Bushranger

William Strutt's Bushrangers on the St Kilda Road, painted in 1887, depicts what Strutt described as "one of the most daring robberies attempted in Victoria" in 1852.^[1] The road was the scene of frequent hold-ups during the Victorian gold rush by bushrangers, mostly former convicts from Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania), which collectively became known as the St Kilda Road robberies.

Bushrangers originally referred to escaped convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia who had the survival skills necessary to use the Australian bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term "bushranger" had evolved to refer to those who abandoned social rights and privileges to take up "robbery under arms" as a way of life, using the bush as their base.^[2] These bushrangers, mostly colonial-born sons of convicts, were roughly analogous to British "highwaymen" and outlaws of the American Old West, and their crimes typically included robbing small-town banks and coach services; in more infamous cases, such as that of Dan Morgan, the Clarke brothers, and Australia's most well-known bushranger, Ned Kelly, numerous policemen were murdered. Kelly's execution in 1880 effectively represented the end of the bushranging era.

History

Convict Joseph Lycett's View upon the Napean (1825) shows a party of bushrangers with guns.

Captain Thunderbolt's death in 1870 marked the end of the bushranging epidemic in New South Wales.

More than 2000 bushrangers are believed to have roamed the Australian countryside, beginning with the convict bolters and drawing to a close after Ned Kelly's last stand at Glenrowan.^[3]

1850s: gold rush era

The bushrangers' heyday was the Gold Rush years of the 1850s and 1860s as the discovery of gold gave bushrangers access to great wealth that was portable and easily converted to cash. Their task was assisted by the isolated location of the goldfields and a police force decimated by troopers abandoning their duties to join the gold rush.^[3]

George Melville was hanged in front of a large crowd for robbing the McIvor gold escort near Castlemaine in 1853.^[3]

1860s

Bushranging numbers flourished in New South Wales with the rise of the colonial-born sons of poor, often ex-convict squatters who were drawn to a more glamorous life than mining or farming.^[3]

Much of the activity in this era was in the Lachlan Valley, around Forbes, Yass and Cowra.^[3]

Frank Gardiner, John Gilbert and Ben Hall led the most notorious gangs of the period. Other active bushrangers included Dan Morgan, based in the Murray River, and Captain Thunderbolt.^[3] Thunderbolt was the most successful Australian bushranger, if bushranging longevity is the benchmark, as he bushranged across northern New South Wales for six-and-a-half years until shot near Uralla in 1870.^[4] With his death, the New South Wales bushranging epidemic of the 1860s officially ended.^[5]

1870s to 1900s

The increasing push of settlement, increased police efficiency, improvements in rail transport and communications technology, such as telegraphy, made it increasingly difficult for bushrangers to evade capture.

Among the last bushrangers was the Kelly Gang led by Ned Kelly, who were captured at Glenrowan in 1880, two years after they were outlawed.

In 1900 the indigenous Governor Brothers terrorised much of northern New South Wales.^[3]

Public perception

Tom Roberts' 1895 painting Bailed Up depicts a Cobb & Co hold up from the 1860s. Rather than appear threatening, the bushrangers are "casual, almost laconic"–characteristics regarded as quintessentially Australian.

In Australia, bushrangers often attract public sympathy (cf. the concept of social bandits). In Australian history and iconography bushrangers are held in some esteem in some quarters due to the harshness and anti-Catholicism of the colonial authorities whom they embarrassed, and the romanticism of the lawlessness they represented. Some bushrangers, most notably Ned Kelly in his Jerilderie letter, and in his final raid on Glenrowan, explicitly represented themselves as political rebels. Attitudes to Kelly, by far the most well-known bushranger, exemplify the ambivalent views of Australians regarding bushranging. Victoria's state cricket team adopted 'Bushrangers' as their team nickname in honour of those such as the Kelly Gang, who lived in the Victorian bush.

In popular culture

Actor playing Ned Kelly in The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), the world's first feature-length narrative film

Tom Roberts, one of the leading figures of the Heidelberg School (also known as Australian Impressionism), depicted bushrangers in some of his historical paintings, including In a corner on the Macintyre (1894) and Bailed Up (1895), both set in Inverell, the area where Captain Thunderbolt was once active.

Although not the first Australian film with a bushranging theme, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906)—the world's first feature-length narrative film—is regarded as having set the template for the genre. On the back of the film's success, its producers released one of two 1907 film adaptations of Boldrewood's Robbery Under Arms (the other being Charles MacMahon's version). Entering the first "golden age" of Australian cinema (1910–12), director John Gavin released two fictionalised accounts of real-life bushrangers: Moonlite (1910) and Thunderbolt (1910). The genre's popularity with audiences led to a spike of production unprecedented in world cinema.^[6] Dan Morgan (1911) is notable for portraying its title character as an insane villain rather than a figure of romance. Ben Hall, Frank Gardiner, Captain Starlight, and numerous other bushrangers also received cinematic treatments at this time. Alarmed by what they saw as the glorification of outlawery, state governments imposed a ban on bushranger films in 1912, effectively removing "the entire folklore relating to bushrangers ... from the most popular form of cultural expression."^[7] It is seen as a major reason for the collapse of a booming Australian film industry.^[8] One of the few Australian films to escape the ban before it was lifted in the 1940s is the 1920 adaptation of Robbery Under Arms.^[6] Also during this lull appeared American takes on the bushranger genre, including The Bushranger (1928) and Captain Fury (1939).

Anticipating the Australian New Wave of the early 1970s, Ned Kelly starred Mick Jagger in the title role. Dennis Hopper portrayed Dan Morgan in Mad Dog Morgan (1976).

• Jack Donahue was the first bushranger to have inspired bush ballads.^[9]
• The first major play written, published and produced in Australia was The Bushrangers by Henry Melville.
• Robbery Under Arms, by Thomas Alexander Browne (writing as Rolf Boldrewood), was published in serial form in the The Sydney Mail from 1882 to 1883.^[10] It is an early account of the lives of fictional bushrangers and has been adapted for several films and a television series.^[11] It is also cited as an important influence on the American writer Owen Wister's 1902 novel The Virginian, widely regarded as the first Western.^[12]
• Ben Hall and his gang were the subject of several Australian folk songs, including "Streets of Forbes".
• Wild Boys, the 2011 TV series, features a gang of bushrangers.
• "The Outlaw Michael Howe," the 2013 ABC TV miniseries, recounts the story of "Michael Howe", an early bushranger active in Tasmania.
• The Legend of Ben Hall, an upcoming feature film due for release in 2016, based on the true story of New South Wales bushrangers Ben Hall, John Gilbert and John Dunn.

Notable bushrangers

Joe Byrne

John Dunn

Ben Hall

Moondyne Joe

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bushrangers.

• Bushrangers trail at Picture Australia
• Bushrangers at Australianhistory website
• Bushrangers on the National Museum of Australia website