Yes, in the annals of Australian history, the name Ben Hall stands out as one of the most infamous and intriguing figures of the 19th century. Born in a penal colony, raised in the rugged Australian bush, Hall's life story is as captivating as it is tragic.
This Website, "Ben Hall: From Stockman to Bushranger," aims to delve into the life and times of this notorious bushranger. Drawing from historical records, newspaper accounts, and personal testimonies, we will journey through Hall's life, from his humble beginnings in New South Wales to his violent end at the hands of the NSW police.
Ben Hall was not born a criminal. He was a child of convicts, yes, but he was also a skilled stockman, a loving brother, and father. A respected member of his community. So, how did this young man, known for his good looks and charm, become one of the most feared bushrangers in Australian history? What forces drove him to a life of crime? And how did his actions impact the lives of those around him and the course of Australian history?
In the following webpages, we will explore these questions and more. We will delve into the societal and historical context of Hall's life, shedding light on the conditions that gave rise to bushranging in 19th-century Australia. We will also examine Hall's personal relationships, his criminal exploits, and the legacy he left behind.
"Ben Hall: From Stockman to Bushranger" is more than just a biography. It is a journey into a fascinating and tumultuous period in Australian history, seen through the eyes of one of its most notorious figures. So, let us embark on this journey together, into the life and times of Ben Hall, the bushranger who captured the imagination and fear of a nation. (All historical related articles incorporated into the narrative are coloured and transcribed as published.)
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| A Good Looking Man |
His father, Benjamin Hall senior, was born at Bristol, England, in 1805. Convicted of theft, he was sentenced to seven years' transportation and arrived at Port Jackson in 1827 aboard the Midas. Ben's mother, Eliza Somers, was born in Dublin in 1808 and likewise received a seven-year sentence for theft. She reached New South Wales in 1830 aboard the Asia I.
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| Hall's Creek Area. Google Earth image. |
Upon reaching the Barnard River district, the Hall family established a modest homestead beside a small creek that flowed into the river. Benjamin Hall senior built their dwelling on its banks, and in later years the watercourse became known as Ben Hall's Creek, a reminder of the family's long association with the locality. The country was remote, rugged and heavily timbered. Winters were often bitterly cold, with snow not uncommon on the surrounding ranges, while the summers could be intensely hot. Later residents would simply describe it as "very mountainous country,"¹ a landscape that demanded resilience from those who attempted to make a living there.
The route by which the family reached this isolated district can be reconstructed with reasonable confidence. A. A. McLellan, in Benjamin Hall and Family, suggests that the Halls most likely followed the inland track established by the Australian Agricultural Company, travelling through Arden Hall, Belltrees and Ellerston before joining the Walcha Track to Glenrock. From there they descended to the junction of the Barnard River and the creek that would later bear the Hall name.
For Benjamin Hall senior, survival depended upon resourcefulness rather than capital. Like many frontier settlers of the period, he built his herd by capturing wild cattle and horses that roamed the surrounding valleys. These animals, descendants of stock that had strayed from earlier pastoral runs, provided the foundation of the family's livelihood. Through hard work and bushcraft, the Halls gradually established themselves in a district where self-reliance was essential, and neighbours were few.
It was in this isolated frontier environment that Ben Hall spent his earliest years. Surrounded by horses, cattle and the daily demands of pastoral life, he acquired the practical bush skills that later became second nature. The rugged country of Murrurundi, with its steep ranges, dense timber and hidden valleys, formed the backdrop of his childhood and instilled the horsemanship, endurance and intimate knowledge of the Australian bush that would later prove invaluable during his years as a stockman—and, ultimately, as a bushranger.
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| Remains of the Halls Creek home. c. 1932. Courtesy A.A. McLellan. |
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| March 1841 |
For Eliza Hall, the move represented a marked improvement in living conditions. Instead of an isolated homestead surrounded by rugged bush, Haydonton offered the advantages of an emerging township, including neighbours, shops, tradesmen and the social interaction largely absent from life at Hall's Creek. Although still a frontier settlement, it provided a far greater sense of community than the lonely valleys of the upper Barnard.
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Bridge House,built by Samuel Clift |
Later research, however, has placed his birth much more convincingly in the Maitland district. The commonly repeated Breeza connection appears to belong instead to the Hall family's earlier movements and, particularly, to Ben's elder brother Edward, who was born in 1836 while the family was associated with Samuel Clift's pastoral interests at Breeza. Modern biographical authorities locate Ben's birth at Maitland rather than Breeza.
One possible birthplace is Bridge House, the substantial residence erected by former convict and successful settler Samuel Clift beside Wallis Creek at East Maitland. Maitland historical records confirm Clift's association with Bridge House and the Hall family's employment within his pastoral enterprise.
Benjamin Hall senior worked for Clift in the cattle and pastoral business, while Eliza appears to have been employed within the Clift household. This makes the suggestion that Ben was born on or near Clift's East Maitland property entirely plausible. It does not, however, establish Bridge House itself as the precise place of birth.
There is another credible possibility.
Eliza's sister Catherine Wynn, who had likewise been transported to New South Wales under a seven-year sentence, was living at East Maitland with her husband John Wynn. Given the closeness ordinarily found within such transplanted family networks, Catherine may well have assisted her younger sister during pregnancy and childbirth. Eliza later naming a daughter Catherine provides an interesting familial connection, although it cannot by itself prove that Ben was born in the Wynn household.
The safest conclusion, therefore, is that Ben Hall was born in the Maitland district, probably at East Maitland, while his parents were associated with Samuel Clift. Whether his actual birthplace was Bridge House, Catherine Wynn's home, or another nearby residence remains unresolved.
The date presents a separate historical problem.
The traditional date used in modern biographies is 9 May 1837. Yet an important contemporary source points elsewhere. Information supplied by Hall's great-grandson, has likewise supported a February 1837 birth rather than May.
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| Benjamin Hall land purchase Haydonton. Courtesy Haydon papers Vol-3 |
"The first parcel to be sold was 2 acres situated on the south side of the main road at the ford and is the parcel of land now bounded by Mayne, Adelaide and Liverpool Streets and the Page's River. The purchaser was Benjamin Hall, a ticket-of-leave holder, but an independent grazier from Breeza where he had been employed by Samuel Clift. He paid £140, a price which indicated that there was probably a hut on the land."
Benjamin Hall senior quickly improved the holding. The original hut was enlarged into a more substantial slab-built residence roofed with bark and containing three bedrooms. As the family's circumstances improved, additional buildings were erected, including a butcher's shop and a blacksmith's forge. Together these transformed the property from a simple frontier dwelling into a productive family enterprise that served both the growing township and travellers passing through the district.
For young Ben Hall, the move marked another important stage in his upbringing. Instead of being raised solely in the isolation of the frontier, he now grew up within a busy rural settlement where drovers, stockmen, blacksmiths, teamsters and travellers were part of everyday life. His father's success also demonstrated an important lesson: in colonial Australia, determination, practical skill and hard work could allow even former convicts to build respectable and prosperous lives.
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Reputed home of the
Hall family,
Murrurundi.
However, this may actually be the rented home of Dr Hallett. c. 1900. Courtesy A.A. McLellan. |
In 1854, amid growing marital difficulties, the property was advertised for sale. The advertisement provides one of the most detailed contemporary descriptions of the Hall family's home:
"In the flourishing town of Haydonton... are erected a snug cottage, three rooms, butcher's shop, kitchen, blacksmith's shop; a splendid well of water, commanding from ten to fifteen feet of water in dry seasons; a small orchard, garden, three stock yards, two gallows; and the whole is enclosed by a four-railed fence. The property's situation is eligible, having an extensive frontage, and commands the main thoroughfare to all the Northern Diggings."
Research contained within the Haydon Family Papers suggests that the Hall held two residences and the one depicted (right) may have been the bark-roofed slab cottage later rented to Dr Hallett on Mayne Street. If correct, this would identify one of the few surviving visual associations with Ben Hall's childhood home.
There also was a medical practitioner residing in Haydonton in a house belonging to Benjamin Hall - Dr Hallett.
Townsend was struck by the contentment of the inhabitants. Most families, he observed, owned cattle running upon the surrounding country and consequently "were at no loss either for meat, or a matter of constant interest." His description portrays a settlement that, although isolated, possessed the confidence and optimism characteristic of an expanding pastoral frontier.
It was in this environment that Ben Hall spent his formative years. Alongside his elder brothers—Thomas Wade, William and Edward—he helped capture and muster wild cattle and horses in the rugged country surrounding Murrurundi. These were not merely childhood adventures but an essential contribution to the family's livelihood. The work demanded courage, horsemanship and intimate familiarity with difficult country. Long before Hall became known as a bushranger, he had earned a reputation as an accomplished horseman and bushman. The skills acquired during these years would later enable him to travel extraordinary distances, evade police through difficult terrain and survive where less experienced riders could not.
Despite its later importance, Haydonton remained a very small settlement. In 1841 neighbouring Murrurundi contained only eleven houses and a population of fifty-two people, while Haydonton itself was even smaller, with just twenty-two residents. Yet each settlement possessed an inn that served as its social and commercial centre—the White Swan at Murrurundi and the White Hart at Haydonton. Around these establishments revolved much of the district's business, travel and exchange of news.
Educational opportunities were equally limited. Formal schooling scarcely existed during Hall's early childhood. Instruction was initially provided informally by James Gowan, a former lock-up keeper who acted more as a tutor than a professional schoolmaster. Recognising the deficiencies, Thomas Haydon led efforts to establish a National School for the district. At the time, some 120 school-aged children had no regular access to education following the departure of the Reverend George Anderson.
Funding such a school proved difficult. Parents were asked to contribute five pounds annually—a considerable burden for frontier families—while also assisting with the construction of both the schoolhouse and the master's residence. Despite these obstacles, a National School finally opened in 1851 under the direction of Alexander Brodie and his sister, Mrs Reid.
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| Hall's mark. Marriage Certificate. |
Therefore, records do not indicate that Ben Hall attended any school. Unlike his elder sister Mary, whereas Ben remained illiterate throughout his life, signing documents with an X. What is clear is that his real education lay beyond the classroom. The hills, rivers and stock routes of the Upper Hunter became his school; horses, cattle and the demanding routines of pastoral life his teachers. It was an upbringing that produced not only an accomplished stockman but one of the finest horsemen of his generation.
Livestock remained central to the family's prosperity. Like many small settlers on the colonial frontier, the Halls relied upon cattle and horses as both working assets and stores of wealth. Yet ownership of stock in the unsettled districts of New South Wales was frequently accompanied by suspicion. Stock wandered over vast unfenced runs, brands were altered or removed, and proving ownership could be difficult. The line between legitimate acquisition and stock theft was often blurred, particularly in districts where escaped animals and wild cattle roamed freely.
By 1845, Benjamin Hall senior had come under increasing scrutiny. Local opinion increasingly regarded him as a cattle and horse thief, and allegations concerning the origin of his livestock became more persistent. Whether every accusation was justified is difficult to determine today, but contemporary records demonstrate that his reputation had become firmly tarnished.
The atmosphere of Haydonton itself did little to discourage such behaviour. As a frontier settlement serving travellers, stockmen and teamsters, the township acquired a reputation for heavy drinking, gambling and frequent disorder. The White Hart Inn became the centre of much of this activity, and even members of the local police were not immune to its influence.
A correspondent to The Australian painted an unflattering picture of the settlement in April 1843 after the district's Chief Constable, William Shields, seriously injured himself while allegedly intoxicated. According to the report, Shields had been displaying his horsemanship outside the White Hart after consuming excessive liquor, attempting to leap logs to entertain spectators. The correspondent observed that Haydonton had become a gathering place for "low life characters," where horse racing, cricket and other diversions were of almost daily occurrence, adding pointedly that the constables themselves were enthusiastic participants rather than impartial guardians of the peace.
Whether exaggerated or not, the article reflects the reputation Haydonton had acquired during the early 1840s. It was a settlement where policing was often imperfect, alcohol flowed freely, and respectable citizens lived alongside men whose occupations and characters were considerably less certain.
Concerned by the growing social problems, Thomas Haydon attempted to improve conditions by establishing a Temperance Society. Although membership remained modest, Haydon later remarked upon what he believed was a noticeable improvement in the behaviour and appearance of the township's inhabitants, recording that "the change in morals and appearance of the people is wonderful."
For Benjamin Hall senior, however, improving public morals came too late. The allegations surrounding his stock dealings eventually attracted official attention, culminating in the issue of a warrant for his arrest on a charge of horse stealing. Before the authorities could execute the warrant, James Gowan—the town's lock-up keeper and a friend of Hall senior—warned him that his arrest was imminent. Gowan's loyalty cost him his position; once his actions became known, he was dismissed from the service.
Forewarned, Benjamin Hall senior fled before the police arrived. Assisted by his wife Eliza and his eldest son William, he escaped from Haydonton and travelled approximately two hundred miles south into the Lachlan district, placing considerable distance between himself and the authorities.
The flight marked a decisive turning point in the fortunes of the Hall family. Young Ben Hall was still only a boy, yet he had now witnessed the collapse of his father's respectable position within the community. The successful butcher, property owner and independent settler became a fugitive from the law. The move to the Lachlan would remove the family from the relative stability of the Upper Hunter and place them within another frontier district—one that would ultimately become inseparable from Ben Hall's own life and legend.
With Hall senior now beyond the district, these associations joined with the colonial authorities in seeking his arrest. A reward notice offering £15 for his apprehension was widely circulated through the Government Gazette and colonial newspapers, ensuring that his description became known throughout New South Wales.
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| Ben Hall's father Wanted. Courtesy N.L.A. |
The pastoral associations further increased the incentive for his capture by offering an additional £10 reward, demonstrating the determination of local landowners to suppress organised stock theft. Their efforts formed part of a broader movement towards coordinated policing and private cooperation in combating rural crime during the 1840s.
Hall senior successfully evaded capture for more than two years. During that time he lived under the protection of Hugh Hamilton on the Lachlan, beyond the immediate reach of the Upper Hunter authorities. His freedom finally ended in October 1848 when Constable Hoy of the New South Wales Mounted Police identified and arrested him near the Lachlan River. He was subsequently returned to Murrurundi to answer the outstanding charge.
During Benjamin Hall senior's absence, the burden of maintaining the family's livelihood fell largely upon Eliza and the children. They continued operating the property as best they could, tending livestock, butchering animals and supplementing their income through the sale of fruit and vegetables. Their efforts demonstrate that the Hall family enterprise remained viable despite the loss of its principal breadwinner.
The authorities, however, did not confine their attention to Benjamin Hall senior alone. Suspicion soon extended to his eldest son, William Hall. Although only eleven years of age, William was arrested on allegations of horse stealing, accused of assisting his father in the movement of stolen stock. The accusation illustrates both the intensity of official scrutiny directed at the Hall family and the extent to which Benjamin Hall senior's reputation had tainted those closest to him.
Among the allegations associated with the investigation was the particularly cruel practice of killing branded mares in order to obtain possession of their unbranded foals. Contemporary evidence described mares having their throats cut so that the foals, no longer bearing any obvious connection to their rightful owners, could be claimed and reared as apparently legitimate stock. Whether Benjamin Hall senior personally committed every act attributed to him remains a matter for the historical record, but such accusations reveal the methods commonly associated with organised horse stealing in colonial New South Wales and the reasons pastoralists regarded the offence with such seriousness. William admitted to:
The killing of two mares for their Unbranded foals by slitting the mare's throats and letting them bleed to death.⁴
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William Hall, 1910
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Evidence later given by Thomas Blair, Clerk of the Court, provides a disturbing glimpse into William's treatment while in custody. Blair described a frightened child, overwhelmed by both his surroundings and the pressure placed upon him during the investigation.
"The boy cried very much through fear; he was kept there some days."
On 4 October 1845 William was transferred from Murrurundi to Parramatta Gaol. There he remained in custody while the authorities prepared their case. Contemporary evidence noted that the boy was instructed in his prayers by the Ladies of Charity and was considered capable of understanding the consequences of giving false evidence under oath.
He remained at Parramatta until March 1846, when he was returned to Murrurundi to give evidence at the forthcoming trial.
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William Hall, aged eleven, Parramatta Gaol Entrance Book, 4th October 1845.
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Young Ben Hall witnessed these events at an impressionable age. Before reaching his teenage years, he had seen his father hunted by police, his elder brother imprisoned, and his family publicly disgraced. The experience introduced him, long before he himself came into conflict with the law, to the realities of criminal investigation, imprisonment, informers and divided family loyalties—experiences that would later echo throughout his own life.
When William Hall's trial commenced at Maitland in March 1846, the young boy found himself in the impossible position of giving evidence in proceedings that centred upon his own father. Despite the pressures placed upon him during months of imprisonment, William initially attempted to shield Benjamin Hall senior from implication.
His efforts quickly drew the attention of the presiding judge. When asked to identify the man who had accompanied him to Abbott's Run, William deliberately withheld the individual's name. The judge immediately intervened, explaining that identifying the person would not incriminate him merely by naming him. Only after this rebuke did William reluctantly answer that the man was "Benjamin Hall, his father."
The exchange demonstrated both the boy's instinctive loyalty and the emotional conflict in which he found himself. Even after months in custody and separation from his family, William's first reaction was still to protect his father.
Under further examination, however, he made admissions that proved deeply damaging to Benjamin Hall senior's defence. William acknowledged that he had himself been involved in horse stealing, although he attempted to minimise his own participation. He stated that he had not "quite helped" to kill the mares, adding that the actual killing had been carried out by his father and William Butler.
The evidence offered the court a rare insight into the operation of organised horse stealing in the colony. The destruction of branded mares allowed their unbranded foals to be retained and later claimed as legitimately acquired stock. Whether William fully appreciated the significance of his testimony is doubtful, but his evidence directly connected his father with the offences under investigation. Not all contemporary observers viewed the boy sympathetically.
One newspaper contrasted William's youth with what it regarded as his apparent familiarity with criminal deception, remarking:
"But that of Hall, a boy, although young in years, evidently old in crime, and well versed in dissimulation."
Nevertheless, the proceedings left an enduring impression upon the Hall family. Young Ben Hall watched as his elder brother was publicly examined, imprisoned and portrayed in the colonial press as already corrupted by crime. Before Ben had reached adolescence, he had witnessed his father's transformation into a wanted stock thief, his family's public disgrace, his mother's rejection of William following his testimony, and the criminal courts becoming deeply entwined with the fortunes of the Hall household.
These experiences formed part of the environment in which Ben Hall grew to maturity. Long before he became a bushranger himself, he had been exposed to the realities of colonial policing, criminal prosecution and the devastating effect that accusations of stock theft could have upon an entire family.
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| Mary Hall c. 1905. Penzig. |
No one told her to say so here. She told her mother what she had heard from her brother. Her brother used to ride about after the cattle; her father had 60 or 70 head, and 8 or 10 head of horses.¹⁰
He had a daughter of Benjamin Hall's at his school, but was not aware of her coming to the Court to contradict her brother; his school was within eighty yards of the lockup and was patronised by the most respectable people in Murrurundi. Considerable laughter was excited by this witness's off-hand manner of giving his evidence.¹¹
Benjamin Hall senior intended that his family should eventually join him in the Lachlan after his escape from Murrurundi. Those plans, however, never came to fruition.
Eliza Hall, then heavily pregnant with the couple's youngest child, Ellen, refused to undertake the journey. According to A. A. McLellan in Benjamin Hall and Family, her decision was based upon both practical necessity and bitter personal experience. She objected to the long and arduous journey into the Lachlan and dreaded returning to the primitive frontier conditions she had endured during the family's earlier years at Hall's Creek.
McLellan records:
"However, Eliza, who was then pregnant, objected to moving both on the ground of the long and tedious journey to get to the Lachlan area and that she and the children would be returning to primitive conditions she had endured."
The separation proved permanent. Among those left behind was Ben's elder brother Edward. Contemporary family accounts suggest that Edward deeply resented both his father's departure and the decision to take Ben instead of him. Whether that choice reflected Benjamin Hall senior's particular confidence in his younger son or simply practical considerations cannot now be known, but it appears to have created a lasting estrangement between father and son that was never repaired.
For Ben Hall, the consequences were profound. The journey to the Lachlan marked the beginning of a new life under the guidance of his father, separated from the influence of his mother and the settled community in which he had spent his childhood. It was also, unknowingly, a final farewell.
Ben Hall never saw his mother again.
Eliza Hall remained in the Upper Hunter, where she gave birth to her youngest child, Ellen. She lived until 1869, surviving both her estranged husband and the bushranging career of the son who had left with him more than twenty years earlier. By the time of her death, Ben Hall himself had been dead for four years, killed beside Billabong Creek on 5 May 1865.
The family's division in 1845 therefore became far more than a temporary separation. It marked the point at which Ben Hall's upbringing diverged permanently from that of the siblings who remained with their mother. From then onward, his formative years would be spent in the Lachlan under the influence of Benjamin Hall senior—a man already living beyond the reach of the law and immersed in the rough pastoral frontier that would ultimately shape his son's destiny.
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| Benjamin Hall arrested 30th October 1848 at Hamilton's station. Courtesy NLA. |
The journey itself would have been an education for the thirteen-year-old Hall. Moving stock hundreds of miles through largely unsettled country demanded endurance, horsemanship and an ability to find grass and water along the route. By the time the family reached the Lachlan, Ben was already experienced in handling horses and cattle, but the years that followed would transform him into an exceptional stockman.
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| Hugh Hamilton's leases. Squatting Licences, 1848. |
Ben came under the supervision of Hamilton's head stockman, William Jones. Working cattle across the Lachlan country provided a demanding apprenticeship. Stockmen were required to muster across immense unfenced runs, control difficult cattle and horses, negotiate rivers and scrub, and remain in the saddle for long periods far from the homestead. Hall excelled at the work.
Another of Hamilton's stockmen was James Newell, who became an important friend of the young Hall. Through Newell, Ben was introduced to Daniel Charters, Newell's brother-in-law. Newell had married Charters' sister Agnes in 1850, bringing the families into close association.
The friendship between Hall and Charters would prove particularly consequential.
At this stage there was nothing inherently criminal about their association. They were young men moving within the interconnected world of stockmen, small settlers and pastoral workers of the Lachlan. Yet little more than a decade later Charters would ride with Hall in the Eugowra gold escort robbery and then turn approver, providing evidence against his former companions. The friendship established during Hall's adolescence would therefore eventually become entwined with both his rise into bushranging and the prosecution of those involved in its most spectacular crime.
The Newell family themselves became well established in the district, living for a period at Tommanbil and later becoming associated with several local businesses, including a hotel at Bandon near Eugowra. The relationship between the families appears to have endured. In August 1865, only three months after Hall's death, Agnes Newell gave birth to a son whom the family named Benjamin.
Hall's apprenticeship under William Jones also produced another enduring friendship.
Jones' career as head stockman came to an abrupt end during a muster in the vicinity of Tom Speck's property at The Gap. His horse fell heavily, breaking his thigh and leaving him stranded and badly injured. He remained alone for some time before a party of stockmen found him. Among those involved in assisting the injured man were Ben Hall and Cornelius O'Donnell.
The injury was severe. Jones' leg was roughly set before he could be transported to Bathurst, and his recovery was prolonged. He was eventually left with a pronounced limp that earned him the enduring nickname "Hoppy" Jones.
Many years later the Forbes Times recalled the accident:
"Jones was out mustering in the vicinity of Speck's Gap when his horse fell, breaking the rider's thigh. He lay there alone for a considerable time before being discovered... One of his assistants was a young man named Benjamin Hall."
Unable, or perhaps unwilling, to return permanently to the demanding life of a stockman, Jones eventually entered the hotel trade. At Bathurst he became publican of the Lachlan Inn, situated at the corner of Seymour and Lambert Streets, near what is now Centennial Park.
His association with Hall did not end with their years on Hamilton's run.
As a young married man, Ben and his wife continued to patronise his former supervisor. A later account remembered that "Benjamin Hall and his wife patronised his old Boyd friend for about twelve months" during the happier period before Hall's life began to unravel.
The relationship survived even Hall's descent into bushranging. In March 1865, during the final weeks of his life, Hall robbed Jones' store at Forbes. The episode presents one of the strange contradictions characteristic of Hall's later career: the former stockman, now hunted across the colony, confronting a man who had known him as a thirteen-year-old boy learning the pastoral trade. Hall would be dead only thirty-five days later.
