, but not really on facts, as you say to “thrill the audience.”
Vagabonde
yes! Students are often well educated in history and geography, depending on the national curriculum where they grew up. So I knew a great deal about Britain and its entire Empire in school, then French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian history at university. But even then, it depended as you noted on the sources (books, films and journal articles) selected for students.
I am not sure that the outlaws’ exploits were romanticised simply to sell more books and films to a gullible audience. But I do agree that voluntary or invisible censorship of history occurred to not offend the public. For example I am not sure that Americans knew about the destruction of innocent peoples' lives that occurred during the McCarthy era... until ages after McCarthy died.
Hi Hels - it's good to know that some of the back story is still available to know about, and realise more about ... all the best - Hilary
Hilary
Many thanks. Even for those of us who have read this sort of history before, we still have to ask how much is nationalist propaganda, how much is political nonsense and how much of the contemporary writing could be trusted. This morning I was asking the same questions exactly, while writing about the Great Deportation in Canada during 1755–64.
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