The years spent working for Hugh Hamilton were therefore among the most formative of Ben Hall's life. Here he developed the extraordinary horsemanship for which he later became famous, learned the geography and rhythms of the Lachlan pastoral country, and formed relationships with men whose names would repeatedly intersect with his own.
Some, like William "Hoppy" Jones, remained friends.
Others, like Daniel Charters, would eventually become accomplices—and then witnesses against the gang.
At thirteen, however, none of that lay before him. Ben Hall had arrived in the Lachlan not as a bushranger but as a stockman's son looking for work. By every surviving indication, he was exceptionally well suited to it.
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| (1813-1888) |
Hall appears to have distinguished himself particularly through his understanding of livestock. His ability was not confined to exceptional horsemanship; contemporary recollections suggest that he possessed the stockman's instinctive ability to read the movement and temperament of animals. One later account associated him with the introduction of improved cattle into the district:
"The first man to bring pedigreed Short-horn cattle to the district. The man in charge of the cattle was Ben Hall; after bringing out Mr Hamilton's cattle, Hall was for years on the station as a stockman."
The responsibility is significant. Pedigreed Shorthorns represented valuable breeding stock, and entrusting their movement to Hall suggests that, despite his youth, Hamilton regarded him as a capable and dependable stockman. It also places Hall within the changing pastoral economy of the Lachlan, as graziers sought to improve the quality of their herds rather than relying solely upon the rougher cattle that had characterised the earlier frontier.
Hamilton's various holdings lay within roughly twenty-five miles of the emerging settlement at Black Ridge, later Forbes. For the teenage Hall, these years provided an intimate knowledge of the country that would become the centre of his adult life. The stations, stock routes, watercourses and ranges through which he worked as a young stockman were the same landscapes through which he would later move with remarkable confidence while pursued by police.
The Hall family itself was meanwhile beginning to establish new connections in the district. Ben's elder sister Mary married William Wright, a local stockman and former convict considerably older than herself. Through such marriages and working relationships, the Halls became increasingly embedded within the pastoral community of the Lachlan.
By the end of 1851 Benjamin Hall senior could see that his sons were capable of supporting themselves. They had found steady employment, developed valuable pastoral skills and established connections among local station owners and stockmen. His immediate purpose in bringing them to the Lachlan had therefore largely been accomplished.
Hall senior consequently decided to return to Murrurundi and rejoin Eliza and the children who had remained behind—Edward, Catherine, Robert, Henry and the youngest, Ellen.
For young Ben, the decision represented another significant separation. His father, who had brought him hundreds of miles from the Upper Hunter and introduced him to life on the Lachlan, now departed. Ben remained behind.
Still only fourteen years old, he was effectively beginning an independent working life.
The transition is important in understanding the man he later became. Hall was not raised into adulthood under close parental supervision. By his early teens he was earning his living among adult stockmen in an enormous pastoral district, entrusted with valuable animals and accustomed to travelling considerable distances on horseback. The independence, self-reliance and extraordinary familiarity with the Lachlan that later characterised the bushranger had been acquired years earlier through legitimate pastoral work.
At this point in his life, Ben Hall appears to have been succeeding. He had employment, respected ability with horses and cattle, and an expanding network of friends and acquaintances throughout the district. His father's criminal reputation had followed the family south, but there was as yet little indication that the fourteen-year-old stockman would eventually acquire a far greater notoriety of his own.
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| 15th April 1843, Pages River Racing. Courtesy NLA. |
His affinity with horses, however, had developed long before his arrival there.
Horse racing had been an important feature of Hall's childhood at Murrurundi. His father owned several good horses and participated in the local racing culture that flourished around Haydonton. Racing in these frontier settlements was considerably removed from the formal racecourses of Sydney. Meetings were important social occasions, attracting landholders, stockmen, tradesmen and travellers from across the surrounding district.
The Haydon Family Papers preserve a vivid description of the old Murrurundi course. It began opposite the later school site, ran parallel with Mayne Street towards the vicinity of the Royal Hotel, then turned north across Little Street before circling back towards the starting point. Meetings were held frequently and attracted large fields, with races commonly decided through a series of heats.
Among the horses remembered from these early meetings were Dr Welsh's Death, Mr Butt's Snake, W. Wightman's Cannonball, Henry O'Neil's Wallaby, and horses belonging to the prominent Dangar and Single families. Benjamin Hall senior also entered his own horses, including Jacky Jacky and Roderick.
For young Ben, horses were therefore much more than working animals. From childhood he had watched them bred, trained, compared and raced. He learned to appreciate the qualities that distinguished an ordinary stock horse from an exceptional animal: conformation, stamina, temperament and speed. The excitement and prestige attached to possessing a fine horse made a lasting impression upon him.
That early fascination matured during his years on the Lachlan. Hall became an accomplished judge of horseflesh and retained a particular admiration for well-bred and fast horses throughout his life. In later years, when his circumstances improved, that interest would develop into ownership and racing of horses of his own. Even during his bushranging career, contemporary accounts repeatedly remarked upon the quality of the mounts associated with Hall and his companions.
His ability with livestock extended equally to cattle. Hall was remembered as quiet and reserved, more inclined to demonstrate his competence than advertise it. During mustering he displayed patience and confidence around difficult stock and developed the practical knowledge expected of an experienced cattleman. He could assess the condition of an animal at a glance and determine its approximate age by examining its teeth—an essential skill when buying, selling or sorting cattle on large pastoral runs.
Such abilities were particularly valuable in the unfenced country of the Lachlan, where cattle could scatter across enormous distances and mustering demanded both endurance and judgement. A good stockman needed to anticipate how a mob would react before it moved, recognise when an animal was likely to break away and know when pressure should be applied or relaxed. Hall appears to have possessed these instincts naturally.
His later reputation as one of the finest horsemen in the colony was therefore not created during his years as a bushranger. It was the product of a lifetime spent around horses: first as the son of a butcher, grazier and racing enthusiast at Murrurundi, and then as a teenage stockman learning his trade across the stations of the Lachlan.
Long before the police came to fear Ben Hall's ability to disappear across the countryside on horseback, pastoralists valued precisely the same skills.
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| Ernest & Adelaide |
Among those who knew him was Ernest Bowler, a prominent Lachlan squatter who frequently encountered Hall during mustering. Bowler remembered him as an exceptionally capable bushman whose services were welcomed whenever cattle or wild horses had to be gathered.
In Frederick Howard's The Moleskin Gentry, Bowler recalled:
"Ben Hall had a cattle station at Wheogo, and he used to attend all the musters round. He was one of the smart, devil-may-care bushmen, knew the whole country well, always had a good horse and knew how to ride. He was a good mate at mustering cattle or running wild horses. He could mother calves: that means after a days mustering, he could tell you when drafting next day, whichcalf belonged to which cow - even if tere were a hundred different brands."Bowler particularly remembered Hall's extraordinary ability to identify livestock. During a large muster, cattle belonging to numerous owners might be brought together and held overnight before being separated according to their brands. Cows and calves inevitably became mixed among the mob, presenting stockmen with the difficult task of matching them again.
Hall possessed the ability known as "mothering" calves. Bowler claimed that after a day's muster Hall could identify which calf belonged to which cow even when animals carrying a hundred different brands had been gathered together.
It was a remarkable demonstration of visual memory and practical knowledge. Such a skill required hours of close observation and an ability to recognise subtle differences between individual animals. It helps explain why Hall's services were repeatedly sought by pastoralists throughout the district.
Bowler also remembered Hall personally.
Several years before Hall became a bushranger, Ernest was travelling by dog cart with his visiting sister Adelaide when they encountered Hall driving a wagon towards Wheogo. Bowler recognised him and stopped to exchange greetings. After the two men had spoken and continued on their respective journeys, Adelaide remarked:
"What a good-looking man that was."Her brother replied:
"Yes, and a fine fellow he is, too. He has a place at Wheogo near Grenfell. His name is Ben Hall."The recollection is valuable precisely because nothing remarkable was happening. Hall was not yet an outlaw and Bowler had no reason to romanticise an encounter with a notorious bushranger. He was simply a neighbouring grazier and stockman whom Bowler regarded as competent and respectable.
Other residents remembered him similarly.
Elizabeth Farrand, later Ernest Bowler's wife, arrived in Forbes with her family in 1857. Her father, William Farrand, became a prominent local magistrate and was associated with the Lachlan Observer. Elizabeth's later relationship with Hall's memory was considerably more complicated than Ernest's.
As a girl she encountered Hall under very different circumstances during his bushranging years. At Yamma Station she and others were detained by Hall's gang, while her father was threatened with a flogging. Yet despite the frightening circumstances of that encounter, Elizabeth's recollections of Hall remained surprisingly favourable. In later life she repeatedly referred to him as "the good-looking young man" and remembered his earlier reputation in the district with evident interest.
Her description of the young stockman closely corresponded with that of her future husband:
"Mrs. Bowler describes him as being a well-built, good looking young man with a pleasant disposition which gained him the friendship of all with whom he came in contact. A splendid rider and a good stockman, his services were frequently in demand."These recollections should not be mistaken for evidence that Hall possessed an uniformly gentle character. They were recorded many years after the events, when the mythology surrounding the bushranger was already well established. Nevertheless, their consistency with accounts from people who knew Hall before his outlawry makes them significant.
A somewhat different portrait emerged from other old residents.
When the Freeman's Journal published reminiscences of the bushranging era in 1930, Hall was remembered as possessing "a certain detachment and shyness." The description suggests that the easy confidence displayed on horseback did not necessarily extend to every aspect of his personality. He could apparently be reserved and self-contained, qualities that accord with other recollections of a man who tended to demonstrate his abilities rather than advertise them.
Thomas Bates, remembering Hall many decades later, provided another dimension. He recalled that Ben "could spin a good yarn and sing a song in the rough, boisterous fashion of the day." The shy stockman was therefore not socially withdrawn. Among people he knew, he could participate readily in the convivial culture of the pastoral frontier.
Taken together, these recollections provide a surprisingly coherent picture.
Hall was remembered as physically attractive, exceptionally capable on horseback, observant with livestock and confident in the bush. He could be quiet and somewhat detached, yet among companions he was capable of humour, storytelling and song. Most importantly, he appears to have enjoyed a broad circle of acquaintances extending across an enormous area of the Central West.
"An amiable sincerity of soul, a generosity of spirit, and an honesty in all his dealings with his fellow-settlers that won their friendliest esteem. He was steady, industrious, temperate, keenly intelligent, and, above all, always ready to give a helping hand to a neighbour."
Such retrospective descriptions must inevitably be treated with some caution, particularly after Hall's transformation into a legendary figure. Nevertheless, they accord with other recollections of his early life. Before the events that made his name notorious, Hall appears to have been regarded throughout the Lachlan as an industrious and capable young stockman with considerable prospects.
Hugh Hamilton evidently recognised those qualities.
Jack Bradshaw, writing many decades later in Frank Gardiner, Ben Hall & Gang, claimed that Hamilton became particularly fond of the young man after recognising his exceptional ability with stock. Bradshaw's account relied substantially upon information supplied by Hall's elder brother William and therefore provides an important family recollection, although one recorded long after the events.
According to Bradshaw:
"Mr Hamilton grew very fond of young Ben, finding out he possessed great ability as a stockman. Mr Hamilton gave Ben permission to graze horses and cattle on his station, which young Ben did, and purchased out of his salary in about three years a small station. He became full manager for Mr Hamilton. The seasons were good and the grass plentiful, so that young Ben became fairly rich."
The precise chronology of Hall's advancement is difficult to establish, but the broader picture is consistent with what is known of his early adulthood. Hall was earning wages while still in his teens, investing in livestock of his own and taking advantage of access to grazing country. Rather than drifting towards criminality, he appears during these years to have been moving steadily towards independence as a small pastoralist.
Life as a stockman was nevertheless demanding. Hall's duties would have included mustering, droving, branding and castrating cattle, breaking horses and protecting livestock from dingoes and other threats. Days commonly began around sunrise and continued until the work was completed, often well into the evening.
The ordinary rhythm of station life was punctuated by the great musters.
Several times each year men converged upon the principal stations from distant parts of the runs. Stockmen from neighbouring properties often joined them, and temporary yards were erected to handle the enormous mobs assembled from the surrounding country. The work meant long hours in the saddle, days spent away from the homestead and nights sleeping beneath the stars in blankets and swags.
For young men such as Hall, however, the muster was more than work. It was also an arena in which horsemanship, courage and reputation were tested before one's peers.
Few activities demonstrated those qualities more dramatically than running the wild horses known as warrigals.
Large mobs roamed the western stations, sometimes becoming serious pests by competing with domestic stock for pasture. At other times valuable broken horses escaped and joined them. Capturing a mob required riders capable of pursuing horses at speed through scrub and broken country, maintaining their bearings while anticipating how the mob would turn.
A retrospective account published by the Sydney Morning Herald in 1914 described the qualities demanded of such men. The successful stockman was an "active, game fellow" and "a first-class horseman," possessing what contemporaries called the "bump of locality"—an exceptional instinct for direction that enabled him to negotiate complicated bush country without becoming lost.
Hall possessed precisely those qualities.
Running warrigals could involve miles of hard riding. Stockmen sometimes used quiet horses as "trailers" to draw the wild mob towards yards, while a stallion could prove especially useful in holding the horses together. Once the chase began, however, success depended upon courage, judgement and exceptional riding.
There was also money to be made.
Ray Saint Smith later recalled that captured wild horses, once broken and brought under control, could command prices of £15 to £20 each—a substantial return beyond the ordinary wages of a station hand. For young stockmen, the chase therefore combined sport, prestige and financial opportunity.
Hall excelled in this environment. His easy manner and exceptional riding made him a conspicuous figure during the great musters, while his ability to negotiate difficult country at speed became part of his reputation. The same skills that later allowed him to elude mounted police had been developed years earlier in legitimate competition with cattle and wild horses.
The dangers were equally real.
In about 1853, when Hall was approximately sixteen years old, he suffered a serious accident while attempting to handle a spirited horse named Slasher, remembered as a racehorse on the local bush circuits. The horse suddenly lashed out, catching Hall and throwing him heavily. His leg was badly fractured.
The injury was severe enough to leave a permanent mark. Although Hall recovered sufficiently to resume the demanding life of a stockman and remained an outstanding horseman, he was thereafter said to carry a noticeable limp.
An account of the accident was later supplied by John Maguire, who would become Hall's brother-in-law, and preserved by P. H. Pinkstone in The Biography of a Reliable Old Native. Pinkstone compiled the work from a series of interviews and conversations with Maguire in the early twentieth century, giving the episode particular value as the recollection of a man closely connected with Hall and the district, although recorded more than half a century after the event.
The accident did little to diminish Hall's enthusiasm for horses. If anything, his subsequent life demonstrates the opposite. Racing, breeding, breaking and judging horses remained among his strongest interests. Good horses represented livelihood, status and freedom in the pastoral society in which he had grown to adulthood.
By his late teens, therefore, Hall's prospects appeared remarkably favourable and increasingly trusted with responsibility and beginning to accumulate livestock of his own. He was well known across the district and remembered as industrious, temperate and willing to assist his neighbours.
Nothing about this period suggests a young man inevitably progressing towards bushranging.
On the contrary, the surviving recollections portray someone moving successfully in the opposite direction—from teenage station hand towards independent pastoralist. Understanding that success is essential to understanding the tragedy of what followed. Ben Hall did not become notorious because respectable colonial society had never offered him a place within it.
For a time, he had already made one.
Unable to travel far with his badly fractured leg, the injured stockman was taken by wagon to nearby Bundaburra, the property of the Strickland family. There he was cared for by Mrs Mary Strickland with the assistance of her brother, Thomas "Tom" Higgins, who possessed a local reputation as something of a bush surgeon.
According to John Maguire's later recollection, Higgins set Hall's broken leg with considerable skill:
"Tom Higgins, who had a reputation as a bush surgeon, set the fracture, making a good job of it. In nine or ten weeks Ben was able to get about on crutches, and after that was as lively as ever."
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| Mary Coneley |
Tradition suggests that an affectionate relationship developed between the two young people while Hall recovered. Mary assisted with his care, and later accounts portray the attachment as sufficiently strong that she was deeply upset when Hall subsequently began courting Bridget Walsh. Whether their relationship amounted to a formal romance cannot now be established, but the tradition of an early attachment persisted written accounts.
She eventually married Michael Coneley, an Irish-born stockman employed on the Strickland property. The marriage reportedly met with opposition from members of her family, who considered Coneley socially beneath her. The couple nevertheless married at Wellington in 1860 and later occupied a cottage on Pierce Strickland's Billabong property.
More than a decade after Hall had been nursed at Bundaburra, that cottage would stand only a short distance from the place where he was killed.
Long after Ben Hall’s demise, his grave was reportedly tended to with great care for decades. On August 5, 1911, The Wingham Chronicle and Manning River Observer speculated that a local woman had maintained it.
In the Forbes cemetery, today rest the mortal remains of Ben Hall, and the mound which covers his dust is still tenderly cared for by a female hand—one who, though long years have drifted by since Hall's unfortunate body was riddled with policemen's bullets, still cherishes a kindly regard for a man who, but for a certain set of circumstances, might have earned renown in a different walk of life.
The identity of that woman was not given.
Later tradition has naturally suggested Mary Coneley, formerly Mary Strickland. The possibility is attractive given her early association with Hall and her proximity to the events of May 1865. Yet there are other plausible candidates. Hall's sister-in-law Anne is also known to have travelled from Parkes and maintained an interest in his memory. Without contemporary identification, the woman who tended the grave cannot confidently be named.
Mary herself remained a notable figure in the district quite apart from her association with Hall.
The newspaper remembered:
"Dora was ridden by Miss Strickland, daughter of Mr Pearce Strickland. There was always great rivalry between those two well-known horse-women, and the match caused much excitement and considerable wagering. After a desperate race, Virginia won."
Their lives would eventually follow very different paths.
The young woman traditionally remembered as helping nurse the sixteen-year-old stockman back to health had married the man who, twelve years later, provided the information that led armed police to his final camp.
Whether Mary later cut a lock from Hall's hair, tended his grave, or privately mourned the man she had known in youth may never be established.
The documented circumstances require no embellishment. They are poignant enough on their own.
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| Mary Strickland nee Higgins. c. 1890's |
Their lives would eventually follow very different paths.
Hall married Bridget Walsh and established himself at Wheogo Station. Mary married Michael Coneley and remained associated with the Strickland properties. Yet in one of the stranger turns of Hall's story, those paths converged again at Billabong Creek in May 1865.
The young woman traditionally remembered as helping nurse the sixteen-year-old stockman back to health had married the man who, twelve years later, provided the information that led armed police to his final camp.
Whether Mary later cut a lock from Hall's hair, tended his grave, or privately mourned the man she had known in youth may never be established.
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| Daniel Charters. This photo was most probably taken at Mrs Reed’s photographic gallery Forbes in 1862, on the same day as the Ben Hall portrait. |
Charters had been born in Ireland and brought to Australia at about three years of age. The family initially settled around Carcoar before extending its pastoral interests westward through purchases, marriages and family connections. By the time Charters reached adulthood, members of the family controlled or managed properties extending towards the Lachlan, including an isolated holding at Humbug Creek near Lake Cowal.
Daniel himself moved regularly between several family properties. He assisted with cattle belonging to his sister Agnes Newell at Daroubalgie, outside Forbes, and had connections with property at Bandon, where a hotel operated. Another sister, Margaret Feehily, recently widowed, held the substantial Pinnacle Station, also associated with a hotel. The Pinnacle lay only about twelve miles from the country where Hall would later establish himself at Sandy Creek.
These overlapping pastoral interests brought Charters and Hall into regular contact.
Charters later testified that their friendship extended back six or seven years before the events of 1862:
"I have known Ben Hall for six or seven years. I used to visit him when I was gathering cattle for myself and my sister."
Physically, Charters was remembered as a tall, heavily built man with a fresh complexion, light-brown hair and blue eyes. Like Hall, he was an accomplished horseman and bushman, but there was an important difference between them: Charters could read and write, while Hall appears to have remained illiterate.
In a district where transactions, correspondence and legal dealings increasingly depended upon literacy, Charters' education would have made him particularly useful to his friend. Hall possessed an exceptional practical intelligence concerning horses, cattle and country, but Charters could negotiate the written world that remained largely inaccessible to him.
Temperamentally, the two men also differed. Hall was frequently remembered as reserved, even shy, particularly in his dealings with women. Charters possessed a considerably more outgoing reputation. Contemporary accounts portrayed him as sociable and charming, and his relationships with women later attracted considerable public attention.
Whatever their differences, their economic interests became increasingly intertwined.
Charters grazed cattle across several properties surrounding Forbes and, between approximately 1860 and 1862, regularly ran some of his stock upon Hall's Sandy Creek holding. With little fencing separating the runs, cattle belonging to neighbouring owners inevitably mixed together and were identified and separated during the great musters.
Charters was not an impoverished station hand living upon Hall's generosity. He was a substantial stockowner in his own right.
Giving evidence during the February 1863 trials arising from the Eugowra robbery, he strongly rejected any suggestion that he had ever been merely an employee:
"My business is that of a stockowner, looking after my own and my sister's cattle. I have never been employed as stock-keeper by any one, and have never in my life received wages from any person."
He then described the scale of the family's pastoral interests:
"My sister's station at the Pinnacle is a large one. She has a good many people employed there, and has about 2000 head of cattle. I have about 500 or 600 head of my own."
This is important when considering his later involvement with Hall, Gardiner and the Eugowra robbery. Charters did not enter that world because poverty had left him with no alternative. Like Hall himself, he had property, livestock, useful connections and legitimate prospects.
Their friendship therefore belongs initially to the prosperous phase of Hall's life.
During the middle and later 1850s the two young men were rising pastoralists whose stock and family connections spread across the Lachlan. They knew the country intimately and possessed the horses and skills necessary to travel through it rapidly. The characteristics that would later make them useful participants in the Eugowra enterprise—horsemanship, local knowledge, trusted relationships and access to isolated properties—had all been acquired through legitimate pastoral life.
For Hall, however, another relationship was about to become considerably more important.
In about 1855, after several years working under Hugh Hamilton, the eighteen-year-old Hall left his employment and moved to Wheogo, sometimes recorded as Uoka, a substantial run of approximately 16,000 acres controlled by the emancipated convict John Walsh.
The decision represented another step forward in Hall's pastoral career, but employment was probably not its only attraction.
At Wheogo lived Walsh's daughter, Bridget.
Hall's move would bring him into the household of the woman who soon became his wife—and begin the period in which the former teenage stockman accumulated land, cattle and a family of his own.
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St Michael's Catholic Church, Bathurst. c. 1850's. |
In temperament Bridget appears to have offered a striking contrast to Hall. Ben was remembered as quiet, easy-going and somewhat shy, particularly around women. Bridget was more forthright and spirited. Whatever the differences between them, the attraction endured.
Hall's move to Wheogo consequently became far more important than another change of employment. It brought him into the Walsh household and established the personal relationship that would dominate the next stage of his life.
Professionally, Hall was also approaching independence. After years spent learning the pastoral trade under Hugh Hamilton and other experienced stockmen, he was no longer simply a teenage station hand. He possessed cattle and horses of his own, had acquired an extensive knowledge of the Lachlan and Weddin districts, and had developed a reputation as an exceptional stockman whose services were sought at musters throughout the surrounding country.
Wheogo offered him the opportunity to turn those skills into something permanent.
For the first time, the prospect of becoming an independent grazier rather than working indefinitely for other station owners appeared within reach. Hall could accumulate stock, build his own interests and contemplate acquiring a station of his own.
His courtship of Bridget therefore coincided with a particularly hopeful period in his life. At eighteen, Ben Hall possessed ability, employment, growing pastoral interests and a respected place within the local community. He was also in love.
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| The very same Alter at St Michael's Catholic Church, Bathurst where Ben and Biddy exchanged their vows in 1856. My Photo. |
The courtship culminated in marriage on 29 February 1856. Ben Hall, then eighteen and approaching his nineteenth birthday, married fifteen-year-old Bridget Walsh at St Michael's Catholic Church in Bathurst. Bridget's sister Ellen Maguire and her husband, John Maguire, witnessed the ceremony, further strengthening the family connections that would later become so important in Hall's life.
The marriage united two families with similar colonial origins. Both Ben and Bridget were Australian-born children of transported convicts who had subsequently established themselves through pastoral enterprise. Neither came from privilege, yet both belonged to families that had succeeded in building lives and acquiring property beyond their convict beginnings.
For Hall, marriage represented another important step towards adulthood and independence. He had arrived in the Lachlan as a thirteen-year-old stockman with little more than his horsemanship and knowledge of cattle. Six years later he was married, earning a respectable living and beginning to accumulate the livestock and property that promised a prosperous future.
More than sixty years afterwards, an elderly district pioneer still remembered seeing the young couple travelling to their wedding. His recollection, published by the Grenfell Record and Lachlan District Advertiser in February 1917, preserved an unusually intimate glimpse of Ben and Bridget before tragedy and notoriety overtook their lives:
"I saw Ben Hall and his Bridget Walsh when they were going to Burrowa, or Yass, to get married. I think it was about the year 1857, or it might have been 1856. They stayed at our house on their return trip. They were both young—Ben about 20 years of age, and I think she was under 20. I fancy I see her slender, little white fingers peeling, with a sharp knife, apples for us youngsters."
It is a small domestic image, but an important one.
Nothing about the scene suggested the upheaval that awaited the couple. Ben was not yet an outlaw, Bridget not yet the estranged wife of one. They were simply two young people beginning married life in the pastoral country of western New South Wales.
For Hall in particular, the marriage seemed to confirm the direction his life had been taking since arriving in the Lachlan. He had employment, livestock, an excellent reputation as a stockman and now a wife. The next logical ambition was land of his own.
For a time, he would achieve that as well.
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| John Walsh's Uoka (Weeoga) Station, registered under The Squatters Act-1846-47. Note; John Tait's station Oma. |
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The Charters' former home, now Fern Hill. c. 1970's. Reputed birthplace of Henry Hall. Courtesy, Carcoar Historical Society. |
There may, however, have been an earlier pregnancy. John Maguire later recalled that "there had been two children, but the first had died." No firm record of this child has been identified, leaving open the possibility of an infant death, stillbirth or miscarriage. Whatever the circumstances, if Maguire's recollection was accurate, Ben and Bridget had already experienced the loss of a child before Henry's birth.
Whether that tragedy contributed to later difficulties within their marriage is impossible to establish. For the moment, at least, Hall's outward circumstances remained favourable. He was married, had become a father and was establishing himself as a grazier with cattle and horses of his own.
The pastoral districts surrounding Forbes, Carcoar and the Weddin Mountains contained men ranging from prosperous landholders and respectable stockmen to horse thieves, sly-grog sellers and individuals who moved regularly across the uncertain boundary between legitimate pastoral work and crime. Hall knew men from across that spectrum.
Daniel Charters was one of his closest friends.
Their association attracted attention in late 1859 when both men's names became connected with proceedings at the Burrowa Court concerning a horse. Later accounts sometimes gave the episode a more sinister character than the evidence supports. Charters himself was emphatic that the dispute was civil rather than criminal.
Giving evidence during the Eugowra escort robbery trials in February 1863, Charters explained:
"I was brought up with Ben Hall at the court at Burrowa; I was not brought up there on any charge; I was summoned there about a horse; I had a horse from a man on trial, and he summoned me for payment for the use of it."
Charters was particularly careful to make this distinction:
"Ben Hall was present when I borrowed the horse; he was implicated in the matter in no other way."
Viewed in isolation, the incident was unremarkable—a minor dispute over payment for the use of a horse. Its later significance arose principally because of what happened to the men involved.
Within little more than three years Hall and Charters would both become implicated in the Eugowra gold escort robbery. John Healy's own trajectory was no more respectable. By early 1863 he had been convicted for serious offences, including involvement in the armed robbery of a dray near the O'Meally family's inn at the Weddin Mountains, and received a lengthy sentence that included imprisonment at Cockatoo Island.
The Burrowa episode therefore provides an interesting glimpse into the social environment surrounding Hall before his own criminal career began. Men who would later appear on opposing sides of criminal prosecutions—or together in the dock—were already trading horses, attending musters, drinking, working and conducting business with one another across the same sparsely populated district.
Hall was certainly associating with men whose subsequent careers would prove decidedly disreputable.
But he was hardly unique in doing so.
The Central West was a small and interconnected society. Respectable squatters employed former convicts; stockmen traded horses with men later convicted of theft; publicans dealt with police and bushrangers alike; and family relationships crossed social and legal boundaries that appear much clearer in retrospect than they were at the time.
The important distinction is that, in 1859, Ben Hall himself had still not been convicted of any crime. His presence at Burrowa demonstrates the company he kept and the complicated social world in which he lived, but it does not establish criminal conduct on his part.
At twenty-two, Hall remained outwardly what he had spent most of his adult life becoming: a husband, father, stockman and increasingly independent grazier.
That position would soon begin to unravel.
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In 1859, the advertisement above demonstrates that Ben Hall was a person of good standing in the community supporting Law and Order. Note the commitment of some of the Lachlan's most esteemed citizens marked by a #.
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Ben Hall's Marriage Certificate 1856 (above)
Note: Ben Hall signed his name with an "X" (his mark), demonstrating he was illiterate
Bridget also signed her name with an "X"(her mark)
Bridget's sister, Elen, signed her name as a witness, as did John Maguire.
It is interesting how one sister was literate and not the other.
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Henry Hall's (Ben Hall's Son) Birth Certificate 1859 (above)
Note: Again, Hall signed his name with an "X" as his mark further demonstrated his illiteracy. The certificate also names Dr Rowland (1) in attendance during Henry's birth, assisted by Mrs Charters (2).
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Left: Bridget Hall, as portrayed in Fiona Craig’s painting (commissioned by Edgar Penzig, reputedly at the time of her marriage to Ben Hall). The likeness is thought to be derived from a drawing after a later original c. 1919. The image suggest some inaccuracies. Right: Bridget’s granddaughter, Bridget May Costello (1891–1973), daughter of Catherine Costello née Taylor. However, note the strong similarities in eyes, cheekbones, and lips between the two women, both noted for their attractiveness. These comparisons suggest that Bridget Hall can be excluded as the subject of the small locket portrait on the Gallery page, which is more likely to depict Susan Prior. Bridget Hall died in 1923; her granddaughter Bridget May Costello in 1973. Courtesy of a private source. |
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| Ben Hall |
The pastoral frontier offered opportunities that would have been almost unimaginable to families of Hall's background in Britain. Beyond the older settled districts, wealth and social standing depended increasingly upon practical ability, access to stock, credit, personal connections and a willingness to take risks. The distinctions of birth had certainly not disappeared, but they could be more readily overcome in a society where enormous areas of grazing country were being opened to settlement and experienced stockmen were in constant demand.
Hall's own family demonstrated this transformation.
Both of his parents had arrived in New South Wales as transported convicts. Yet within little more than a decade Benjamin Hall senior had become a butcher, grazier and property owner at Haydonton. Bridget's father, John Walsh, had likewise emerged from convict origins to establish substantial pastoral interests of his own. Their children consequently belonged to a generation for whom the circumstances of transportation did not necessarily determine their eventual place in colonial society.
This was one of the remarkable features of nineteenth-century Australia. Men and women who had arrived in chains could, after completing their sentences or receiving conditional freedom, acquire businesses, livestock and property. Some accumulated considerable fortunes. Their Australian-born children inherited not only the stigma that could still attach to convict origins, but also opportunities their parents could scarcely have imagined in Britain or Ireland.
The emerging pastoral society of the interior was therefore not simply an imitation of the English landed order. It developed its own hierarchy.
At its summit stood wealthy squatters controlling enormous runs and thousands of cattle or sheep. Beneath them were smaller graziers, publicans, storekeepers and independent stockowners, many of whom aspired to expand their holdings and secure permanent property. Former convicts and their descendants existed alongside free immigrants and members of established colonial families, their fortunes increasingly determined by land, livestock and commercial success rather than ancestry alone.
There was an unmistakable roughness to this new rural elite. The successful Australian pastoralist might possess considerable wealth while remaining more comfortable on horseback than in a drawing room. Horsemanship, knowledge of stock, endurance and familiarity with the bush commanded a form of respect that differed markedly from the inherited social conventions of Britain.
Hall was particularly well equipped for such a world.
By his early twenties he had accumulated more than a decade of experience with cattle and horses. He knew the Lachlan and Weddin districts intimately, possessed livestock of his own and enjoyed a wide network of acquaintances among stockmen, small settlers and substantial pastoralists. He had married into the Walsh family and had already begun establishing a household and pastoral interests of his own.
His ambition was therefore not extraordinary.
He wanted to become a substantial grazier.
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| John Maguire Sandy Creek Station. Gazette, 15th February 1861. |
By the beginning of the 1860s, those ambitions appeared increasingly achievable.
At twenty-three, Hall joined with his brother-in-law John Maguire in taking another significant step towards independence. Together they prepared to acquire a pastoral property of sufficient size to establish themselves not merely as stockmen working for others, but as graziers in their own right.
For Ben Hall, it represented the culmination of everything he had been working towards since arriving in the Lachlan as a thirteen-year-old boy.
He was attempting to become a landholder.
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NSW Government Gazette 27th March 1860. Courtesy NLA |
In March 1860, Ben Hall and his brother-in-law John Maguire took the decisive step towards becoming independent graziers when they secured the lease of Sandy Creek Station, adjoining the Walsh family's Wheogo run.
For Hall, still only twenty-two, the acquisition represented the culmination of almost a decade of pastoral work. He had arrived in the Lachlan as a thirteen-year-old stockman, accumulated experience and livestock under Hugh Hamilton, and gradually established a reputation throughout the district. Sandy Creek gave him something more substantial: a pastoral enterprise in which his own prosperity would depend upon the quality of his management.
Maguire brought considerable experience of his own. Both men also carried physical reminders of earlier accidents. Hall retained the limp caused by his horse-breaking injury as a teenager, while Maguire had lost the sight of one eye during childhood in an accident involving a crude firearm fashioned from animal bone. Neither disability prevented them from undertaking the demanding work required to establish a station.
Sandy Creek comprised approximately 16,000 acres and was estimated to carry as many as 640 head of cattle. Much of the country remained unimproved, but its value lay in the quality of its grazing land and, above all, its water. Several creeks crossed the run, providing the reliable supply upon which pastoral settlement depended.
Contemporary assessments regarded the property highly:
"Shortly after his marriage, he, in company with Mr John Maguire, obtained a lease of a run adjoining Wheogo, called Sandy Creek, which they stocked with cattle and horses. Sandy Creek, Wheogo, and Bundaburra are estimated to be among the very best runs in the Lachlan district."¹⁴
Hall and Maguire stocked the property with cattle and horses and began developing the run. For Hall, the work was familiar: managing stock, organising musters, selecting horses and maintaining the pastoral relationships upon which an unfenced grazing enterprise depended.
His performance appears to have strengthened rather than diminished his standing in the district. One later assessment observed:
"Hall became the owner of Sandy Creek Station, adjoining Wheogo. He had it on lease, running cattle and horses, and managed it in a business-like way, thereby adding further to his reputation as a young man of fine promise."¹⁵
Nor was Sandy Creek merely an isolated bush holding. It represented capital. The cattle and horses grazing upon it could reproduce, appreciate in value and provide the means for further expansion. Good seasons could transform a modest stockowner into a substantial grazier within surprisingly few years.
Hall's circumstances in 1860 therefore stand in striking contrast with the image preserved by his later notoriety.
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| Sandy Creek c. 1883. Courtesy David Geelings. |
There was no inevitability about what followed.
On the contrary, at Sandy Creek Ben Hall had more to lose than at any previous point in his life.
This week the supply of good, quality was small and prices advanced about 20s per head no improvement for second and inferior qualities which were abundantly supplied. Prime heavy weights, bullocks brought from £9 to £11.- ditto, ordinary weights from £7 to £8 10s second quality ditto from £4 15s to £5 10s; inferior from £2; Prime cows (ordinary weights) from £5 to £6; second quality ditto from £3 to £4 inferior from 35s upwards. FAT CARVES. — Supply small and the demand good best quality from 40s to 50s.
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| John Maguire. c. 1880's. |
Hall was well placed to benefit.
Before establishing his own home at Sandy Creek, Ben, Bridget and their young son Henry had lived at the Wheogo homestead. Following the death of Bridget's father, John Walsh, in 1858, the property passed into the control of his widow, Sarah Walsh.
Sarah herself belonged to a notable colonial family. Born Sarah Chidley and previously married to Joseph Harpur, she was the mother of the celebrated Australian poet Charles Harpur and of Josiah J. Harpur, who later represented Patrick's Plains in the New South Wales Parliament. Josiah would subsequently become involved in his own celebrated confrontation with Sir Frederick Pottinger, providing yet another unexpected connection between the families surrounding Hall and the men who later pursued him.
At Sandy Creek, the partnership between Hall and Maguire appears to have operated with considerable independence. Although they shared the lease, each maintained his own cattle and horses and developed a separate portion of the run. John Maguire later recalled that Hall called his section Cubbine Bin.
The two men nevertheless cooperated where necessity demanded it. Sandy Creek was still largely undeveloped country, requiring timber to be cleared and stockyards erected at strategically useful watering places. Hall and Maguire worked together on these improvements and shared responsibility for the annual government assessment upon the run, while otherwise conducting their pastoral businesses separately.
Each man also established a home upon his portion of the station.
The precise locations have since become uncertain. Local tradition generally places Hall's residence several hundred metres from Maguire's, most probably to the south or south-east, although alternative locations near the present Ballendine and Sandy Creek roads have also been proposed. By the beginning of the twentieth century little remained from which to reconstruct the original layout. Later occupation and clearing had removed the old structures, and a 1907 account reported that the earlier buildings had disappeared or been destroyed by fire.
The isolation of the station should not be underestimated. Forbes lay approximately twenty-eight miles away, reached not by a formed road in the modern sense but by rough tracks winding through the pastoral country. Sandy Creek itself provided an important geographical reference in a landscape where fences were scarce and property boundaries often existed more clearly on paper than upon the ground.
Although the exact appearance of Hall's and Maguire's houses is unknown, neither man appears to have been living in absolute poverty. Maguire's household, for example, employed Mrs Shannahan as a domestic servant and cook. The surviving evidence suggests two young graziers attempting to establish comfortable permanent homes rather than temporary stockmen's camps.
Their livestock practices, however, belonged firmly to the rougher conventions of the frontier.
Maguire later acknowledged with striking candour that both men engaged in duffing:
"Ben had always done a bit of duffing. But, for the matter of that, we all duffed, with very few exceptions; it was not considered a great crime—simply a matter of business. The man who could muster and secure unbranded calves was considered a fool if he did not stick his own brand on."
Among many stockmen and smaller graziers, placing one's own brand upon an unmarked animal encountered during a muster was consequently treated less as serious criminality than as an accepted advantage of frontier life.
A later description of the custom explained the informal code:
"If one settler took a beast of a neighbour's, the latter simply bided his time until he found an animal belonging to his predatory fellow settler worthy of appropriation."
This should not be confused with the organised horse and cattle stealing for which Hall's father had earlier been pursued. There was a spectrum of behaviour extending from claiming genuinely wild or ownerless stock, through opportunistically branding another grazier's unmarked calves, to deliberately stealing branded animals. Contemporaries themselves did not always agree where accepted "duffing" ended and criminal stock theft began.
Hall's rapidly increasing herd naturally attracted comment.
An old district joke held that "Ben Hall's cows always bear twins." Behind the humour lay an obvious insinuation: Hall's cattle appeared to multiply rather more quickly than ordinary reproduction could explain.
Whether the joke accurately reflected the scale of his duffing cannot now be determined. Maguire's own testimony, however, removes any need to portray Hall as entirely innocent of the practice. Hall did appropriate unbranded stock. The more important historical point is that, within the pastoral culture in which he lived, this did not necessarily mark him as an outlaw among his neighbours.
Many of them were doing precisely the same thing.
By 1860–61, therefore, Hall occupied an interesting position. He was a successful young grazier operating a substantial pastoral lease, benefiting from rising cattle prices generated by the goldfields and accumulating horses and cattle of his own. He maintained a home, wife and child and enjoyed a wide network of relationships throughout the district.
At the same time, he participated in the informal and sometimes illegal practices of an unfenced pastoral frontier.
The distinction would become increasingly important.
For years Hall had lived comfortably within a society in which the boundary between accepted custom and criminal conduct was negotiable. Soon he would encounter a legal system far less willing to recognise that distinction.
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| Maguire and Hall's Sandy Creek Station still recorded as owners in Bailliere's New South Wales Gazetteer, 1866. Note acreage. |
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| William and Ann Hall. c. 1910. Penzig. |
William Hall and his wife Ann also lived for a period with Ben and Bridget at Sandy Creek. The arrangement brought the brothers' families into close daily contact, and although there is little contemporary evidence documenting their domestic life, later recollections suggest that relations between Ann and Bridget eventually became strained.
Ann's judgement of Bridget was particularly severe.
Following Ben's death in 1865, she reportedly blamed her sister-in-law for the course his life had taken, declaring in substance that "he wouldn't be lying there if not for his wife's actions." The remark was made with hindsight and should not be treated as an impartial assessment of the marriage. Nevertheless, it suggests that resentment towards Bridget had existed within Hall's family for some time.
The household had already experienced tragedy. John Maguire later recalled that Ben and Bridget had lost a child before Henry's birth in 1859. Nothing reliable survives concerning the circumstances, and any suggestion that the loss itself caused subsequent marital difficulties must remain conjectural. What can be said is that the couple entered their years at Sandy Creek having already experienced a bereavement that would have been deeply felt.
More visible problems soon emerged.
Bridget had been raised in the comparatively independent world of the Weddin pastoral country and appears to have possessed a markedly stronger and more restless temperament than her reserved husband. She sometimes left Sandy Creek for several days, ostensibly visiting neighbouring properties and acquaintances, occasionally in company with her sister Catherine, better known as Kitty Brown.
In time, those absences acquired another significance.
Bridget had formed an attachment to James Taylor, a neighbouring stockman with whom she was conducting a clandestine relationship. At approximately the same period, Kitty Brown became romantically involved with Frank Gardiner, whose reputation as a horse thief and bushranger was already becoming notorious.
The coincidence would have profound consequences.
What might otherwise have remained a private marital breakdown now intersected with the increasingly dangerous criminal world surrounding Gardiner and his associates. Hall's domestic troubles and his later involvement with bushrangers would become so closely intertwined that subsequent accounts often struggled to separate cause from consequence.
During Bridget's absences, much of the domestic responsibility at Sandy Creek appears to have fallen upon Ann Hall. William and Ann had young children of their own—Mary, born in 1858, and John in 1860—yet Ann also helped care for Ben's son Henry.
The relationship between aunt and nephew endured long after the destruction of the Sandy Creek household. As an adult, Henry spent periods living with William and Ann at Parkes, suggesting that the attachment formed during his earliest childhood survived the extraordinary upheavals that followed.
The fractured relationships within the household therefore did not divide the entire Hall family equally. Whatever hostility existed between Bridget and her in-laws, Henry retained close connections with his father's relatives.
The spelling of John Maguire's surname presents a smaller historical difficulty. Contemporary documents contain several variations, including Maguire, McGuire and MaGuire, with one form appearing on Hall's marriage documentation. For consistency, Maguire is used throughout this account.
While Ben was attempting to establish Sandy Creek as a permanent pastoral enterprise, the reputation of the wider Hall family remained considerably less settled.
Back at Murrurundi, his father and several brothers continued to attract police attention. Colonial newspapers periodically reported members of the family appearing before the courts in connection with theft and other offences, a pattern that extended from the late 1850s into later decades.
The contrast is important.
At Sandy Creek, Ben Hall was building a home, managing cattle and horses, raising a son and attempting to establish himself as an independent grazier. In Murrurundi, the Hall name continued to carry associations with stock theft and criminal prosecution inherited from his father's earlier activities.
Ben therefore lived between two reputations.
One was the reputation he had built for himself throughout the Lachlan: accomplished stockman, horseman, husband, father and promising young grazier.
The other was the reputation attached to the family name.
Soon, events within his own household would begin to bring those two worlds together.
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| Edward Hall, 1879 prison admission portrait. Courtesy NSW archives. |
The incident was sufficiently serious—and sufficiently unusual—to attract the attention of the Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser. At its centre, characteristically, was livestock.
Benjamin Hall senior attempted to take possession of a bullock that Edward claimed as his own. Father and son confronted one another in the bed of the Pages River near Edward's home, where an argument over ownership quickly escalated.
The newspaper reported:
"Edward Hall was charged with assaulting his father, Benjamin Hall, on the 11th instant. The evidence of the complainant and several witnesses went to shew, that on the day above named Hall senior went to take possession of a bullock, which was also claimed by the defendant."
Words soon gave way to violence:
"The father and son met in the bed of the river, near the house of the latter, when an altercation arose, which was ended by the son laying his stock-whip pretty smartly across the shoulders of his father."
The episode provides unusually direct evidence of the bitterness that had developed between Edward and his father. Their estrangement had apparently begun years earlier when Benjamin Hall senior left for the Lachlan and chose to take young Ben while Edward remained behind with Eliza. Whatever resentments accumulated during the intervening years, by 1860 father and son were prepared to contest ownership of stock physically and publicly.
The same court report recorded another glimpse of disorder within the family. Honora Hall had charged Benjamin Hall senior with using abusive language towards her, although the case was dismissed.
These were domestic incidents of little consequence beyond Murrurundi, yet they reveal the fractured family from which Ben Hall had become increasingly removed. While Ben was hundreds of miles away establishing Sandy Creek, raising cattle and attempting to secure his position as an independent grazier, his father and brother were fighting one another with a stockwhip over possession of a bullock.
The contrast is striking.
By 1860 Ben had arguably become the most conventionally successful of Benjamin Hall senior's sons. He had escaped neither the family's reputation nor some of its questionable pastoral practices, but he had fashioned a substantially different life for himself. He possessed a pastoral lease, cattle and horses, a wife and child, and a respected reputation among many of the Lachlan's graziers.
Back at Murrurundi, the older family conflicts remained unresolved.
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| John Wilson freehold portion of Sandy Creek. Granted 1868. Courtesy Peter Bradley. |
A historical document reveals that in 1868, John Wilson, who purchased Sandy Creek, was awarded 40 acres of freehold land at the southern boundary of the property adjacent Wheogo Station. A title map of this land depicts a hut at a location currently marked as the site of Ben Hall's home, which was destroyed by fire in March 1863. It has long been believed that the residences of Hall and Maguire were situated roughly five hundred yards from each other, although their precise positions relative to the cardinal directions remain unclear.
Further complicating the historical record, in 1909, a man named Mr. Pearse is reported to have dismantled and cleared all structures from the era of Hall and Maguire on the Sandy Creek run. This was highlighted in a publication from 'The Grenfell Record and Lachlan District Advertiser' dated Saturday, 30th January 1909.
Sandy Creek Station is a historical spot, having been the erstwhile property and occasional home of Ben Hall. The present owner, Mr J. S. Pearce, has pulled down all the old buildings and yards so curious and credulous tourists, if any ever penetrate into this part of the bush, can no longer gaze at imaginary bullet holes and speculate how closely the valiant police shot to the bold bushranger's anatomy. In overhauling one of the defunct Mr Hall's humpies, before putting a firestick in it, an ancient pistol and one shilling were raked out of the accumulated debris within. These now form the nucleus of a local buccaneer's museum. The magnificent willow-fringed dam below the hill had water in but was lower than it generally is at this time of the year. Mr Pearse has built a new and roomy house, also stables and shed on the hill near the Pullabooka and Ironbarks road. He has only had the property two years, but in that time has done a lot to improve its condition and is yet busy ringing the country. Out of 2000 acres, there are only some 150 which cannot be ploughed. From a rise beyond the dam by the old diggings hills towards Wyalong are visible in a most varied and extensive landscape.
However, regardless of whose hut was who's the whole of Sandy Creek and adjoining stations Uoka (Wheogo) and Pinnacle and parts further afield are most important to the Ben Hall story.
The discovery of rich deposits at Burrangong in 1860—later known as Lambing Flat and eventually Young—sent thousands of fortune seekers into the district. Soon after, another rush erupted much closer to Hall's home when payable gold was discovered around Black Ridge on the Lachlan.
Black Ridge had been little more than scrub-covered pastoral country. Almost overnight it became the nucleus of a new township, Forbes, one of the colony's great gold-rush towns. A later account in the Forbes Advocate captured the almost mythical speed of the change:
"Then the magic cry of 'Gold!' went forth, and thousands flocked to the new El Dorado. No longer a desert, no longer a wilderness, the blows of the axe resounded through the forest, and a busy hive of humanity had its place, where but a few weeks before was solitude of the bush."
The enterprising cattlemen of the Lachlan suddenly had an Eldorado of their own.
Sandy Creek was exceptionally well positioned to take advantage of it. Forbes lay only about twenty-five miles away, while the Burrangong field was approximately sixty miles distant. Hall did not need to gamble his future digging for gold. He already had something successful and unsuccessful miners alike would pay for: cattle.
His decision to remain a grazier proved profitable.
As the rush intensified, Hall expanded his stock and supplied beef into the growing markets. The young man who had arrived in the Lachlan as a thirteen-year-old station hand was now becoming a prosperous squatter, benefiting directly from one of the district's greatest economic upheavals.
John Maguire diversified still further. Rather than relying solely upon cattle, he became involved in gold mining at the Pinnacle Range, approximately five miles from his homestead. The partners who had established Sandy Creek together were therefore participating in different sides of the same extraordinary boom—Hall supplying the population drawn by gold, Maguire seeking a share of the mineral wealth itself.
The scale of the transformation at Forbes was astonishing. A contemporary visitor in late 1861 marvelled at the maturity of a settlement that scarcely existed months earlier:
"We never saw a place of the same age in such a state of forwardness as this."
"Forbes," the correspondent concluded, "is not a place to be lightly esteemed." The population was extraordinarily diverse. Tens of thousands of miners moved between claims and camps. At sunset the diggings briefly quietened as thousands of cooking fires appeared and men prepared their evening meals. Then the settlement came alive again.
Theatres, concert halls, dancing saloons and hotels filled with customers. Shoeblacks worked the streets, itinerant musicians performed for coins, coaches arrived and departed at all hours, while actors, singers, sawyers, doctors, clergy, merchants and adventurers mingled among immigrants drawn from across the world. Mounted police moved through the crowds, attempting to impose order on a town growing faster than the colonial administration could control.
The gold rush brought merchants, tradesmen and legitimate entrepreneurs into the Lachlan, but it also attracted horse thieves, confidence men, escaped prisoners and professional criminals. Men who failed upon the diggings sometimes turned to theft. Travellers carrying gold or cash became tempting targets upon isolated roads, while the enormous demand for horses and cattle made stock theft increasingly profitable. The conditions were almost perfectly suited to a new generation of bushrangers.
The word's meaning had already begun to change. Earlier in the colonial period a bushranger was usually an escaped convict who fled into the bush and survived by robbing isolated settlers. By the 1860s transportation to New South Wales had ended, and the new bushrangers were increasingly native-born or long-established colonials. Many were accomplished horsemen who used the vast distances, sparse police presence, and difficult terrain of the interior to prey on travellers, mail coaches, and the gold economy. The familiar cry of "Bail up!" became part of the goldfields' vocabulary.
The pastoral districts suffered as well. Cattle and horses disappeared in increasing numbers as the population expanded. One of the most prominent victims was George Ranken of Bogabigal Station, whose losses became so severe that he eventually pursued the colonial government for £10,000 in damages, arguing that inadequate protection had allowed widespread stock stealing to flourish. After a prolonged dispute he reportedly recovered approximately £1,000. His name survives in Forbes through Rankin Street, although the spelling was altered. For Hall, this changing environment presented both extraordinary opportunity and growing danger.
The gold rush had increased the value of his cattle and strengthened his prospects as a grazier. At the same time, it brought an influx of criminals into a district where Hall already possessed friendships and family connections extending across the uncertain boundary between legitimate stock dealing and theft.
Those relationships were about to become increasingly important.
By the beginning of the 1860s, Hall knew men who would soon become notorious throughout the colony—the hard-riding young stockmen and horse thieves later romanticised as the Wild Colonial Boys. They inhabited the same world as Hall. They knew horses, cattle and the bush; attended the same races and musters; drank at the same hotels; traded livestock with the same settlers; were often linked by marriage and moved across the same enormous pastoral runs. Hall had not yet joined them as a bushranger.
Indeed, the irony is that the gold rush initially gave him every economic reason not to do so. He had Sandy Creek. He had cattle and horses. Beef prices were rising. Forbes and Burrangong provided expanding markets almost on his doorstep. At twenty-three, Ben Hall was better positioned financially than at any previous point in his life. Yet the same gold that was making him prosperous was transforming the society around him.
It brought wealth, strangers, crime and increasingly aggressive policing into the Lachlan. It drew Frank Gardiner and other horse thieves towards the district. It turned the roads around Forbes into valuable targets and made the gold escorts irresistible prizes. And, before long, it would bring the police directly to Sandy Creek.
Among them was a young aristocratic police inspector whose determination to suppress horse stealing and bushranging would become inseparable from the destruction of Hall's settled life.
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| Frank Gardiner |
The district knew him as Frank Gardiner, sometimes called "The Darkie."
Frank Gardiner was not his real name.
He had been born Francis Christie in Scotland in 1829 and arrived in New South Wales with his family in 1834, aged about five. The Christies later moved south into the country that would become Victoria, where Francis grew up.
Convicted of horse stealing in Victoria, Christie received a five-year sentence and was imprisoned at the Pentridge Stockade at Coburg. He served only about a year before escaping custody and making his way north into New South Wales towards the end of 1851.
There he adopted a succession of aliases, including Clarke and eventually Frank Gardiner, while returning to the lucrative business of horse stealing.
His freedom again proved temporary.
In February 1854 he was arrested at Yass and prosecuted under the name Clarke for horse stealing. Convicted, he received two consecutive seven-year sentences—a total of fourteen years—and was sent to Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour.
The experience gave Gardiner something that distinguished him from many of the young men with whom he would later associate. He was no novice. By the time Ben Hall encountered him, Gardiner had already been stealing horses, escaping custody and enduring imprisonment for much of his adult life.
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Gardiner Ticket-of-Leave 1859. Never before Published
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He did neither for long.
Christie absconded from his prescribed district, and authorities issued another warrant for his arrest. By then he had increasingly adopted the identity under which he would become notorious: Frank Gardiner.
The discovery of gold at Burrangong offered him an opportunity.
In 1860 Gardiner joined his friend William Fogg in establishing a butcher's business at the rapidly expanding Lambing Flat goldfield. The venture was well chosen. Thousands of miners required meat, and beef prices rose dramatically as the population increased.
For a time, Gardiner participated in precisely the same economic boom that was enriching Ben Hall.
The two men approached it from different directions. Hall and John Maguire were graziers producing cattle at Sandy Creek. Gardiner and Fogg were butchers requiring a constant supply of animals for the goldfield market. Their business interests consequently brought them into the same pastoral network.
It was almost inevitable that they would meet.
Hall and Maguire drove cattle towards the profitable Burrangong market, while Gardiner searched throughout the surrounding districts for animals to slaughter. In legitimate circumstances the relationship between grazier and butcher would have been entirely ordinary.
Gardiner's methods, however, soon attracted suspicion.
Questions arose concerning the origins of some of the cattle passing through the business, and allegations of stock theft followed. Gardiner and Fogg abruptly abandoned Lambing Flat and retreated towards country with which they were more familiar.
Gardiner sought refuge at Fogg's residence in the Fish River district.
Police eventually discovered his whereabouts.
Officers Middleton and Hosie attempted to apprehend him, and the encounter deteriorated into an extraordinary combination of gunfight and physical struggle. Both policemen were badly injured, while Gardiner himself was severely beaten during the fight.
Yet somehow he escaped.
The circumstances surrounding that escape attracted considerable suspicion and controversy, but the result was unmistakable. Gardiner was once again a fugitive, now wanted not merely as a horse thief who had breached his Ticket of Leave but as a violent offender prepared to resist arrest with firearms. His movements increasingly brought him towards the Weddin and Wheogo country.
There he developed associations with John Gilbert and John O'Meally, two exceptionally capable young horsemen already becoming involved in the theft and movement of livestock. Gardiner possessed experience, criminal connections and an understanding of how stolen horses and cattle could be converted into money. Gilbert and O'Meally possessed youth, superb horsemanship and intimate knowledge of the country. It was a dangerous combination.
Gardiner's arrival around Wheogo also introduced him directly into Ben Hall's extended family. Near the Wheogo homestead lived Catherine "Kitty" Brown, Bridget Hall's younger sister. Catherine was about eighteen and married to John Brown, with whom she occupied a small hut near the Walsh property. Gardiner, approximately fourteen years her senior, began an affair with her.
The relationship appears to have been intense and openly dangerous. Gardiner was already a wanted man. Harbouring or assisting him exposed anyone involved to police scrutiny, while Catherine's marriage made the affair a source of scandal within the closely connected community. For Ben Hall the implications were particularly serious. Gardiner was no longer merely a cattle buyer or distant acquaintance encountered through the Burrangong trade. Through Catherine, he had entered Hall's immediate family circle.
At the same time Hall's own marriage was beginning to deteriorate. Bridget's relationship with James Taylor was developing, while her sister Catherine was involved with one of the colony's most wanted criminals. Hall's friends and neighbours included Daniel Charters, John O'Meally and others who were themselves moving increasingly close to Gardiner.
Sandy Creek and Wheogo consequently became the meeting point of two very different trajectories. Ben Hall had spent the previous decade moving steadily towards respectability: from teenage stockman to husband, father and independent grazier. Frank Gardiner had spent almost the same period moving in the opposite direction: from horse thief to escaped prisoner, convicted criminal and armed fugitive.
By 1861 their paths had converged. Gardiner brought with him more than trouble. He brought an established criminal network, experience in organised horse stealing and a willingness to confront the police with violence. Around him gathered talented young colonial horsemen whose skills had been developed in precisely the same pastoral world that had produced Hall.
The gold rush had brought Gardiner to the district. Family connections brought him to Wheogo. What followed would bring the police to Ben Hall's door. The rise of Frank Gardiner brought a corresponding escalation in the police presence throughout the Lachlan. Among the officers sent to confront the growing problem of horse stealing and bushranging was a man whose background could scarcely have been more different from that of the stockmen and small settlers he was charged with policing.
His name was Sir Frederick Pottinger. (See Traps page.)
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Sir Frederick Pottinger |
After an unsuccessful attempt to make his fortune on the Victorian goldfields, Pottinger crossed into New South Wales. Rather than trading upon his title, he initially concealed his aristocratic identity and entered the colonial police as an ordinary mounted trooper attached to the southern gold escort at Gundagai.
His anonymity did not last. Once it became known that the mounted constable was in fact Sir Frederick Pottinger, Baronet, his position changed rapidly. Whether the revelation occurred accidentally or Pottinger finally used his family connections is less certain, but his advancement thereafter was remarkable.
He was appointed Clerk of Petty Sessions at Dubbo and later helped maintain order at Burrangong during the disturbances of 1861, when hostility towards Chinese miners erupted into the violent confrontations remembered as the Lambing Flat riots.
The experience placed Pottinger directly within the turbulent society created by the gold rush. When the New South Wales police were reorganised under the Police Regulation Act of 1862, Pottinger emerged as one of the officers entrusted with suppressing crime throughout the western districts. As Inspector responsible for the Lachlan, with Forbes becoming the centre of operations, he found himself confronting a policing problem unlike anything his aristocratic upbringing or military service had prepared him for.
His principal quarry was Frank Gardiner.
Gardiner's intimate knowledge of the countryside, access to exceptional horses and extensive network of associates made him extraordinarily difficult to capture. Pottinger consequently spent weeks conducting exhausting searches through the Wheogo, Weddin and Bland districts, sometimes cooperating with experienced officers such as Captain Battye and Captain Zouch. The difficulty was not simply finding tracks.
Gardiner had friends.
The scattered stations, inns and sly-grog establishments of the western districts provided places where a wanted man could obtain food, fresh horses and information concerning police movements. Some settlers actively sympathised with Gardiner; others feared retaliation; still others regarded the police with sufficient hostility that assisting a fugitive seemed preferable to cooperating with the authorities.
The result was an early version of what would later become known as the bush telegraph. News of police patrols travelled rapidly from station to station, while officers themselves remained uncertain which residents they could trust. Pottinger became increasingly frustrated. His suspicions naturally fell on properties where Gardiner and his associates were known to have connections. Among them was Pinnacle Station, controlled by Margaret Feehily, the widowed sister of Daniel Charters. The property occupied an important position within the network of families and stations surrounding Hall, and Mrs Feehily had a reputation among police as someone prepared to assist Gardiner.
From Pinnacle, the web of relationships led directly towards Sandy Creek and Wheogo. Daniel Charters was one of Ben Hall's closest friends. Gardiner was conducting an affair with Hall's sister-in-law Catherine Brown. John O'Meally and John Gilbert moved through the same pastoral network. Hall and John Maguire traded cattle into the same goldfield economy where Gardiner ran his butchering business.
To Pottinger, these connections were becoming increasingly difficult to regard as coincidence. Sandy Creek consequently began attracting police attention. For Hall this represented a fundamental change in his circumstances. Until then his association with men of questionable reputation had existed within the loose social conventions of the pastoral frontier. A stockman could know a horse thief, trade cattle with a former convict, drink with a wanted man or have a criminal as a relative without necessarily regarding himself as part of the same world.
Pottinger saw matters differently. He was attempting to dismantle a network. The Inspector increasingly regarded the stations surrounding Wheogo not simply as neighbouring pastoral properties but as a system through which Gardiner could obtain horses, provisions, intelligence and protection. Every friendship became potentially significant. Every unexplained horse became suspicious. Every delay or evasive answer reinforced the belief that the local settlers were protecting the bushranger.
In that environment, Ben Hall's reputation as a respectable young grazier offered diminishing protection. His friendship with Charters, his family connection to Gardiner through Catherine Brown, his familiarity with O'Meally and Gilbert, and Sandy Creek's proximity to properties suspected of harbouring Gardiner placed him squarely within Pottinger's field of investigation.
The two men were therefore moving towards confrontation. They represented strikingly different products of colonial society. Pottinger was an Eton-educated baronet and former Guards officer who had crossed the world and reinvented himself as a colonial policeman. Hall was the Australian-born son of transported convicts who had risen through horsemanship and pastoral labour to become an independent grazier.
Both were ambitious. Both were exceptionally comfortable on horseback. And both had a stubbornness that made compromise increasingly unlikely. Gardiner had brought them into the same struggle. Before long, Sir Frederick Pottinger's pursuit of Frank Gardiner would become inseparable from his pursuit of Ben Hall.
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| Kitty's reputed hut, Wheogo Station. c. 1920's. Courtesy Gordon Piper. |
Many of the stations surrounding Wheogo and the Weddin Mountains consequently came under Pottinger's scrutiny. Sandy Creek was no exception.
John Maguire later remembered the Inspector as a regular visitor:
"I knew Sir Frederick well. He used to stay at Sandy Creek whenever he was making round my way."
Pottinger's difficulty was that Gardiner rarely operated in isolation. A fugitive surviving in the western districts required food, horses, shelter and, above all, information. Pottinger therefore increasingly regarded the pursuit not simply as a hunt for one man but as an attempt to penetrate the social network protecting him. This approach inevitably widened the circle of suspicion.
Pottinger appears to have developed a deeply sceptical view of a substantial section of the local population. Stockmen, small settlers, publicans and emancipist families whose friendships overlapped with Gardiner's associates were increasingly grouped together as what he disparagingly regarded as "that class of people."
The frustration was understandable, even if the conclusions were not always justified. Whenever police entered a station seeking information, conversations could abruptly cease. Residents claimed ignorance. Horses disappeared. Someone who had supposedly been present the previous evening could no longer be found.
A kind of frontier code of silence surrounded the bushrangers. Some inhabitants genuinely assisted Gardiner. Others feared him. Some disliked the police. Others simply refused to inform upon neighbours, relatives or friends. To an officer attempting to distinguish one group from another, silence itself could easily become evidence of complicity.
Pottinger's methods consequently became increasingly aggressive. He knew of Gardiner's relationship with Catherine "Kitty" Brown, Bridget Hall's younger sister, and this connection made Wheogo and Sandy Creek obvious places to search. Police patrols appeared unexpectedly, questioned residents and examined properties in the hope of surprising Gardiner or uncovering evidence of horse stealing and other criminal activity. Hall increasingly found himself treated not simply as a grazier who happened to know Gardiner, but as a man who might belong to Gardiner's network.
Whether that suspicion was entirely unjustified is another matter. Hall certainly knew men engaged in stock theft, and Gardiner had entered his extended family circle through Kitty Brown. Daniel Charters was one of Hall's closest friends. John O'Meally and John Gilbert were familiar figures within the same pastoral community. Sandy Creek itself lay in country these men regularly travelled. But association was not proof. The distinction became increasingly blurred. For Pottinger, every connection strengthened the pattern. For Hall, every police visit appeared to reinforce the belief that he had already been judged guilty.
Their relationship deteriorated accordingly. Hall came increasingly to regard Pottinger not as an impartial officer investigating particular offences but as a personal adversary determined to implicate him. Pottinger, in turn, appears to have regarded Hall as one of a circle of ostensibly respectable graziers whose knowledge of Gardiner's movements was considerably greater than they admitted.
The resulting hostility became self-reinforcing. The more Hall resented police interference, the less inclined he was to cooperate. The less he cooperated, the more suspicious Pottinger became. An extraordinary surviving police document illustrates how far this network of suspicion had developed.
During the pursuit of Gardiner in 1861–62, police compiled a hand-drawn intelligence map of the district identifying properties, routes and individuals believed to be connected with the fugitive. It was, in effect, an attempt to map not simply the landscape through which Gardiner travelled but the human geography that sustained him.
Officers marked stations suspected of providing shelter. Officers identified individuals according to their perceived reliability or character. Officers recorded relationships between families, stockmen, and suspected criminals so they could understand where Gardiner might safely obtain assistance. The document is revealing precisely because it records police perceptions rather than judicial findings. Among the names appearing were Bridget Hall and Catherine Brown.
The sisters were bluntly characterised as "bad."
Elsewhere, a man identified as Yorkshire Jack was described as a "good man," but the assessment was qualified by his association with these supposedly undesirable women.
The language is striking.
It shows how intelligence gathering in the district relied not merely on evidence of specific offences but on judgements of character and association. A person could become suspicious because of whom they married, visited, employed, drank with or allowed onto their property. For Bridget and Kitty, their family and personal relationships placed them directly within that system. Kitty's association with Gardiner gave the police an obvious reason for interest. Bridget's inclusion is more revealing. As Ben Hall's wife and Kitty's sister, she belonged to the same closely interconnected social network even where direct evidence of criminal activity was absent.
The police map therefore offers a rare glimpse into how suspicion spread through the Weddin community. One person was known to associate with Gardiner. Another was related to that person. A neighbouring station provided horses. A stockman visited both properties. A publican knew the stockman. Gradually an entire network emerged. Some of those connections undoubtedly reflected genuine criminal cooperation. Others amounted to little more than the ordinary relationships of a sparsely populated pastoral district in which almost everyone knew everyone else.
For Hall, the distinction was becoming dangerously academic. His wife and sister-in-law appeared within police intelligence. His closest friend, Daniel Charters, belonged to another family suspected of assisting Gardiner. Pottinger repeatedly visited his station. His acquaintances included men already known for horse stealing.
Sandy Creek had effectively become a place of interest. Recognising the sensitivity of the information, police forwarded the intelligence map to the Inspector-General in Sydney under strict secrecy. Disclosure could destroy its usefulness immediately. Gardiner would alter his movements, suspected harbourers would remove evidence, and anyone believed to have supplied information could face retaliation.
The map therefore represented more than a simple list of wanted men. It was an early intelligence assessment of the social infrastructure surrounding bushranging. Yet it also reveals one of the central problems confronting Pottinger's campaign: intelligence based upon association could readily become guilt by association. By 1862 Ben Hall was caught squarely within that ambiguity. Pottinger had good reason to investigate the network surrounding Frank Gardiner.
Whether he had equally good reason to treat Ben Hall as already belonging to it was another question entirely.
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| The Map drawn by NSW police c 1861, shows the Routs and Harbourer's of Frank Gardiner living in the western districts and notes Mrs Ben Hall and her sister Mrs Catherine Brown as Women of Interest. ( I have edited the map to make it more legible. The map was brought to light by Edgar Penzig.) |
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| Ben Hall's son Henry, aged 56. Note; Henry's big solid frame. A dead ringer for his Father. c. 1915. Courtesy Noel Thurgood Collection. |
The appearance of Bridget Hall and Catherine Brown in confidential police intelligence is significant, although it does not by itself establish criminal conduct. What it does demonstrate is that by 1861–62 the sisters had become sufficiently connected with people under police suspicion to attract official attention in their own right.
For Bridget, this coincided with an increasingly troubled period in her marriage.
Relations within the Sandy Creek household appear already to have been strained, particularly between Bridget and her brother-in-law William Hall. More importantly, another man had entered her life.
James Taylor belonged to the same complicated network of families and acquaintances surrounding Gardiner. His sister Mary was married to William Fogg, Gardiner's former business partner at Lambing Flat. Through these relationships Taylor was no stranger to the social world in which Gardiner moved.
Bridget increasingly associated with Taylor.
She was also reported visiting properties belonging to people regarded by police as sympathetic towards the bushrangers, sometimes leaving young Henry behind at Sandy Creek. Such behaviour inevitably attracted gossip in the small pastoral community and intensified the suspicions already surrounding the Hall household.
The contrast with Ben's relationship with Gardiner is worth preserving.
Hall certainly knew Gardiner and appears to have conducted business with him during the period when Gardiner and Fogg operated their butchering enterprise at Lambing Flat. Cattlemen such as Hall had obvious commercial reasons to deal with butchers supplying the goldfields. At least initially, however, the surviving evidence allows Hall's association with Gardiner to be understood principally as commercial and social rather than as participation in Gardiner's criminal activities.
John Maguire appears to have known Gardiner more closely.
Nevertheless, Hall's own circle was changing.
Among the young horsemen increasingly associated with him were John Gilbert and the O'Meally brothers, John and Patrick, from the Weddin Mountains. Gilbert and John O'Meally in particular would soon become central figures in the new generation of bushranging emerging around Gardiner.
A remarkable recollection published in 1863 suggests that Hall's association with these men extended back to approximately 1859 or 1860—well before the Eugowra robbery and before Hall himself became publicly identified as a bushranger.
The writer remembered encountering Hall while moving cattle through the Lachlan:
"About four years since, whilst taking some cattle overland from my station on the Lachlan, I fell in with young Hall, who was then stock-keeping for his brother near Bundaburra."
Hall was not alone.
"He, O'Meally, Gilbert, and some others had all just returned from their usual trip after cattle."
When asked what success they had experienced, the men replied that they had spent three nights camped at Humbug Creek but had found few cattle:
"Only in one mob there were a few duffers."
The correspondent then explained the frontier terminology:
"The term 'duffer' is too well known to need description here; it simply means clean-skinned animals, which are appropriated by whoever can get them into a yard."
The account is important because it places Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally together several years before their later notoriety and does so within the pastoral activity from which their relationships naturally developed. They were not yet necessarily riding together as bushrangers. They were riding after cattle. Yet the distinction between legitimate mustering and cattle duffing could be remarkably thin.
Humbug Creek was isolated country near Lake Cowal and associated with the Charters family's pastoral interests. Men could disappear there for several days searching for cattle, returning with animals whose ownership might be difficult to establish. On unfenced runs, where clean-skinned calves and semi-wild cattle were commonly appropriated by whoever managed to yard them, such expeditions occupied the ambiguous frontier between accepted pastoral custom and outright theft.
Hall had already admitted, through Maguire's later recollections, to participating in this culture of duffing. Gilbert and O'Meally were moving through the same world. This is an important stage in Hall's development because it avoids the false impression that Frank Gardiner suddenly arrived and transformed an entirely respectable grazier into a criminal.
The reality was more gradual.
Hall had spent his life within a pastoral culture in which stock changed hands informally, unbranded animals were appropriated, stolen horses circulated through legitimate markets, and respectable graziers regularly encountered men whose activities crossed the law. His exceptional horsemanship and knowledge of the country naturally brought him into contact with other young men possessing the same skills. Most did not become bushrangers. Some did. By 1860, Hall's acquaintances included several who would.
At the same time his private life was deteriorating. Bridget was increasingly drawn towards James Taylor. Kitty Brown was involved with Gardiner. Police were repeatedly visiting Sandy Creek and Wheogo. Pottinger was mapping the relationships between Hall's family and suspected harbourers. Gilbert and O'Meally were becoming regular associates.
The pressures were converging. Yet even at this point it would be misleading to portray Hall as having consciously entered Gardiner's gang. He still possessed Sandy Creek, cattle, horses, a wife and young son, and substantial economic reasons to preserve the life he had built. What had changed was the company around him. The boundaries between grazier, duffer, horse thief and bushranger were becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. And Ben Hall was moving ever closer to the men who had already crossed them.
Another recollection places Hall and Gilbert together in a far more ordinary setting—working side by side on a station fence. Years later, a clergyman recalled travelling through the country around Wheogo and Sandy Creek on a Sunday when he encountered Ben Hall, John Gilbert and several others engaged in fencing. The scene is significant precisely because of its ordinariness. These were not yet the armed bushrangers of later legend, but young bushmen occupied with the routine labour of improving a pastoral property.
The preacher stopped and admonished them for working on the Sabbath. Their response was unexpected. According to the later account, Hall and his companions claimed that they had simply lost track of the days and did not realise it was Sunday. Rather than dismissing the clergyman's rebuke, they referred the question to a woman living at a nearby homestead. When she confirmed that it was indeed the Sabbath, the men immediately put down their tools and ceased work.
The incident was later recalled:
"On one occasion the same preacher was travelling near the residence of Hall, on a Sunday, when he discovered Ben, Gilbert and others doing some fencing. Reminding them of the sacred character of the day, the preacher was surprised to learn that they did not know it was the Sabbath. They referred the point to a lady who happened to live in a homestead near, and on the statement of the preacher being confirmed they immediately ceased their work for the day."
For men working on isolated stations, losing track of the day was hardly implausible. Pastoral work followed the demands of livestock, weather and season rather than the conventional working week, and the anecdote suggests less a deliberate contempt for religious observance than the rhythms of life in the bush. More importantly, it provides another glimpse of the relationship between Hall and Gilbert before their bushranging careers became inseparable. They were neighbours and working companions before they were outlaws.
The writer who preserved the story, knowing what eventually became of both men, could not resist adding the Latin warning:
Facilis descensus Averno.
The descent into hell is easy.
Written with hindsight, the phrase transformed an otherwise mundane Sunday encounter into a moral premonition. To the later observer, the young men repairing a fence already appeared to be standing at the beginning of the road that would end with both being shot dead by police in May 1865.
But nothing in the incident itself foretold that future.
Indeed, their willingness to stop work once assured that it was Sunday presents a rather different picture. Hall and Gilbert were still participating in the ordinary social conventions of the rural community around them. They worked, fenced, mustered cattle and interacted with neighbours and travelling clergymen like other young men of the district.
The significance lies not in seeing the bushrangers they would become, but in recognising how unremarkable they could still appear before becoming them.
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| Bridget Hall c. 1919. Note Taylors Wedding ring. Private Source. Never before published. |
Taken together, these recollections demonstrate that Hall's connections with the men who later formed Gardiner's circle were established earlier and ran deeper than some later accounts suggested. Gilbert and O'Meally were not strangers who suddenly appeared after Hall's life collapsed; they belonged to the same pastoral network in which he had worked for years. Gardiner himself had traded within the same cattle economy and, through Kitty Brown, had entered Hall's extended family circle.
This does not establish that Hall was already a member of Gardiner's criminal organisation. It does, however, make the older picture of an entirely unconnected grazier suddenly drawn into the gang increasingly difficult to sustain. Hall knew these men before the great outbreak of bushranging, worked and socialised within the same district, and shared many of the relationships through which their later activities developed.
While these associations were forming, Hall's private life was approaching a crisis of its own. During Bridget's increasingly frequent absences from Sandy Creek—sometimes in company with her sister Catherine—she became involved with James Taylor, a stockman approximately ten years her senior.
Taylor was not necessarily the complete stranger to Bridget that some later versions of the story imply. The isolated pastoral districts of the Weddin Mountains and Bland operated through dense networks of family, employment and marriage. Neighbours might live miles apart, but horseback travel made prolonged social visits commonplace. Families gathered for races, musters, weddings, dances and other occasions, while visitors routinely remained overnight or for several days before returning home. Within such a society, acquaintance often extended far beyond immediate neighbours. Bridget and Taylor occupied overlapping social worlds even before their affair.
One connection ran through Taylor's wife, Emma Dower, and Emma's sister Mary Jamieson. The Jamieson family held land at Back Creek, close to John Walsh's Wheogo property where Bridget had been raised. The families therefore belonged to the same relatively confined pastoral community, making earlier acquaintance between Bridget and Taylor entirely plausible even if no surviving record documents precisely when they first met. Taylor's own family connections extended further into the district.
Members of the family held substantial interests at Balabla and The Rocks, near Bimbi. These properties lay within the same geographical network as Arramagong Station, associated with the O'Meally family, and the rapidly expanding Burrangong goldfield.
The distances involved were small by the standards of pastoral New South Wales. Wheogo, Back Creek, Balabla, The Rocks and Arramagong all lay within a comparatively compact district surrounding the Weddin and Bland country, many within roughly fifteen miles of Lambing Flat.
This geographical concentration is important.
The people who later appeared in accounts of bushranging were not scattered strangers brought together by crime. They were neighbours, relatives, stockmen and acquaintances whose families had known one another through years of pastoral life.
John O'Meally grew up at Arramagong. James Taylor moved through the Bimbi and Bland country. Frank Gardiner operated among the cattlemen supplying Burrangong. Kitty Brown was Bridget Hall's sister and Gardiner's lover. Daniel Charters was one of Hall's closest friends. John Gilbert worked and rode with Hall and O'Meally.
The relationships overlapped long before the men became notorious.
Bridget's affair with Taylor must therefore be understood within this closely connected society rather than as the sudden appearance of an outsider at Sandy Creek. What changed was not necessarily that Taylor entered her social world, but the nature of their relationship. For Hall, the consequences would be devastating.
At precisely the moment when Sandy Creek appeared to offer him security and increasing prosperity, the foundations of his domestic life were beginning to collapse. Bridget's absences became more frequent, her relationship with Taylor deepened, and Hall's extended family was becoming increasingly entangled with Gardiner and the young horsemen surrounding him. The geography of the district made those developments almost impossible to separate. The same roads led to family visits, cattle musters, race meetings and goldfields. They also led to Gardiner's hiding places. By 1861, the pastoral world that had allowed Ben Hall to prosper was becoming the same world through which bushranging spread.
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| William Fogg and Mary Fogg, nee Taylor. c. 1870's Penzig |
The Empire reported, with obvious sarcasm:
"Mrs Fogg is in the habit of showing the shirt that the desperado wore in that encounter, or rather the shreds of it that were picked up after his escape. I am given to understand that it is prized as a relic..."The correspondent dryly suggested that the shirt, accompanied by an embellished account of Gardiner's exploits, would exercise a suitably "beneficial influence" upon the younger generation of the Abercrombie Ranges.
The episode illustrates the culture of admiration that could surround successful defiance of the police. Gardiner was certainly feared, but within some families and communities he was also celebrated. His ability to escape armed police became part of his reputation, and objects associated with such encounters could acquire almost talismanic significance. It was into this interconnected world that Bridget Hall's relationship with James Taylor developed. Taylor was still legally married. He had wed Emma Dower at Yass in 1849, and they had several children, including Sophia, Mary and the infant John. By the beginning of the 1860s the marriage had deteriorated badly. Emma struggled with alcohol, while Taylor eventually abandoned the household at Bennett Springs near Narrawa and returned towards the Lachlan.
A persistent historical error has identified James Taylor himself as a former policeman. There appears to be no evidence for this. The confusion almost certainly arose from his father, Adam Taylor, a former convict who briefly served as a constable at Penrith after obtaining his freedom.
By the latter half of 1861, Taylor was again moving through the Bland and Lachlan districts and his relationship with Bridget Hall had become increasingly serious. At first his visits to Sandy Creek could be explained as those of a friend and neighbour. John Maguire later believed otherwise.
In The Biography of a Reliable Old Native, he recalled:
"Taylor was a pretend friend of Ben, but, as the after events showed, his visits were more on account of Ben's wife, who was a fine-looking woman."Maguire claimed that he recognised what was happening before Hall did:
"I suspected his little game myself and had dropped hints to Ben."
Hall apparently resisted the implication at first. He loved Bridget and appears to have trusted both his wife and Taylor. Eventually, however, suspicion became impossible to ignore. Maguire recalled that Hall warned Bridget angrily about what would happen if he discovered evidence of an affair. Then Hall found letters from Taylor.
According to Maguire:
"Ben cautioned his wife, in very threatening language, what would happen if he ever discovered anything between her and Taylor. Later on, Ben actually came across some of Taylor's letters, and there was such a row that the latter kept a civil distance."For a time, Taylor withdrew. The marriage nevertheless continued to deteriorate. In the spring of 1861 Hall left Sandy Creek to participate in one of the great seasonal cattle musters. Such absences were an ordinary part of pastoral life. Squatters and stockmen gathered from properties across the Bland and Lachlan plains, sometimes remaining away from home for weeks while enormous mobs of cattle were collected, identified and separated.
Clarence Paget Bayly later remembered the atmosphere:
"Wire fences were unknown, and wild horses and cattle roamed the bush at will, and you would see from 20 to 30 men saddle up in the morning to take part at these great musters, and the stockwhips would sound like thunder coming home to the yards at nightfall."At day's end the slip-rails were closed, saddles removed and the exhausted riders gathered around their evening meal. Bayly remembered them as "as jolly a lot of fellows as ever smoked a pipe." For Hall, however, one such muster would mark the end of his settled domestic life. Later accounts romanticised his departure from Sandy Creek: Hall saying farewell to Bridget, affectionately tousling young Henry's hair and riding away unaware that he was looking upon his family together for the last time. Whether the farewell occurred precisely in that form cannot be established. What followed can. During Hall's absence, Bridget left him. She did not go alone. James Taylor went with her. Most devastatingly for Hall, they took his two-year-old son Henry. When Hall returned to Sandy Creek some weeks later, he found the home deserted.
One later account summarised the moment starkly:
"When Hall returned to Sandy Creek a few weeks later, he found the homestead hut deserted and learned from neighbours that the wife he had so greatly loved and so entirely trusted had gone off."John Maguire remembered the effect upon his brother-in-law in deeply personal terms.
Hall was:
"Cut up terribly, for he had been fond of his wife, and the little boy was the sunshine of his home."The loss of Henry appears to have affected him at least as profoundly as Bridget's betrayal. A later recollection published in 1924 described Hall initially refusing to believe what he was being told. When an old acquaintance finally explained that Bridget had gone with Taylor, Hall reportedly responded:
"For God's sake, don't say that."Then he asked about his child. Henry had gone with them. According to the same account, Hall became frantic. He saddled a horse, armed himself with a revolver and set out in pursuit.
For several days he searched.
Maguire remembered:
"For three or four days Ben raced about, but could not get a clue as to the direction taken by the pair. He abandoned the search in despair."Hall apparently did not know that Taylor and Bridget had initially made towards the Fish River country and connections associated with the Fogg family. By the time he attempted to follow them, their trail had disappeared into the network of relatives and acquaintances spread across the district.
Later they returned towards the Bland, finding shelter at a property associated with Alice Gibson between Humbug Creek and Lake Cowal, approximately forty-five miles from Sandy Creek. Hall returned home alone. A Changed Man. Those who knew Hall later insisted that something fundamental transformed in him after Bridget's departure. The 1924 account described him returning to Wheogo "a completely changed man." The previously industrious grazier became sullen, restless and increasingly indifferent towards the property he had spent years building. He reportedly complained that there was little purpose in working when he no longer had a wife or child waiting for him at home.
Such recollections were recorded many decades after the event and were inevitably influenced by knowledge of what Hall subsequently became. They should therefore be treated cautiously. There is a powerful temptation in bushranger biography to locate a single dramatic moment at which the respectable man becomes the outlaw.
Real lives are rarely so simple. Nevertheless, the collapse of Hall's marriage was unquestionably a major personal crisis. Within a remarkably short period he had lost the domestic foundation around which his prosperity at Sandy Creek had been constructed. Bridget was gone. Henry was gone. Taylor, a man who had entered the household as a supposed friend, had betrayed him.
The station remained. The cattle remained. But the home Hall had built around them had effectively ceased to exist. Maguire regarded the desertion as one of the decisive events in Hall's subsequent decline, and later members of the Hall family were even more emphatic in blaming Bridget. Their judgement should not be accepted uncritically, but neither should the emotional consequences of the event be minimised. Hall had been deeply attached to both wife and child. One of the most dramatic stories surrounding the separation concerns a purported farewell letter left by Bridget.
Jack Bradshaw reproduced the document decades later in Frank Gardiner, Ben Hall & Gang, a work drawing substantially upon recollections attributed to Hall's elder brother William. In the letter Bridget supposedly begged Ben to forget her, described Taylor as a "scoundrel," condemned herself as a "runaway strumpet," and acknowledged that she had destroyed her husband's happiness.
The document is extraordinary.
It is also of uncertain authenticity. No contemporary original has been established, and there is a further difficulty: both Ben and Bridget appear to have been unable to write, each signing the marriage register with a mark. If such a letter genuinely existed, Bridget therefore probably required someone else to compose or transcribe it. One possibility is her literate elder sister Ellen Maguire, who remained close to Hall and was apparently aware of the developing relationship with Taylor. But without the original document or a contemporary reference to it, the letter cannot safely be treated as Bridget's authenticated words. At best, it preserves a later family tradition concerning the separation. Maguire's recollections contain another detail that assumes significance only in hindsight. Around this period Hall acquired a revolver. According to Maguire, the weapon was found accidentally while the two men were riding together:
"I witnessed Ben's first essay at pulling the trigger. It was a revolver that he had picked up on the road one day while we were out riding together—a six-chambered weapon that had evidently fallen from someone's belt."Hall obtained ammunition and began practising. Maguire remembered him spending his lonely hours at Sandy Creek firing at a target. There is something haunting about the recollection because of what followed, but again hindsight must be resisted. Firearms were ordinary tools in rural New South Wales, and learning to use a revolver did not make Hall a bushranger.
What matters is the broader transformation taking place around him. The man practising with the revolver was no longer the contented young husband who had established Sandy Creek. His marriage had collapsed. His son had been taken from him. His relationship with the police was deteriorating. Gardiner was moving through his extended family. Gilbert and O'Meally were among his acquaintances. And Hall, increasingly restless, began making more frequent journeys away from Sandy Creek, including visits to the booming goldfield at Lambing Flat. The desertion did not turn Ben Hall into a bushranger overnight. But it removed one of the strongest reasons he had possessed for remaining what he had been. A husband. A father. And a man building a home.
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| Jack Bradshaw, 1846-1937. |
The recollections preserved by Jack Bradshaw broadly support John Maguire's account of what followed. Drawing heavily upon the memories of Ben's elder brother William Hall, Bradshaw portrayed the desertion as a decisive rupture in Ben's life. The young grazier who had previously devoted himself to stock, property and family became restless and increasingly reckless.
William's recollection was blunt:
"He rode about the country like a madman, hardly knowing what he was doing, and mixed up with all kinds of company."
The language was recorded many years afterwards and inevitably carries the benefit—and distortion—of hindsight. Neither William Hall nor John Maguire could know precisely what was occurring in Ben's mind. Yet their accounts agree upon something that can be considered more cautiously: his behaviour changed.
Hall began spending increasing periods away from Sandy Creek.
Maguire noticed the transformation because its consequences fell directly upon their shared pastoral enterprise:
"Ben soon lost interest in his station and started roaming about, so often that I missed him for days together."
This was a striking reversal. Only a short time earlier Hall had been clearing land, building stockyards, accumulating cattle and developing Sandy Creek into a permanent home. The station represented years of work and his principal investment. Now the domestic purpose around which much of that effort had revolved had disappeared.
Bridget was gone.
More painfully, Henry was gone with her.
It is reasonable to conclude that the loss profoundly affected Hall. What cannot safely be claimed is that it alone caused his subsequent criminal career. Hall already knew Gardiner, Gilbert, O'Meally and other men operating around the margins of the law; he had participated in cattle duffing; and police attention towards his extended social network was increasing independently of the collapse of his marriage. But Bridget's desertion appears to have removed an important restraint. The settled life Hall had spent years constructing suddenly mattered less to him.
As Ben increasingly absented himself, his elder brother William assumed greater responsibility for the management of Sandy Creek. The arrangement allowed the station to continue functioning while Ben wandered through the surrounding districts. Where he went during every absence cannot now be reconstructed.
Some journeys were undoubtedly ordinary. Hall possessed friends, relatives, livestock interests and business connections spread across an enormous area. A grazier could legitimately disappear for days while attending musters, inspecting cattle or travelling to the goldfields.
But Hall was also increasingly seen in different company.
His association with Frank Gardiner became more conspicuous, and he began spending more time around public houses and grog shops frequented by young horsemen whose apparent prosperity bore little relationship to visible employment. This was precisely the class of men attracting increasing police attention throughout the gold districts.
In April 1862 the Yass Courier urged police to scrutinise:
"All those young men who appear to have plenty of idle time to own and ride flash horses, and knock about public-houses, with apparently plenty of spare cash, and no ostensible means of earning or replacing the same."
The newspaper added that such men were frequently surrounded by older "loafers" of shabby appearance and concluded with the Latin maxim:
Noscitur a sociis. A man is known by the company he keeps.
The observation could almost have been written for the dilemma now confronting Ben Hall. Throughout his earlier life, Hall's wide circle of acquaintances had been evidence of his usefulness as a stockman. He knew men across the Lachlan because he mustered their cattle, rode their stations, attended their races and traded livestock with them.
By 1861–62, the meaning of those associations was changing. The same exceptional horses that once marked an accomplished stockman could identify a suspected horse thief. The same ability to disappear into the bush for days at a time could suggest criminal activity. The same friendships that had developed through mustering cattle now connected Hall with men increasingly wanted by police. And the same public houses that served as ordinary meeting places for stockmen and travellers also provided gathering points for thieves, fugitives and their sympathisers. Hall was moving between these worlds at precisely the moment when Pottinger's police were becoming determined to distinguish one from the other. The distinction was becoming increasingly difficult even for Hall himself.
William Hall remembered his brother mixing "with all kinds of company." Maguire remembered him abandoning the routine of Sandy Creek and disappearing for days. Both men traced the change to the destruction of his domestic life.
Their testimony does not establish that Hall immediately joined Gardiner. It establishes something more subtle, and probably more important. Ben Hall had ceased to live like the man who had built Sandy Creek.
The disciplined young stockman who had spent a decade accumulating cattle, horses and land was becoming restless. The future he had imagined for himself had collapsed, and the station that once represented independence and prosperity no longer commanded his full attention.
Into that vacuum came companionship. Among the men offering it were some of the finest horsemen in the district. They were also becoming its most dangerous criminals.
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| Rev. John Dunmore Lang. b. 1799 - d. 1878. Courtesy University of Wollongong. |
The places in which Hall increasingly spent his time were themselves attracting public criticism.
During his travels through the western and southern districts, the outspoken clergyman, politician and social commentator John Dunmore Lang observed the network of shanties, public houses and sly-grog shops that had grown rapidly along the roads serving Burrangong and the Lachlan goldfields.
Lang—the celebrated "Stormy Petrel" of colonial politics—was rarely restrained in his opinions. In his 1862 Notes of a Trip to the Westward and Southward, he condemned both the criminal element flourishing around the goldfields and what he regarded as the complacency of local communities towards it.
Of the roadside establishments scattered throughout the district, he observed:
"All along these routes there are these places of accommodation, shanties, sly grog shops, etc., of the most questionable character and it is in these places that our modern bushrangers obtain occasional shelter and general information."
Lang had identified one of the fundamental difficulties confronting the police. The bushrangers did not live permanently hidden in inaccessible caves or mountain retreats. They moved through an inhabited landscape. Public houses, roadside shanties and isolated stations provided food, alcohol, news, fresh horses and temporary shelter. Travellers passing through carried information concerning police patrols, gold escorts and the movements of wealthy settlers. These establishments therefore functioned as informal exchanges of intelligence. They were also ordinary places of social life. Stockmen, carriers, miners and travellers had legitimate reasons to visit them, making it extremely difficult for police to distinguish between the casual customer, the sympathiser and the active accomplice.
Hall was increasingly visible in precisely these surroundings.
After Bridget's departure, his movements became irregular. He travelled between Forbes, Lambing Flat, the Weddin Mountains and properties scattered across the Lachlan and Bland districts. He appeared at public houses and shanties, visited acquaintances and spent increasing periods away from Sandy Creek.
One drayman later recalled repeatedly encountering him during journeys through the district:
"The last two trips we have made, on both occasions, I saw him at the Pinnacle Station, Mrs Feehily's public house."
The Pinnacle was particularly significant. Margaret Feehily was Daniel Charters' sister, and her property had already attracted police suspicion as a place associated with Gardiner and his acquaintances. Hall's presence there was therefore entirely understandable through his friendship with Charters, yet to Pottinger's police it provided another connection within the network they were attempting to penetrate.
This was the problem Hall increasingly faced. Almost everywhere he went, relationships that had once been ordinary now carried a different meaning. Visiting the Pinnacle meant visiting the sister of his closest friend—but the police regarded the property as sympathetic to Gardiner. Travelling to the Weddin Mountains meant entering country where Hall had mustered cattle for years—but it also brought him near the O'Meally family's inn and men suspected of horse stealing. Going to Lambing Flat could involve legitimate cattle business—but it was also where Gardiner had operated his butcher's shop and where stolen livestock circulated through the goldfield economy. Drinking at a public house was hardly remarkable for a young grazier—but those same establishments were being used by wanted men to obtain shelter and intelligence. The boundaries were collapsing. Hall himself appears to have become increasingly indifferent to the consequences.
The recollections of William Hall and John Maguire describe a man experiencing a profound emotional crisis following the loss of Bridget and Henry. He rode compulsively through the district, abandoned much of the routine management of Sandy Creek and mixed increasingly freely with men whose reputations should have warned him to exercise caution.
It is impossible—and unnecessary—to assign a retrospective medical diagnosis to that behaviour. What the evidence supports is a marked change in functioning. The previously industrious grazier became restless. The man who had spent years accumulating stock began neglecting his station. The husband and father who had built a permanent home increasingly avoided it. And the young man formerly described as steady and temperate began spending more time among the restless population surrounding the goldfields.
Hall had not yet become a bushranger.
But he was becoming conspicuous. That distinction mattered enormously because Sir Frederick Pottinger and the western police were watching precisely such men.
Hall's hard-earned reputation could no longer protect him indefinitely from the implications of his behaviour. He rode excellent horses. He possessed no obvious need to work continuously for wages. He disappeared for days. He frequented establishments associated with Gardiner. His friends included Charters, Gilbert and O'Meally. His sister-in-law was Gardiner's lover.
To Hall, these relationships may still have belonged to the ordinary social world in which he had lived for years.
To the police, they increasingly formed a pattern.
And in the atmosphere of the goldfields, where noscitur a sociis—a man was known by his associates—could become almost a principle of investigation, Ben Hall was surrounding himself with increasingly dangerous company.
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MacAlister's former
Great Eastern Hotel, Forbes, frequented by Ben Hall. c. 1862. N.L.A. |
Later recollections suggest that by 1861 Hall's changing behaviour had become sufficiently conspicuous to damage the reputation he had spent years building throughout the Lachlan.
One of the most important accounts came from Charles MacAlister, a former Forbes publican who later recorded his memories in Old Pioneering Days in the Sunny South. MacAlister remembered the hotels and social circles through which Gardiner and his associates moved before the Eugowra gold escort robbery, and his account complicates the later image of Hall as an entirely innocent grazier suddenly persecuted into bushranging by the police.
According to MacAlister, Gardiner's associates were remarkably open in their movements around Forbes.
He recalled:
"Ben Hall, Gilbert, Fordyce, Charters, and others of the bushrangers had drinks on many occasions at the Great Eastern Hotel in Forbes, and in broad daylight, too."
MacAlister placed these gatherings before the Eugowra robbery of June 1862.
That chronology is significant.
The men who would later become associated with one of the most spectacular robberies in Australian history were not necessarily strangers brought together immediately before the attack. Several already knew one another, travelled through the same district and socialised openly in Forbes.
Yet MacAlister also made an important distinction.
Before Eugowra, he wrote:
"Ben Hall and Gilbert were only suspected of a bushranging kinship with Gardiner."
The word suspected matters.
Hall's associations were sufficiently strong to attract the attention of police and prominent residents, but suspicion had repeatedly failed to produce a conviction. MacAlister remembered that Hall and O'Meally had been brought before the local Bench more than once:
"For though several of them had been before the Forbes Bench on suspicion (Ben Hall and O'Malley were repeatedly brought up), the law had failed to sheet the guilt home to them to the satisfaction of the local J.P."
This provides a more balanced picture of Hall's position immediately before Eugowra. He was no longer simply the promising young grazier of Sandy Creek. Nor had the authorities proved him to be a bushranger. He occupied the increasingly uncomfortable territory between the two. Police knew his associates. Local residents saw him drinking with Gardiner's circle. He appeared repeatedly before magistrates. Yet evidence sufficient to convict him remained elusive. The situation raises an important question concerning Sir Frederick Pottinger's treatment of Hall.
Later accounts sympathetic to Hall frequently portrayed Pottinger as an aristocratic policeman who selected an innocent grazier for persecution and, through repeated harassment, effectively drove him into crime. There is some truth in the claim that Hall was repeatedly arrested or detained without conviction, and such treatment undoubtedly deepened his hostility towards the police.
But Pottinger's suspicions were not created from nothing.
By this stage Hall was associating openly with men involved in horse and cattle theft. Gardiner had entered his extended family through Kitty Brown. Hall knew Gilbert and O'Meally. Daniel Charters was one of his closest friends. Hall frequented properties and public houses identified by police as meeting places for Gardiner's associates.
MacAlister's recollections indicate that these relationships were visible not merely to Pottinger but to ordinary residents of Forbes. The police therefore had legitimate reasons to investigate Hall. The more difficult question is whether reasonable suspicion became indiscriminate harassment when evidence repeatedly failed to support prosecution. Hall himself certainly believed it had. During the capture of Inspector Norton in 1863, Hall reportedly complained about the treatment he had received from Pottinger before his open bushranging career began. He referred bitterly to:
"The trouble Sir Frederick Pottinger had given him in having him taken into Forbes so many times before the magistrates for nothing."
The remark is revealing.
From Hall's perspective, the crucial fact was not that police suspected him but that they repeatedly arrested him and repeatedly failed to prove anything. Each unsuccessful prosecution reinforced his conviction that Pottinger had personally targeted him.
From Pottinger's perspective, the same sequence probably suggested something entirely different: Hall continually appeared in suspicious circumstances, surrounded himself with known offenders and somehow escaped conviction.
Both men could therefore interpret the same events as confirmation of their existing beliefs.
Hall saw persecution.
Pottinger saw a criminal clever enough to remain beyond the reach of the evidence.
Their antagonism intensified accordingly.
There is also reason to be cautious when assessing how much criminal activity Hall may already have undertaken without detection. Bushrangers routinely concealed their identities during robberies. Faces could be blackened with soot or charcoal, while crape, calico and other improvised masks prevented victims from making reliable identifications.
A man might therefore participate in a robbery without subsequently being recognised by those he had held up.
Whether Hall personally used such disguises in undocumented robberies before Eugowra cannot now be demonstrated. MacAlister's evidence establishes association and suspicion; it does not identify Hall beyond doubt as the masked participant in any particular earlier offence.
Nevertheless, by early 1862 the cumulative evidence makes one conclusion increasingly difficult to avoid:
Ben Hall was moving within Gardiner's criminal circle before the Eugowra robbery.
Exactly when acquaintance became complicity remains uncertain. That distinction is important because Hall's descent was not a single event. There was no morning on which the respectable grazier simply became a bushranger. Instead, the boundary shifted gradually. First came cattle duffing. Then friendships with Gilbert and O'Meally. Then Gardiner entered the family circle. Then Hall neglected Sandy Creek and spent increasing periods away from home. Then came the hotels, the suspected harbourers and repeated appearances before the magistrates.
At each stage Hall could still claim that association was not guilt.
Legally, he was correct.
But by 1862 Sir Frederick Pottinger was no longer the only person asking questions about Ben Hall. And before long, the law would finally obtain something more substantial than suspicion.
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Illustration of hotel
festivities on the Gold Fields. c. 1860's. Image courtesy NLA. |
Charles MacAlister remembered seeing Hall and men associated with Gardiner moving openly through the town's hotels and places of entertainment. There was remarkably little attempt at concealment. Men suspected of horse stealing and bushranging drank alongside miners, stockmen and respectable townspeople, sometimes within sight of the very police attempting to apprehend them.
For Hall, Forbes offered almost everything that the deserted homestead at Sandy Creek no longer did company, noise, entertainment and distraction.
The transformation of Black Ridge into a gold town had created one of the most extraordinary social environments in colonial New South Wales. Thousands of predominantly young men had arrived carrying gold or hoping to find it, and an entire entertainment economy appeared almost overnight to relieve them of their money.
Hotels multiplied, dance halls opened, theatres and concert rooms competed for audiences. Billiard rooms, gambling establishments and drinking houses remained crowded long after darkness.
Among the most conspicuous figures were the hurdy-gurdy girls, professional dancers who provided female companionship in a community where men greatly outnumbered women. For a price they danced with miners and stockmen while musicians struggled to make themselves heard above the stamping feet, shouting and general uproar of the saloons.
Successful miners could be astonishingly extravagant.
Some women reportedly demanded pounds rather than shillings for a dance. One later recollection claimed that a particularly celebrated performer refused to dance with an ordinary customer for less than £5—an extraordinary sum for a few minutes' entertainment.
The atmosphere could move rapidly from exuberance to violence.
MacAlister remembered one disturbance in which a barmaid, having been insulted by a young man, began hurling empty bottles and pewter mugs at him.
"The air was full of smash and frenzy."Sir Frederick Pottinger happened to be riding past with a trooper.
The two policemen rushed into the establishment to restore order, leaving their horses tethered outside.
Someone stole them.
MacAlister recalled that John Gilbert was suspected of having a hand in the joke. Whether he actually did so was never established, but the humiliation of the formidable Inspector became part of local folklore. Pottinger emerged from the disturbance to discover himself stranded, threatening bystanders with punishment unless the missing horses were returned.
The story captures something of the atmosphere in which police and the young horsemen of the district confronted one another.
Authority could easily become entertainment.
The goldfields possessed money, alcohol, weapons and an abundance of young men willing to test themselves against one another.
Ted Plunkett, who had known Forbes from childhood, remembered that whisky was comparatively uncommon in the early years. Brandy dominated the bars:
"Pale and dark brandy was sold then, and it was quite effective, too."His understated conclusion was borne out by what followed.
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| Ted Plunkett |
Fighting was constant.
Plunkett remembered one particularly troublesome group known as the Donegallers:
"They were always looking for a fight. You might see one fight start away in the distance, and before you could reach it there would be half a dozen more."Another old resident, looking back upon Forbes in 1862 and 1863, described an extraordinary mixture of humanity:
"Pressmen, lawyers, magistrates, surveyors, actors, demireps, unfrocked parsons, gamblers, pugilists, golden hole men, 'all sorts and conditions of men,' cheek by jowl."The writer remembered the bars and dancing saloons overflowing while theatres and cafés chantants attracted larger audiences than the churches.
His conclusion was memorable:
"Money was flung about anyhow; it seemed as if Sheol itself was let loose."Forbes was not merely drunken chaos. It was also a thriving centre of entertainment. Theatres advertised performances every evening. Wigram's Exhibition Concert promised "legitimate amusement, light, laughable, and agreeable" from half past seven until eleven, with reserved seats for a shilling and cushioned seats for two. Other theatres charged no admission at all, although the apparent generosity concealed a commercial arrangement: everyone entering was expected to purchase a drink for sixpence whether they wanted one or not. The performers themselves could become celebrities.
Journalist Dan Mayne later remembered actresses Maggie Oliver and Joey Gogenheim appearing with William Holloway's company. Audiences were so delighted that, instead of flowers, successful diggers threw nuggets of gold onto the stage.
Mayne recalled:
"It was the liveliest place I was ever in."Money, he said, was thrown about "in the most reckless fashion." The boom created fortunes far beyond the mining claims. Entrepreneurs established boarding houses, stores, restaurants and hotels as quickly as buildings could be erected. An advertisement from early 1862 offered a public house on the South Lead containing four bedrooms, kitchen and oven, already accommodating fifty boarders.
The asking price was £150.
In a town whose population had exploded almost overnight, even a rough timber building could become valuable. The crowds were also heavily armed. One observer remembered entering a gathering where:
"Nearly all the men had revolvers or pistols in their belts."Their clothing often revealed their occupations. Miners and labourers wore flannel shirts and moleskin trousers, while men in riding breeches could readily be identified as stock dealers and stockmen who had brought animals to the diggings for sale.
Hall would have fitted naturally among them. He was a superb horseman, grazier and cattle dealer in his early twenties, accustomed to carrying himself among stockmen and miners. His presence in Forbes hotels therefore proves little by itself.
What matters is the frequency of those visits and the company increasingly surrounding him. MacAlister remembered Hall drinking openly with Gilbert, Charters, Fordyce and others associated with Gardiner. Hall moved between the hotels, dance halls and gathering places of the gold town while his elder brother increasingly attended to Sandy Creek. The contrast with Hall's life only a short time earlier is striking. At Sandy Creek, his days had been structured around cattle, horses, improvements to the run and a young family.
Forbes offered the opposite.
It was restless, anonymous and exhilarating. A man could drink until morning, dance with strangers, gamble, fight, race horses and disappear into a crowd drawn from almost every corner of the world. Gold circulated freely. Revolvers were commonplace. Respectable businessmen stood at the same bars as horse thieves, and suspected bushrangers could sometimes drink openly while police passed in the street outside.
For a twenty-four-year-old man whose home had collapsed, the attraction is not difficult to understand. Yet Forbes also accelerated Hall's movement towards the criminal world. Every night spent drinking with Gilbert or Gardiner's associates strengthened police suspicion. Every unexplained absence from Sandy Creek weakened his claim to be simply an industrious grazier. Every appearance at a hotel known to harbour suspicious characters brought him further into Pottinger's field of vision. The transformation was gradual but increasingly visible. Ben Hall had once spent his spare hours improving Sandy Creek. Now he was spending them in Forbes.
And Forbes in 1862 was perhaps the easiest place in New South Wales for a restless young horseman to find trouble. At its height the Forbes gold rush produced scenes almost unimaginable only months earlier.
"Gold, man, gold! Have I died and gone to heaven?"
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| Capt Brown |
The observer concluded simply:
"The Forbes rush at its height was a pandemonium."Canvas and bark initially dominated the landscape, but permanent buildings rapidly appeared along the rough tracks that became the town's streets. Hotels, stores, theatres, boarding houses and drinking establishments competed for the enormous quantity of money circulating through the goldfield.
The crowds themselves seemed endless. An old resident, looking back in 1928, remembered attempting to walk through Rankin Street:
"It was simply impossible for you to get down Rankin Street with a mate without losing him. The people were like sardines in a tin."Hotels were so crowded that customers waited outside for an opportunity merely to enter.
"I do not think there was a country on the face of the earth which was not represented."Into this extraordinary environment came Ben Hall. After the collapse of his domestic life at Sandy Creek, he increasingly immersed himself in the social world of Forbes. He was seen with Gilbert, O'Meally and other men associated with Gardiner, moving between public houses and entertainment venues without displaying much concern for the police presence.
Among the establishments associated with this period were Montgomery's Rising Sun Hotel, the Great Eastern, Cohen's Inn, the Harp of Erin, and the White Hart, kept by John Wilson, an acquaintance of John Maguire. Hall had entered a world in which anonymity was easy and companionship abundant. One later tradition even records that for a short period he lived with a woman remembered as Betsy, although the details of the relationship are uncertain. If the recollection is reliable, the attachment was brief; she eventually left him for another man. The story, following so closely upon Bridget's desertion, adds another melancholy detail to Hall's unsettled personal life, but the evidence is too slight to draw much more from it. Beyond the respectable licensed hotels existed another economy altogether. Unlicensed drinking houses flourished along the roads connecting Forbes, Burrangong and the surrounding stations. Some were little more than huts in isolated locations, deliberately situated away from the principal routes used by police. The Yass Courier condemned them in June 1861. While conceding that unlicensed drinking establishments on rapidly shifting goldfields might be understandable, the newspaper saw no justification for their existence "in out of the way places in the bush."
Their purpose, it argued, was obvious:
"The unlicensed grog-shops on by-roads, and in other quiet spots, are the very places where the professed horse and cattle thieves meet, concoct their plans, or effect changes in the property they have appropriated."The examples provided were extraordinary. At one establishment, half the carcass of a supposedly stolen bullock had allegedly been exchanged for a bottle of rum. Elsewhere a valuable mare had reportedly been traded for half a gallon of liquor. Such transactions reveal that sly-grog shops served purposes extending well beyond drinking. They were meeting places. Information exchanges. Markets for stolen property. And locations where men operating beyond the law could gather without attracting the attention they might receive in the centre of Forbes. Gilbert and O'Meally were themselves associated with such an establishment on the road between Lambing Flat and Forbes near the Weddin Mountains.
The authorities understood the problem and periodically attempted to suppress the trade. In one series of prosecutions, Samuel Richards, James Pattison and Margaret Scully were each fined £30 for sly-grog selling. Proceedings against Elizabeth Marshall were adjourned, while a warrant was issued for Helen Berriman after she failed to appear.
The prominence of women among the operators is notable. Running an illicit drinking house offered entrepreneurial opportunities in a society overwhelmingly populated by men, and some women proved remarkably adept at maintaining such businesses despite repeated police attention. For Hall, frequenting these establishments represented another step away from the respectable pastoral world of Sandy Creek.
Again, drinking in a sly-grog shop did not make a man a bushranger. But these were precisely the places in which stolen horses could be exchanged, police movements discussed and robberies planned. Hall was moving deeper into Gardiner's social environment.It is important, however, not to project Hall's later circumstances backwards across his entire married life. Ben had enjoyed hotels, dances and social gatherings long before Bridget left him.
One old Bathurst resident, interviewed in 1921, remembered dancing with Hall around 1860:
"Ben Hall wasn't a bushranger then."The witness recalled a group of young men arriving at a William Street hotel, among them Ben and his brother William.
"Ben looked a fine young fellow."Someone suggested:
"Let's have a buck set."A "buck set" was a dance performed predominantly by men when female partners were scarce. The young witness remembered taking "tops" with Hall, while the publican's daughter was apparently the only woman participating.
The recollection is a useful reminder that Hall's enjoyment of hotels and dancing was not itself evidence of decline. These establishments were central to colonial social life. The difference after 1861 was frequency, purpose and company. Before the collapse of Sandy Creek, Hall attended such places as a young grazier enjoying recreation. Afterwards, according to those closest to him, he increasingly seemed to be avoiding home. Bridget herself had demonstrated her formidable temperament several years before the marriage failed. During a visit to Bathurst in 1858, Ben and Bridget stayed at the Australian Hotel in Bentinck Street. There Bridget became involved in a furious verbal confrontation with another woman, Elizabeth Fitkin. The quarrel eventually reached the Bathurst court. The language used was apparently so extraordinary that the newspaper refused to reproduce most of it. The reporter observed that Bridget had made accusations concerning Mrs Fitkin's chastity:
"In language which could scarcely be equalled by either the celebrated Mrs Moriarty or the great Daniel O'Connell, and which is therefore hardly fit for print."The unwilling principal witness was the hotel's barman, Mr Murray. Murray initially failed to appear despite being summoned, resulting in his being brought before the court by a policeman. When asked to explain himself, he responded that he had no desire:
"To mix himself up with anything so filthy and disgusting as the case in question."He remained indignant:
"I am disgusted, your Worships, beyond measure, at being in any way connected with the transaction."Murray had spent forty years working in hotels and considered himself familiar with coarse behaviour, yet declared that he had never imagined being dragged into:
"A dirty, filthy, obscene piece of business such as this."
The Bench eventually dismissed the case and released the unfortunate barman from custody.
The episode provides unusually contemporary evidence of Bridget's personality. She was capable of extraordinary verbal aggression when provoked and appears to have possessed little of her husband's reputed shyness.
Her opponent was hardly a passive victim. Elizabeth Fitkin, an Irish-born former convict who had arrived aboard the Margaret in 1839, possessed her own extensive history of appearances before the courts for drunkenness, disorder and assault.
The confrontation was therefore less an attack by one uniquely unruly woman than a spectacular collision between two formidable personalities.
It also reveals something important about Ben and Bridget's life before their separation. They travelled, visited hotels,t hey attended the social world of the larger towns.
Their marriage was not spent entirely within the isolation of Sandy Creek. By 1862, however, Hall's circumstances had changed fundamentally. The grazier once described as "a young man of fine promise" was becoming increasingly difficult to recognise. His brother managed much of Sandy Creek. His closest companions increasingly included men suspected of horse stealing and highway robbery.
And Hall himself was spending more time in a town where money could disappear as quickly as it was found. Forbes provided endless diversion. It also provided almost unlimited opportunity for trouble. The hotels were crowded. The roads were rich. The population carried cash and gold. Horses stood everywhere. Firearms were ordinary accessories.
And beyond the lights of the town stretched hundreds of miles of bush that Ben Hall knew as well as any man alive. All that remained was for someone to show how those advantages could be turned into something more profitable than cattle.
Frank Gardiner already knew how.
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| Bridget Taylor |
Author's Note — Bridget's relationship with James Taylor continued long after Ben Hall's death, although the couple could not legally marry while Taylor's first wife, Emma, remained alive.
Emma Taylor died near Crookwell in March 1876 after years reportedly marked by serious problems with alcohol. With the legal obstacle to their marriage removed, James Taylor and Bridget finally married at Forbes on 1 June 1876—approximately fifteen years after they had first left Sandy Creek together. By then they had established a family of their own. Three children are recorded from their relationship: John Taylor, born 1 January 1869; James Taylor, born 14 April 1871; and Catherine Ellen Taylor, born 20 July 1873.
Taylor himself survived the marriage by little more than a year. He died at Cadalgulee, near Forbes, on 21 July 1877, aged approximately forty-six. Contemporary accounts associate his declining health with excessive drinking. Bridget was widowed again at only thirty-seven.
One persistent error concerning James Taylor should also be corrected. Later accounts sometimes described him as a former policeman or constable. There appears to be no basis for the claim. The policeman was his father.
Adam Taylor, a transported convict, arrived in New South Wales aboard the Baring in 1819 under a seven-year sentence. After obtaining his freedom in 1825, Adam was appointed—or returned to service—as a constable at Penrith in 1827. Confusion between father and son appears to have produced the later tradition that Bridget left Ben Hall for a policeman.
She did not.
After James Taylor's death, Bridget eventually left the Forbes district and moved north-west to the Bourke country, settling around Fords Bridge. Family connections again influenced the move. Her sister Ellen was in the district, as was John Brown, husband of her sister Catherine "Kitty" Brown. Bridget's later life there produced an interesting reunion with the son she had taken from Sandy Creek in 1861. When she was prosecuted for failing to comply with the compulsory schooling requirements introduced under the Public Instruction Act, Bridget appeared before the court represented by her son Henry Hall.
She was nevertheless fined.
The episode is important because it demonstrates that whatever difficulties may have existed between mother and son, Henry remained sufficiently involved in Bridget's affairs as an adult to appear on her behalf. In 1904 Bridget moved again, this time to Cobargo on the far South Coast of New South Wales. There she spent the final nineteen years of her life. She died on 9 July 1923, aged eighty-two. Bridget was buried at Cobargo, apparently without a permanent marked headstone.
The absence of a surviving monument is curious. By 1923 Cobargo was an established community, and Bridget had adult children and grandchildren. An unmarked grave therefore naturally raises questions concerning her circumstances and family relationships at the end of her life. Yet without further evidence it would be unsafe to interpret the absence of a headstone as proof that her children had abandoned her. Markers could be temporary, deteriorate or disappear, and many graves from the period subsequently lost their identifying monuments.
Her son Henry's life contained an extraordinary echo of his father's domestic experience. In 1884 Henry Hall married Ellen Barnes, and the couple had a son, Arthur. Eight years later, in 1892, Ellen left Henry for another man, Charles Keightley. The parallel is striking. As a two-year-old child Henry had been taken from Sandy Creek when his mother left Ben Hall for James Taylor. Three decades later, Henry's own wife left him for another man.
Ellen and Charles Keightley subsequently established themselves in South Australia. Henry eventually rebuilt his life and in 1899 married Kate Fullbrook, an English immigrant. Whether Henry consciously reflected upon the similarity between his own experience and that of his father is unknown. Nor is it clear that Henry was permanently estranged from Bridget. His movements away from Bourke and later residence elsewhere may suggest distance between them, but his appearance on her behalf in court demonstrates that their relationship was not simply one of complete abandonment. Henry would in due course settle in Tamworth.
Bridget outlived Ben Hall by fifty-eight years.
She had been fifteen when she married him, approximately twenty when their marriage collapsed, twenty-four when Hall was shot dead at Billabong Creek, and eighty-two when she herself died. By then the events of Sandy Creek belonged to another age. The husband she had left had become one of Australia's most famous bushrangers. The man for whom she left him had been dead for nearly half a century. Almost everyone who had participated in the extraordinary events surrounding Wheogo, Gardiner and the Hall gang had disappeared.
Bridget survived them all.
Yet unlike Ben, whose grave at Forbes became a place of remembrance and legend, Bridget's final resting place at Cobargo passed quietly into obscurity.
While Ben Hall's own domestic life was collapsing at Sandy Creek, the family he had left behind at Murrurundi remained embroiled in difficulties of its own.
In December 1861 the fifty-six-year-old Benjamin Hall senior again became the subject of newspaper attention, this time as the victim of an unusually cruel assault. Hall had spent the evening drinking at Thomas Abbott's Plough Inn at Blandford, not far from Murrurundi. Afterwards he began the half-mile journey home. According to the Newcastle Chronicle and Hunter River District News, he was "a little the worse for beer" and, becoming tired along the road, sat down to rest.
He fell asleep.
What followed was particularly vicious.
"On Friday last, as poor old Ben Hall, of Blandford, was on his road home, a 'little the worse for beer,' and as Benjamin resided a distance of half-a-mile from the public house where he had been spending the evening, and felt tired, he sat down to rest awhile, and unfortunately fell into a sound sleep, when some villain poured over his head and face a quantity of hot water, scalding poor Hall in a fearful manner."The attack was clearly deliberate.
Someone had either followed Hall from the hotel or discovered him sleeping beside the road, obtained hot water and poured it across the face and head of a defenceless man.
The newspaper added:
"The police have a clue to the monster who committed this atrocious act."Who the police suspected is unclear. Given the documented hostility within the Hall household, later speculation naturally falls upon those with whom Benjamin Hall senior had quarrelled. Honora Hall had already taken legal action against him, while Edward's relationship with his father had become openly violent. Yet no surviving evidence presently establishes that either was responsible for the scalding, and the identity of the attacker should therefore remain unresolved.
What the episode does demonstrate is the extraordinary deterioration of Benjamin Hall senior's circumstances. Twenty years earlier he had been an ambitious butcher, grazier and property owner occupying one of the most desirable allotments at Haydonton. He had maintained a substantial home, butcher's shop, blacksmith's shop, stockyards, orchard and livestock. By the beginning of the 1860s his position was markedly different. His marriage had fractured. His relationship with Edward had descended into violence. His daughter-in-law had taken him before the courts.
And now, after an evening drinking at a Blandford public house, he had been found asleep beside the road and deliberately scalded by an unknown assailant. There is no surviving evidence recording Ben Hall junior's reaction. By then father and son had lived largely separate lives for a decade. Ben was more than two hundred miles away in the Lachlan, consumed by the collapse of his own marriage and increasingly drifting away from Sandy Creek. The parallel is nevertheless striking. At almost the same moment, father and son—separated geographically and apparently personally—were experiencing the disintegration of the respectable lives each had once attempted to build.
In Murrurundi, Benjamin Hall senior's family relationships had become openly hostile. At Sandy Creek, Ben's home was disappearing altogether. Neither man's troubles caused those of the other.
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| Ben Hall c. 1862. |
The phrase was written with hindsight, but it captures the way Hall's contemporaries remembered the transformation. The quiet, hardworking stockman began behaving recklessly. He neglected Sandy Creek, disappeared for days. He frequented Forbes and Lambing Flat.
The change should not be reduced to a simple proposition that Bridget's betrayal made Hall a bushranger. Hall remained responsible for the choices that followed, and his associations with cattle duffing and questionable companions had begun before his marriage collapsed.
But the timing is difficult to ignore. Until 1861 Hall had possessed powerful reasons to preserve his respectable life. Sandy Creek represented years of work. Bridget and Henry gave the station its domestic purpose. His cattle and horses offered a path towards increasing prosperity. After the desertion, much of that purpose disappeared. Into the void stepped Frank Gardiner. By the closing months of 1861 and the beginning of 1862, Hall's association with the celebrated fugitive appears to have become considerably closer. Gardiner was everything Hall had not previously been: experienced in crime, openly contemptuous of authority, accustomed to imprisonment and escape, and prepared to use violence against police when cornered.
To restless young horsemen throughout the district, he possessed an undeniable reputation. Gardiner had escaped from custody. He had survived Cockatoo Island. He had fought armed police and escaped again. He rode exceptional horses, moved freely through the bush and appeared repeatedly to humiliate the authorities attempting to capture him. To Sir Frederick Pottinger he was a dangerous professional criminal. To some young men of the western districts, he was "The King of the Road." John Maguire believed Gardiner's arrival represented the decisive stage in Hall's decline.
His recollection was unequivocal:
"Things got from bad to worse, till Frank Gardiner, the bushranger, came. He capped the lot. Now under 'The King of the Road's' influence, Ben started on his notorious career."
Maguire's judgement deserves weight because he had known Hall before the transformation. He had worked beside him, shared Sandy Creek with him, witnessed the collapse of his marriage and watched his interest in the station disappear. Yet even Maguire's account was recorded long afterwards, when the eventual outcome was already known. It therefore describes the trajectory more neatly than Hall himself could possibly have experienced it.
There was probably no conscious moment when Ben Hall decided to become a bushranger. The transition appears instead to have occurred through degrees. First he stopped caring about Sandy Creek. Then he began roaming. Then he spent increasing time with men already engaged in stock theft. Then Gardiner became a regular presence. The respectable grazier and the criminal world were no longer separated by much distance. By early 1862, Hall was not merely acquainted with the men surrounding Gardiner. He was becoming one of them. The remaining step was participation in serious armed crime. That step would come soon enough.
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| Flamboyant, Claude Du Val. by William Powell Firth (1819-1909) |
He understood reputation.
In this respect he belonged to an older tradition of the romantic highwayman, epitomised in popular memory by the seventeenth-century English robber Claude Du Val. Du Val's reputation survived not merely because he robbed travellers but because later generations remembered him as the courteous and theatrical "gentleman of the road"—a criminal whose manners supposedly distinguished him from the common thief.
One later description called Du Val:
"A gallant and courteous rogue, probably the most dashing highwayman ever to haunt the roads of England."Gardiner cultivated a remarkably similar image in colonial Australia. Whether he consciously modelled himself upon Du Val cannot be established, but Gardiner certainly understood that a successful outlaw possessed two identities: the man who committed the robbery and the character subsequently created through newspapers, gossip and popular imagination. He followed press reports concerning his activities and appears to have taken considerable interest in how they represented him. When newspapers published accounts he considered inaccurate, Gardiner was reportedly prepared to challenge them, even communicating with editors such as those of the Burrangong Star. This concern with reputation distinguished him from the anonymous highway thief. Gardiner was becoming a celebrity. His appearance contributed to the effect. One contemporary description remembered him wearing:
"Breeches and high boots, cabbage-tree hat with a black band, and black poncho spotted on the inside like the skin of a leopard."It was practical bush clothing transformed into theatre. Gardiner also cultivated manners that contrasted with the violence implicit in the revolver he carried. Victims were often treated courteously provided they complied. He joked, conversed and attempted to leave behind the impression of a man in command of himself and the situation. Even his robberies could contain gestures designed to reinforce the image. Contemporary observers noted that Gardiner and some of the new generation of highwaymen occasionally returned small amounts of money to their victims:
"There have been few instances where violence has been used by these modern highwaymen; they will often leave a few shillings with their victims, so that they may not be on the road quite destitute."
Such behaviour should not be mistaken for genuine benevolence. A traveller had still been threatened with firearms and robbed. But as performance it was effective. The robber could take a man's gold while leaving him enough silver for a meal and afterwards be remembered as generous. Gardiner understood the distinction. John Gilbert possessed a similar instinct for display.
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| John Gilbert |
Hall was temperamentally different.
The quiet, somewhat reserved grazier did not naturally possess Gardiner's theatrical personality or Gilbert's exuberance. Yet as Hall spent increasing time among them, his appearance and behaviour also began to change. He had always taken pride in good horses and respectable dress. Now that attention to appearance acquired another significance.
A contemporary observer later described Hall:
"Hall had a quiet and respectable air—by wearing nicely-shaped high boots and a well-fitting pair of brown cord pants, with fashionably cut cloth coat and vest of the same colour, and only one gold chain, and not much of that to be seen."The description is revealing. Hall did not dress like a desperate man hiding in rags. He dressed like a prosperous young colonial. That appearance became part of the paradox surrounding the new bushrangers. They might emerge from the bush armed with revolvers and order travellers to surrender their money, yet they were frequently clean, well mounted and fashionably dressed.
Respectability and criminality appeared in the same figure. Hall also seems eventually to have adopted something of Gardiner's habit of leaving victims with small sums rather than stripping them absolutely bare. Such gestures contributed powerfully to the later mythology of the "gentleman bushranger."
The reality remained less romantic. Courtesy depended upon obedience. Behind the manners stood loaded firearms. Nevertheless, Gardiner had discovered that how a robbery was remembered could become almost as important as what was stolen. Hall would eventually become even more successful at cultivating that distinction, whether consciously or through the accumulation of stories told by his victims.
By March and April 1862, Gardiner's campaign along the roads connecting Forbes and Lambing Flat had become impossible for the authorities to ignore. The scale of the activity was later summarised before the New South Wales Parliament. On 25 March came news from Forbes that Gardiner had stopped and robbed two drays travelling between the Lachlan and Lambing Flat, taking provisions, spirits and winter clothing. On 12 April he was reported at Mrs Chisholm's station in the Bland district, where a horse was stolen. By 17 April reports from Forbes declared that:
"Sticking-up is still the order of the day between here and Lambing Flat."
A few days later approximately twenty-five men were reportedly held up on the Lachlan Road along with several drays. On 23 April Gardiner and four armed companions suddenly appeared before Greig's coach on the road between the Lachlan and Burrangong before disappearing again into the bush. The same day a dray belonging to Moses and Son was robbed, while Greig's own dray was also attacked around this period. The roads around Hall's country had become hunting grounds. Who accompanied Gardiner during every one of these robberies is considerably less certain.
Gilbert and O'Meally were increasingly associated with him. Other young men moved in and out of the group, including John Davis, John McGuinness, Paddy Connolly and others whose names appear intermittently in accounts of the period. Even Bridget Hall's teenage brother Johnny Walsh and members of the extended Taylor-Jamieson network moved through this same social world.
Gardiner's "gang" was therefore not yet the stable organisation that later imagination sometimes created. It was fluid. Men joined for particular expeditions. Others provided horses, information or shelter. Some participated in cattle stealing without taking part in highway robbery. Others disappeared when the risks became too great. Around Gardiner gathered a loose fraternity of young horsemen, opportunists and criminals attracted by the possibility of rapid wealth and the prestige attached to the increasingly celebrated "King of the Road."
Where exactly Ben Hall fitted within this network during the opening months of 1862 remains one of the important questions in his biography. There is strong reason to believe that his involvement with Gardiner had progressed beyond mere acquaintance. But caution is required. The fact that Gardiner committed a robbery close to Sandy Creek does not establish Hall's participation. Nor can every unidentified member of a masked gang automatically be assumed to have been him. The evidence becomes stronger elsewhere. In December 1863 a mail rider named Richard Henry, employed by contractor Jacob Marks, was carrying the mails between Binalong and Yass when he was stopped by Hall and Gilbert. There was no difficulty identifying them. Their faces were uncovered, and Henry knew precisely who they were. The subsequent report contained a particularly significant observation. Henry recognised Hall and Gilbert as:
"Those well known bushrangers, who, in company with Gardiner, waited upon him professionally while he was conveying the mails in the neighbourhood of Murrumburrah, some two years past."The phrase "waited upon him professionally" was a wry euphemism. He had been robbed. More importantly, if the chronology is approximately correct, Henry was remembering Hall operating with Gardiner around 1861 or early 1862. That places Hall's participation in highway robbery before the Eugowra gold escort robbery. It also accords with MacAlister's recollection that Hall and Gilbert were already suspected of a "bushranging kinship with Gardiner" before Eugowra and were openly drinking with Gardiner's associates in Forbes. The pieces begin to fit together. Then witnesses remembered him operating "professionally" with Gardiner. The exact first robbery may never be identified.
But by early 1862 the transition appears to have occurred. Ben Hall was no longer merely keeping questionable company. He had begun riding with the bushrangers. For Sir Frederick Pottinger, the escalation demanded action. Gardiner had effectively challenged the Government's authority over the roads between its two richest western goldfields. Drays were being stopped, horses stolen, travellers robbed and coaches threatened almost within sight of the settlements. Worse, the bushranger appeared to possess an extensive intelligence network. One contemporary report claimed that Gardiner was:
"Supplied with information by numberless accomplices both in the township and along the roads."The network was reputedly so effective that a journalist joked that friends could be protected from Gardiner simply by obtaining a "pass." Whether literal passes ever existed is less important than what the story reveals. People believed Gardiner exercised influence over the roads. That was intolerable to the colonial Government. Pottinger had already been watching Sandy Creek. Now Hall's movements increasingly justified his attention. In the opening months of 1862, Hall was repeatedly brought before the magistrates on suspicion of involvement in bushranging offences. The police still struggled to produce evidence sufficient for conviction.
Then came a particularly public arrest. Hall was seized at the Forbes racecourse, handcuffed and taken to the lock-up. For many residents the spectacle was extraordinary. Ben Hall was not yet universally regarded as a criminal. He was still remembered as the handsome young stockman, the Sandy Creek grazier and the man who had attended their musters and races. Gardiner was the notorious bushranger. Hall was one of their own. But Pottinger increasingly believed that distinction had ceased to matter. And this time the Inspector intended to prove it.
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| Ben Hall description NSW Police Gazette, for 8th April 1862, Note Lame. Others no doubt 1. Gardiner, 3. Gilbert and 4. O'Meally. |
His marriage had collapsed. Henry had been taken from him. His interest in Sandy Creek diminished, and his elder brother William increasingly assumed responsibility for the station. Hall spent longer periods roaming through Forbes, Lambing Flat and the Weddin country, associating openly with Gilbert, O'Meally and the men surrounding Frank Gardiner.
Somewhere during this period, association became participation. Precisely when Hall first crossed that boundary cannot now be established. Later evidence indicates that he had ridden "professionally" with Gardiner before the Eugowra robbery, while Charles MacAlister remembered that Hall and Gilbert were already suspected throughout Forbes of possessing a "bushranging kinship" with the notorious highwayman.
MacAlister recalled:
"Ben Hall and Gilbert were only suspected of a bushranging kinship with Gardiner. For though several of them had been before the Forbes Bench on suspicion (Ben Hall and O'Malley were repeatedly brought up), the law had failed to sheet the guilt home to them to the satisfaction of the local J.P."The distinction is important. The police suspected Hall. Residents of Forbes suspected Hall. Hall openly associated with men known to be involved in horse stealing and highway robbery. Yet suspicion was not evidence sufficient for conviction. The methods employed by Gardiner's gang made identification particularly difficult. Robbers could blacken their faces, conceal them beneath crape or calico, change horses and clothing, and disappear into country they knew intimately. Victims confronted suddenly by several armed men had only moments in which to observe their attackers.
Hall's own knowledge of the district gave him an additional advantage. He knew the tracks, stations and watercourses surrounding the Lachlan as a result of years spent mustering cattle. He possessed access to excellent horses and a network of acquaintances stretching across much of the country in which Gardiner operated. A man with those advantages could participate in a robbery and be back among familiar surroundings before police even understood what had occurred. There is therefore little reason to assume that the first offence in which Hall was positively identified was necessarily his first offence. What can be established is that by April 1862 the evidence of his involvement in highway robbery becomes considerably more substantial. Among the incidents associated with this transition was the robbery of the Benkin—sometimes rendered Bacon—dray. The attack occurred during an extraordinary outbreak of highway robbery on the roads between Forbes and Lambing Flat. Gardiner and his companions were stopping carriers, stealing provisions, clothing and alcohol, taking horses and repeatedly demonstrating that the police could not guarantee safe passage between the goldfields.
Hall was now riding within that circle. The transformation was remarkable. Only two years earlier he had been developing Sandy Creek, increasing his cattle and benefiting from the soaring price of beef. Now he was risking the station, his livestock, his reputation and potentially his life for the proceeds of armed robbery. Heartbreak provides part of the explanation, but not an excuse. Bridget's desertion undoubtedly affected Hall deeply and appears to have precipitated the restless behaviour remembered by William Hall and John Maguire. Yet the decisions that followed remained his own. Thousands of colonial marriages failed without producing bushrangers.
Nor did Gardiner manufacture Hall from nothing.
Hall already possessed the qualities that made him useful to an organised gang: exceptional horsemanship, intimate geographical knowledge, physical courage, access to horses and cattle, and relationships with men operating outside the law.
Gardiner supplied something different. Experience. He demonstrated how those same skills could be applied to highway robbery. Under Gardiner, the accomplished stockman could become an accomplished outlaw. The bushman's ability to locate water became a means of remaining beyond police reach. The stockman's knowledge of isolated tracks became knowledge of where coaches and drays could be intercepted. The horseman's ability to judge an exceptional mount became essential to escape. The network of stations and acquaintances accumulated through years of pastoral work became a source of shelter, information and fresh horses. Almost every skill that had made Hall successful at Sandy Creek could be repurposed for bushranging.
By early 1862, that process had begun.
MacAlister's evidence is particularly useful because it avoids the extremes that later developed around Hall's reputation. He did not claim that Hall had always been a criminal. Nor did he portray him as an entirely innocent man persecuted into outlawry by Sir Frederick Pottinger.
Instead, he remembered a period of uncertainty. Hall and Gilbert were suspected. They appeared before the magistrates. Police attempted to establish their involvement.
And repeatedly:
"The law had failed to sheet the guilt home."For a time Hall lived inside that gap between what people believed and what the authorities could prove.
He appears to have exploited it successfully. The consequences were dangerous in both directions. Every failed prosecution increased Hall's confidence that the police could not touch him. Every failed prosecution also increased Pottinger's conviction that Hall was guilty and escaping through lack of evidence.
Neither man was likely to retreat.
By April 1862 the confrontation between them was no longer simply a contest between a suspicious policeman and an aggrieved grazier. Pottinger's suspicions were becoming justified.
Ben Hall had crossed the line.
Throughout 1861 and the opening months of 1862, the New South Wales Police Gazette recorded an extraordinary succession of highway robberies throughout the Burrangong, Weddin and Lachlan districts. Victims frequently described several mounted men operating together, sometimes disguised and sometimes sufficiently exposed for reasonably detailed physical descriptions to be circulated among police. Among those descriptions were men whose appearance corresponded closely with the known characteristics of Ben Hall.
By April 1862—almost two months before the Eugowra gold escort robbery—Hall's name and description had entered police intelligence concerning unlawful activity in the district. This is important because it moves the evidence beyond later folklore. The authorities were actively considering Hall in connection with criminal activity before Eugowra made his association with Gardiner's circle notorious throughout the colony.
The true extent of the robberies can probably never be reconstructed. The roads between Forbes and Lambing Flat carried miners, carriers, stockmen and merchants, many with cash or valuable goods. Gardiner and his associates exploited that traffic relentlessly. Some victims reported their losses immediately. Others did not. A traveller deprived of a small amount of money, alcohol or provisions might see little advantage in riding miles to a police station, particularly when identification was uncertain and retaliation remained possible.
Consequently, the offences preserved in the Police Gazette almost certainly represent only part of what was occurring. Hall's exact participation in every unidentified robbery cannot be established. But by April 1862 the argument that he remained entirely detached from Gardiner's criminal operations becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. The physical descriptions circulated during these investigations also help correct one of the persistent misconceptions surrounding Hall. Later illustrations and popular representations sometimes portray him as unusually tall and slender. The surviving descriptions suggest otherwise.
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| Ben Hall woodcut image, c. 1865. Courtesy NLA. |
One account described him as:
"Rather above the medium height, 5ft 6–7in tall and rather stoutly built, and weighed 13 st 7 lbs."
John Maguire similarly remembered Hall as substantially heavier than himself:
"Although he was a much bigger man than I was, for he was nearly three stone heavier than I."Maguire reportedly weighed about ten stone and stood approximately five feet nine inches. His recollection therefore reinforces the image of Hall not as a lanky horseman but as a compact, powerfully built man. Hall's old leg injury provided another identifying characteristic. Hostages who observed him at close quarters during the later Canowindra occupation noticed his lameness. A retrospective description recorded:
"Ben Hall is a quiet, good-looking fellow, lame, one leg having been broken."Even during his bushranging career his weight attracted comment. In 1864 one observer remarked:
"Hall is the only one of the three who cultivates any moustache or whiskers, and he is getting fat."The surviving portrait of Hall is consistent with these descriptions. His face is broad, his neck and shoulders substantial, and his appearance more robust than many later artistic representations suggest.
These details matter when considering the descriptions contained in early police intelligence. Height alone could vary significantly according to the witness, particularly when a suspect was observed mounted or only briefly during a robbery. Build, complexion, facial hair, horsemanship and distinctive lameness could provide more useful points of comparison.
By the autumn of 1862, police were increasingly looking for a man who looked very much like Ben Hall. Soon they would have considerably more than a description. On 14 April 1862, a transport dray belonging to William Bacon was travelling through the district when two mounted men suddenly emerged from the bush. Edward Horsenail, one of Bacon's employees, immediately understood what was happening.
He called to his employer:
"Look out, Bill, here are the boys!"The riders were armed. One was Frank Gardiner. The other was John Gilbert. They rode directly towards the dray, levelled their revolvers and ordered the men from the road.
Horsenail later recalled:
"They came up and presented their revolvers, and ordered us into the bush."Bacon's dray was then directed away from the road and into the scrub. Waiting there were two more men. One was identified as Ben Hall. The other was John Youngman, a man reputedly associated with or employed by Hall. Hall was holding the reins of a packhorse intended to carry the proceeds of the robbery. This was no longer merely questionable company in a Forbes hotel. Nor was it cattle duffing, an ambiguous horse transaction or another appearance before magistrates on suspicion. Hall was participating in an organised armed robbery. As the bushrangers searched the dray, two travellers appeared along the road. Gardiner immediately ordered Hall and Gilbert to bring them in.
The pair rode out, intercepted the travellers and forced them from the road at gunpoint. A saddle was taken and the men detained with the other prisoners while the gang continued searching Bacon's load. The robbery was methodical. Clothing was selected. Tobacco was taken. Spirits and other useful goods were loaded onto the packhorse. These were not the proceeds of a spectacular gold robbery. The value was comparatively modest. But the significance for Hall was enormous.
He had crossed the boundary openly.
The accomplished stockman who had spent his adolescence riding after cattle was now riding after travellers. The packhorse that might once have carried station supplies was being loaded with stolen property. And the revolvers that Gardiner's men carried transformed the offence from opportunistic theft into highway robbery. By then Gardiner had become so audacious that contemporary newspapers wrote as though he exercised an unofficial authority over the road between Burrangong and the Lachlan.
One correspondent regarded his behaviour as both courageous and absurd:
"Gardiner is a bold rogue and a very great fool, because he not only braves the police and levies toll along the whole line of road from Burrangong to the Lachlan, but he risks his liberty or neck for the paltry equivalent of a few months' defiance of the law."The writer lamented:
"A pity it is that so bold a spirit should be occupied in so bad a cause, and should have to look forward to so contemptible an end."The prediction would prove remarkably accurate for many of the young men drawn into Gardiner's orbit. Gardiner himself would eventually escape the gallows. Others would not. For Hall, the Bacon dray robbery marks an important evidentiary threshold.
There are substantial grounds for believing that he had participated in earlier robberies. Richard Henry's later identification placed Hall operating "professionally" with Gardiner before Eugowra. MacAlister remembered Hall already associated with Gardiner's circle in Forbes. Police intelligence had repeatedly brought Hall under suspicion. But the Bacon robbery provides something more concrete.
Hall was placed with Gardiner's party during the commission of a specific armed offence. The significance is heightened by what Hall already possessed at the time. He was not starving. He was not landless. He was not an escaped prisoner with nothing to lose. He still held his interest in Sandy Creek. He owned cattle and horses. The nearby goldfields provided excellent markets for beef.
His brother could manage the station during his absences. Hall had legitimate economic opportunities that many men on the goldfields could only envy. Yet on 14 April 1862 he was waiting in the scrub while Gardiner and Gilbert brought William Bacon's dray from the road. Whatever emotional devastation followed Bridget's desertion, whatever resentment Hall felt towards Pottinger, and whatever influence Gardiner exercised over him, the decision was now Hall's.
The respectable grazier had become an armed highwayman.
And this time, if the police took him, they would finally have something to take him for.
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| Forbes Annual Horse Racing results, April 22,23 and 24, 1862. N.L.A. |
He went to the races.
The annual Forbes Easter meeting was being held over three days, from 22 to 24 April 1862, at the Wowingragong racecourse. For Hall, an enthusiastic horseman who had grown up around racing at Murrurundi and retained a lifelong fascination with fine horses, the attraction would have been considerable.
The meeting drew a large and colourful crowd.
Respectable graziers and prominent citizens mixed freely with miners, bookmakers, horse dealers and the less reputable followers who invariably gathered wherever racing and money came together. A later description remembered among them:
"Notorious 'sovereign-sellers,' 'urgers,' 'teardowns,' 'pluguglies,' 'pea and thimble' tricksters, and 'go-getters' of that day."The racecourse therefore represented colonial society in miniature—wealth, horses, gambling and respectability existing alongside confidence men, thieves and opportunists.
Hall attended openly.
There was little reason for him to believe otherwise. Pottinger had arrested or questioned him before and had repeatedly failed to establish a case. Hall was still publicly known as a settler from the Wheogo district, and despite growing suspicion surrounding his associates, he apparently felt sufficiently secure to appear among hundreds of people at one of the district's largest social gatherings.
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| SMH Arrest |
The Sydney Morning Herald subsequently reported:
"Benjamin Hall, described as a settler in the Wheogo district, was brought before the Court charged with highway robbery under arms."Pottinger explained the circumstances:
"From information received I apprehended the prisoner on Wednesday last on the racecourse, charged with highway robbery, in company with others, on the road between the Lachlan and Lambing Flat."Hall denied the charge. The spectacle made a lasting impression. Nearly forty years later an old resident remembered the moment and, significantly, still remembered what Hall had been wearing:
"It was at these races that Ben Hall, who was at that time looked upon as being in a fair way well to do, was first arrested for horse stealing or something of the kind. I remember he was dressed in knee-breeches and boots and wore a cabbage-tree hat, which were generally used at that time."The recollection contains an important observation. Hall was still regarded as being "in a fair way well to do." To many watching his arrest, he was not yet the notorious bushranger of later years. He was the Sandy Creek grazier, an accomplished stockman and familiar figure at district race meetings. Yet this arrest was different from those that had preceded it. Pottinger finally had witnesses. William Bacon did not identify Hall from a vague description. He knew him personally. At the subsequent remand hearing Bacon gave detailed evidence concerning the robbery. After Gardiner's party had forced the drays from the road, cases were opened and tobacco, gin and other goods selected for removal. Hall helped load the stolen property onto the packhorse. During the process, according to Bacon, Hall spoke directly to him:
"You never saw me before."Bacon's answer could hardly have been worse for Hall:
"I replied that I had, and drank with him."The exchange is extraordinary. Hall apparently understood the danger of being recognised and attempted, whether jokingly or threateningly, to encourage Bacon to deny knowing him. But Bacon knew precisely who he was. The two men even exchanged jokes concerning a woman with whom Bacon knew Hall was acquainted. Bacon concluded his evidence emphatically:
"I swear positively that the prisoner is the man; I cannot be mistaken."This was not the uncertain recollection of a terrified traveller seeing a masked robber for a few seconds. Bacon had socialised with Hall. He recognised his face. He recognised his manner. They conversed during the robbery about people they both knew. The identification could scarcely have been stronger. Nor did the case depend upon Bacon alone. Edward Horsenail, Bacon's employee, also knew Hall before the robbery. He had worked for Bacon for approximately fifteen months and testified:
"I know the prisoner—have seen him on several occasions."Horsenail described seeing two armed riders emerge from the bush at approximately ten o'clock in the morning. Recognising immediately what was happening, he called out:
"Look out, Bill, here are the boys!"The two riders presented revolvers and forced the drays from the road. Once inside the scrub, two additional men appeared. One was Hall. Horsenail remembered him leading a packhorse carrying several saddles.
While Gardiner opened cases upon the dray, Hall stood nearby armed with a revolver. A case of gin was broken open and a bottle passed among the men. Gardiner then sent Hall and another bushranger to intercept two travellers visible upon the road. Hall subsequently searched Horsenail's dray himself, broke open a case of tobacco and loaded bags of stolen goods onto the horse. Again Horsenail emphasised that this was not his first encounter with Hall:
"The last two trips we have made, on both occasions I saw him at the Pinnacle Station, Mrs Feehily's public house."His conclusion matched Bacon's:
"I can positively swear to him; I cannot be mistaken."
Hall declined to make a statement. He was remanded and subsequently committed for trial. Bail was refused. For Sir Frederick Pottinger, the arrest represented a major breakthrough. For months Hall had complained that the Inspector repeatedly dragged him before magistrates "for nothing." Previous suspicions had failed because witnesses could not identify him, evidence was circumstantial or the Bench remained unconvinced.
This time Pottinger possessed two eyewitnesses. Both knew Hall before the offence. Both observed him during the robbery. Both described his actions. Both swore positively that they could not be mistaken. Whatever criticisms can legitimately be directed at Pottinger's earlier interactions with Hall, the Bacon case cannot easily be characterised as another baseless arrest. The Inspector had substantial grounds to act. Indeed, the evidence exposes the extraordinary recklessness of Hall's decision to participate in this particular robbery. He had chosen to hold up men who knew him. Not casually. They had seen him repeatedly. Bacon had drunk with him. Horsenail had encountered him at the Pinnacle on his previous two journeys. Pottinger believed he had his man.
But it was far too late. Of all the drays travelling all the roads between Forbes and Lambing Flat, Ben Hall had helped Gardiner rob one belonging to men who knew him well. There was another irony. The horse upon which one of Gardiner's associates was arrested around this period was described as a magnificent powerful brown animal, superior to anything available to the Mounted Police. At the same Forbes meeting, among the horses entered was a handsome brown bay named Don't You Know, trained by Hall's old friend Tom Higgins and reputedly owned by Gardiner. Even while police hunted Gardiner and investigated his associates, the world of horse racing continued to bring the same men together. That was the strange reality of the Lachlan in 1862. Bushrangers attended races. Police attended races. Men suspected of highway robbery drank openly in Forbes hotels. Fine horses passed between graziers, trainers, thieves and fugitives. And on 23 April, amid the noise and excitement of the Wowingragong meeting, the contest between Pottinger and Hall finally became public. Sir Frederick had spent months trying to prove that the respectable young grazier of Sandy Creek was involved with Gardiner. Now William Bacon and Edward Horsenail had given him the evidence he needed. For the first time, Ben Hall was not merely arrested because of the company he kept.
He stood accused because two men who knew him personally said they had watched him commit the crime.
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| Clerk of the Peace, Forbes, Depositions received entry log for Ben Hall, 1862. Never before published. |
Despite the extraordinary growth of the goldfield and the thousands of people who had descended upon the district, prisoners charged with serious offences still had to be transported to Orange, approximately eighty miles away. The inadequacy attracted increasing criticism.
The Empire complained in May 1862:
"Amongst our many wants perhaps none is more imperatively felt than that of a session court somewhere in the district. At present, we have to go to Orange, a distance of eighty miles."
Hall consequently remained in custody while arrangements were made for his trial. He continued to deny the charge. Hall's explanation was straightforward. vHe maintained that he and his co-accused, John Youngman, had not been members of Gardiner's party at all. According to their account, they had accidentally encountered the robbery while travelling through the district.
The revolver associated with Hall, he claimed, had previously been found in the bush. Gardiner and his companions had then appeared and ordered Hall and Youngman to remain where they were. Faced with armed bushrangers, the two men supposedly complied, sitting upon their horses while the robbery proceeded around them.
The defence was possible.
It was not particularly convincing. Gardiner had spent the morning stopping travellers, forcing drays from the road and taking whatever property suited him. Yet Hall and Youngman, according to their version, happened to arrive armed and mounted and were neither robbed nor treated as prisoners. More damagingly, the eyewitness evidence described Hall doing considerably more than simply watching.
Horsenail testified:
"Prisoner and another left by order of the man supposed to be Gardner, and brought two other men from the road."
Hall had therefore obeyed Gardiner's instruction, ridden onto the road and helped intercept additional travellers. He was also described standing armed during the robbery, searching a dray, breaking open tobacco and helping load stolen property onto the packhorse. Bacon's evidence was equally damaging. He knew Hall personally and remembered Hall telling him:
"You never saw me before."
Bacon had replied that he most certainly had—and had previously drunk with him. Taken together, the evidence made Hall's claim to have been an accidental spectator extremely difficult to sustain. The witnesses had no obvious reason to manufacture his involvement. Both knew him independently before the robbery, both identified him positively and both described specific actions he performed. This was not simply Pottinger's suspicion. It was eyewitness testimony. The magistrates accordingly refused bail and committed Hall for trial. Hall's imprisonment nevertheless occurred in conditions hardly appropriate for a rapidly expanding gold town. The Forbes lock-up was little more than a log hut.
A correspondent to the Empire described it in April 1862:
"It is a log hut, about twenty by twelve feet, anything but secure."
The description proved accurate. While Hall was imprisoned, a remarkable mass escape occurred. Several prisoners simply used knives to excavate beneath the logs and disappeared during the night.
The following morning:
"It was discovered that the birds had flown."
The authorities were poorly placed to respond. Pottinger and much of the available police force were away pursuing Gardiner. Among those reported to have escaped were Richard Eady, John Lewis, James M'Grain, John Donovan, Sydney Reece, James Taylor and David Fraser, several already committed or sentenced for various offences.
The newspaper concluded dryly:
"There must be some neglect somewhere."
One prisoner apparently did not go with them. Ben Hall remained. The decision is noteworthy. Here was a man supposedly already committed to bushranging, confined in an insecure timber lock-up while other prisoners literally dug their way to freedom. Hall could have gone with them.
He did not.
His reasons are unknown, but the most plausible explanation is that Hall still expected to defeat the charge through the legal process. He had successfully survived previous arrests. He maintained his innocence. He still possessed Sandy Creek, cattle, horses and family connections worth returning to. At this stage Hall evidently did not yet consider himself an outlaw with nothing to lose. That distinction would not last. News of Hall's committal spread rapidly through the district. One local report announced that conditions were becoming quieter following the capture of another offender and:
"Benjamin Hall committed for trial for robbing Mr Greig's team, on Friday last, by Sir F. Pottinger."
The precise identification of the dray varies between reports, but the broader effect was unmistakable. Hall's name was now publicly associated with Gardiner's robberies. For the young grazier who had once been regarded as "a man of fine promise," the reputational consequences were severe. His arrest at the racecourse had been public. His committal was reported in newspapers. Pottinger's repeated visits to Sandy Creek were already well known. And the station itself increasingly appeared within the same network of suspicious properties as Pinnacle and Arramagong. Neighbours who might previously have dismissed Pottinger's interest as harassment now had to confront the sworn evidence of Bacon and Horsenail.
Hall's social position was changing.
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| NSW Police Gazette, May 1862 |
"Found in possession of Benjamin Hall a bushranger, a light chestnut horse, 16½ hands high, BB near shoulder, small star; also, a saddle and double reined bridle; Colonial made; the seat and knee pads are hogskin. The above are now in possession of the police at Forbes."
The wording is striking. Hall had not been convicted. He had not yet been tried. Yet an official police publication described him simply as:
"Benjamin Hall a bushranger."
This was more than the language of newspaper gossip. The Police Gazette circulated throughout the colonial police establishment. Its purpose was practical: identifying wanted offenders, stolen property, suspicious persons and items requiring investigation. The notice therefore demonstrates that, within police intelligence at least, Hall was already being treated as part of the bushranging fraternity. Whether Pottinger personally chose the wording, or whether it reflected the terminology employed more generally by the police administration, cannot presently be established. Nor should the notice automatically be interpreted as a deliberate campaign to destroy Hall's reputation. But its consequences are worth considering. A man awaiting trial was being officially described as though his criminal status had already been settled. For Hall, who bitterly complained that Pottinger had repeatedly dragged him before magistrates without proving anything, such treatment could only reinforce his belief that the police had already decided what he was.
There is another curiosity.
The notice sought information concerning the ownership of Hall's horse and equipment, strongly suggesting that police suspected the animal might have been stolen. Yet Hall was not prosecuted for stealing it.
That omission may simply mean that no owner came forward or that insufficient evidence existed to establish theft. It may also demonstrate the broader problem confronting Pottinger: suspicion surrounding Hall was abundant, but suspicion alone could not sustain a criminal charge.
The horse itself was impressive. At sixteen and a half hands it was a substantial animal, consistent with Hall's longstanding preference for exceptional horses and the quality of mounts repeatedly associated with Gardiner's circle. For police attempting to understand where such animals originated, publishing the description was entirely logical. The choice to call the man from whom it had been seized "a bushranger" remains more revealing.
By May 1862, Pottinger and Hall appear to have developed fundamentally incompatible interpretations of their conflict. Pottinger believed he had finally caught one of Gardiner's associates. This time he possessed witnesses. Bacon knew Hall. Horsenail knew Hall. Both swore positively to his participation. From the Inspector's perspective, the months of surveillance and repeated arrests had been vindicated. Hall saw something different.
He had been arrested publicly at the races, handcuffed, denied bail and imprisoned in a crude log hut. Before any jury had heard his case, an official police publication was already calling him a bushranger. His resentment towards Pottinger deepened. Yet there is an important distinction between Hall's sense of persecution and the evidence against him. Whatever excesses Pottinger may have committed in pursuing Hall previously, the Bacon case was not fabricated.
Two independent witnesses who knew Hall personally placed him at the robbery. The magistrates had substantial grounds to commit him. The police had substantial grounds to investigate him. Hall may have believed himself persecuted. But by April 1862 he had also given Pottinger good reason to pursue him.
The real turning point would come not from the arrest itself, but from what happened when Hall finally reached the higher court. For despite the eyewitness evidence, the prosecution was about to encounter a problem.
And Ben Hall was about to walk free.
The prosecution arose from the robbery of William Bacon's drays on 14 April 1862. Contemporary reporting summarised the evidence against Youngman in similar terms to that already given against Hall:
"The prisoner was riding a brown horse, and leading a grey one. The man supposed to be Gardiner handed fire-arms to the prisoner, who stood with them until Gardiner and his mates commenced to break open the goods on the dray."
The Empire described both men being pinioned and led to the scaffold shortly before nine in the morning. Peisley, apparently resigned to his fate, concluded his final remarks:
"Goodbye gentlemen, and God bless you."
The newspaper noted that Peisley's death appeared relatively rapid, while Jackey Bullfrog remained convulsed for several minutes. For Hall, imprisoned only a short distance away in time and geography from such events, the possible consequences of serious criminal conviction could hardly have been abstract. Hall was not without assistance. His brother-in-law and Sandy Creek partner John Maguire, together with Hall's half-brother Thomas Wade, began organising his defence.
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George Colquhoun. c. 1890. Penzig |
John Youngman's position became more complicated.
The Crown apparently developed doubts concerning whether the evidence against him was sufficient, and Youngman was admitted to bail. Unable to provide the necessary sureties himself, he received assistance from Maguire and Peter Murray, who each reportedly pledged £40.
Youngman then disappeared.
The decision cost his sureties financially and removed him from the immediate prosecution. He subsequently faded almost entirely from the history of the Gardiner circle. Hall remained.
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Orange Courthouse, c. 1860's. Here Hall's trial took place on 19th May 1862. Hall had been transported to Orange under escort by Sgt Condell. Image courtesy NLA. |
Bacon had even described the extraordinary exchange during which Hall supposedly told him:
"You never saw me before."
At Orange, one of the witnesses associated with Bacon's party—identified in later accounts as Ferguson—did not repeat the certainty attributed to the earlier evidence. His testimony now introduced doubt about Hall's identification. The effect was substantial.
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| View from Orange Courthouse |
Hall walked free.
The dramatic alteration in the evidence immediately created suspicion. Police and court officials reportedly believed that Ferguson had been influenced before the trial. Later tradition went further, alleging that John Maguire had paid him—sometimes said to be as much as £50—to weaken or alter his testimony. Such a payment would have represented an enormous inducement to an ordinary carrier or labourer. But the surviving evidence requires caution. No complete transcript of the Orange proceedings appears to survive, and the alleged payment itself should not be treated as established fact unless supported by a contemporary record. What is established is that Maguire later knew police suspected him.
He candidly admitted:
"On assisting Ben in his trouble, I did so believing him innocent of any crime. It cost me a tidy sum; and, moreover, was a bad day for me, as I left the impression with the police that I had tampered with witnesses."
His original evidence remained unequivocal:
"I swear positively that the prisoner is the man; I cannot be mistaken."
Hall was acquitted.
That does not necessarily mean the jury concluded that Bacon had lied or that Hall had been falsely accused. It means the Crown failed to prove the charge to the criminal standard. The result angered some members of the Forbes establishment.
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R.B. Mitchell c. 1882. Courtesy Penzig Collection. |
His resentment did not fade. Even after Hall's death in 1865, Mitchell returned publicly to the events surrounding the Orange trial, maintaining that Hall had escaped conviction despite compelling evidence. His reaction demonstrates how divided opinion had already become. To Hall's supporters, the acquittal proved that Pottinger had again arrested him without justification.
To men such as Mitchell, it proved only that a guilty man had escaped through weakness or interference in the prosecution case.
Both interpretations would become embedded in the later Ben Hall legend.
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Mr Mitchell's unvarnished letter. N.L.A. |
Maguire recalled:
"About three miles along the road we overtook Bacon and Ferguson. As we bore them no malice, we entered into conversation with them, and we all rode together for 40 miles."
Maguire also preserved another, more troubling recollection. He claimed that after court he overheard Judge Casey speaking with defence counsel Edward Lee while the two men walked towards their hotel. According to Maguire, the judge said that he personally believed Hall guilty. Lee supposedly responded:
"I was paid well to defend him, and I did so, by getting him off."
The judge allegedly answered:
"Mr Lee, it was not you that did it—it was done outside."
Maguire concluded his account with an image of Hall celebrating rather less decorously than his legal advisers:
"Next morning our party rode home jubilant—all but Ben Hall, who had celebrated the victory by getting immovably drunk."
Gardiner soon appeared.
John Maguire later claimed that the bushranger expressed regret that Hall had become entangled in the Bacon affair:
"Next day Gardiner called Ben, and expressed regret that Ben had got into trouble through him."
Hall's reported reply would become one of the most quoted lines associated with this period:
"Next time they take me they'll have something to take me for."
Whether those were Hall's exact words cannot now be established.
But Maguire's next observation is more important:
"From that out, Ben and Gardiner were often together."
Later writers frequently attempted to reinterpret the Bacon prosecution as evidence that Hall had been persecuted into crime. A particularly sympathetic account published by the Scone Advocate in 1934 proposed that James Taylor—and perhaps Bridget herself—had deliberately supplied false information to Pottinger in order to have Hall removed as a threat to their relationship.
According to this version, Hall's public arrest at the Wowingragong races shocked the district because everyone knew him to be a decent and respectable young man. The article even argued that the community's surprise constituted evidence of his innocence. That reasoning is difficult to sustain against the contemporary depositions. Whatever information initially led Pottinger to arrest Hall, William Bacon and Edward Horsenail subsequently gave direct evidence placing him at the robbery.
They did not rely upon Taylor.
They knew Hall themselves. Even if Taylor had supplied information—and that remains to be demonstrated—it would not invalidate the eyewitness testimony of Bacon and Horsenail. Hall was entitled to his acquittal because the prosecution ultimately failed to meet the required standard of proof.
But acquittal should not automatically be converted into historical proof of innocence. Following the trial, Hall appears for a time to have resumed life around Sandy Creek. His personal circumstances had also changed again. During one of his journeys to Lambing Flat he had become acquainted with Susan Prior, a young Tasmanian-born woman approximately seventeen years of age. Hall brought Susan back to Sandy Creek, where she entered the already crowded household occupied by William Hall, his wife Ann and their children. A relationship developed between Susan and Ben.
She later became pregnant.
The liaison represented another attempt, perhaps, to reconstruct some form of domestic life after Bridget's departure. Yet Sandy Creek was no longer the isolated pastoral home Hall had once intended it to be. Gardiner visited. Gilbert and other associates passed through. William managed much of the station. Police continued to watch the property.
The homestead had become part home, part pastoral headquarters and increasingly part meeting place for men drifting towards organised crime. At the same time, the world around Hall was changing technologically.
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Sydney Telegraph Office c. 1862. Image courtesy NLA. |
Contemporaries themselves recognised the effect.
One observer remarked:
"There is scarcely a nook of the colony which has any population that does not possess its press."
The telegraph amplified that press:
"The wires make us acquainted with every outrage committed on the great lines of communication almost as soon as it has happened."
The writer also identified an unintended consequence.
Because the original robbery, the arrest, the remand and the trial might each be reported separately:
"A single crime becomes multiplied to the imagination of the reader, who loses the clue of identity, and takes every repetition as a new incident."
The telegraph had become the information network of the 1860s. It accelerated both policing and celebrity. Gardiner's name could travel across New South Wales faster than Gardiner himself.
Children heard the stories. Adults debated them. Newspapers competed for colourful descriptions. Bushrangers became simultaneously criminals, news personalities and figures of popular folklore. Hall was now entering that same world. Within weeks of his acquittal, an opportunity emerged that dwarfed everything Gardiner had previously attempted.
The wealth moving out of the Forbes goldfield was immense.
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| A NSW mounted gold escort preparing to depart. Image courtesy NLA. |
At Forbes, enormous quantities of it were being carried from the diggings under armed escort. The gold rush had transformed Hall's life once already. It had increased the value of his cattle. It had turned Black Ridge into a booming town. It had brought Gardiner into the district.
Now gold presented another temptation. Not the slow accumulation of wealth through cattle. Not a few cases of tobacco and gin from a carrier's dray. A fortune. Hall had narrowly escaped conviction in May 1862. Instead of retreating, he moved still closer to Gardiner.
And within a matter of weeks, the men around Sandy Creek began preparing for one of the most audacious robberies in Australian colonial history:
The attack upon the Forbes gold escort at Eugowra Rocks. For most men, gold was won only through exhausting labour and considerable risk. Prospectors searched remote creeks and riverbeds for promising colour, washing countless loads of gravel in the hope of finding something worthwhile. Others pursued reef gold, sinking shafts deep into the earth and working underground in dangerous conditions. Some shafts descended hundreds of feet, where collapse, flooding, foul air and accidents could kill as readily as failure could ruin a man financially.
For thousands, gold demanded patience, endurance and luck. Frank Gardiner had discovered another method.
He took it at the end of a revolver.
Throughout 1861 and early 1862, travellers, carriers and merchants moving through the western districts repeatedly experienced the terror of Gardiner's approach. Cash, jewellery, horses and gold could be surrendered within minutes, the proceeds obtained without months of digging or the uncertainty of a mining claim.
Yet highway robbery carried its own burdens.
Gardiner was now one of the most hunted men in New South Wales. Every successful hold-up increased his notoriety. Newspapers followed his movements closely, police patrols intensified, and the network of stations and sympathisers upon which he depended became progressively more dangerous to use.
Among the officers pursuing him was a man whose own path to the goldfields had been very different.
Sir Frederick Pottinger had arrived in Australia seeking fortune and adventure, eventually entering the colonial police as an apparently ordinary mounted trooper attached to the southern gold escort. Once his aristocratic identity became known, his career advanced rapidly, and he ultimately emerged as one of Gardiner's most determined pursuers. The two men represented opposing sides of the gold economy. Pottinger guarded the wealth moving from the diggings.Gardin er intended to take it.
By 1861, however, Gardiner's personal circumstances were also changing. He had become deeply involved with a married woman Catherine "Kitty" Brown and appears to have begun contemplating an escape from the increasingly precarious existence of a hunted bushranger. The proceeds of individual robberies—cash, jewellery, horses and occasional gold—could sustain him, but they did not provide the security required to disappear permanently.
Nor was every robbery as profitable as the headlines suggested. Money had to be shared. Horses had to be obtained. Food and shelter had to be secured. People who assisted fugitives often expected payment or favours in return. And every new offence increased the likelihood that someone, somewhere, would betray him. The mythology surrounding Gardiner could obscure how exhausting such a life must have been. He was constantly moving, sleeping in temporary refuges and depending upon people whose loyalty could never be guaranteed. Even Catherine's presence offered no permanent sanctuary while police continued searching the district. Gardiner nevertheless delighted in demonstrating how easily he could embarrass his pursuers.
In one audacious letter attributed to him, he claimed to have entered a house where several troopers had spent the night drinking and gambling:
"Three of your troopers were at a house the other night and got drinking and gambling till all hours. I came there towards morning when all was silent."
Gardiner boasted that he found their weapons unattended:
"The first room that I went into I found revolvers and carbines to any amount, but seeing none as good as my own, left them."
He then discovered the policemen asleep on the verandah:
"Satisfying myself that neither Battye nor Pottinger were there, I left them as I found them, in the arms of Morpheus."
Gardiner was publicly mocking the police. He wanted readers to believe that he could move among his pursuers almost at will, entering their resting places, inspecting their firearms and departing without disturbing them. But bravado could not conceal the underlying reality. The police were closing around him.
Every newspaper story increased his fame, but it also circulated descriptions, movements and associations throughout the colony. Every refuge became more vulnerable. Every acquaintance became a potential informer. Gardiner needed more than another drayload of tobacco and spirits.
He needed enough wealth to disappear. The solution was obvious. One great robbery. One haul large enough to divide among the participants while still leaving Gardiner with sufficient capital to abandon the Lachlan and begin again elsewhere with Catherine Brown. And almost every week an enormous fortune passed along the roads of the district under armed guard. The Forbes gold escort. For Gardiner, the temptation must have been irresistible.
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| S.M.H. 8th May 1862. |
For months he had been watching the movement of the gold escorts serving Forbes and Burrangong. Their routes were predictable, their departure times widely known, and even the quantities of gold they carried were often discussed publicly. Newspapers regularly reported escort movements and the value of shipments, unintentionally providing precisely the kind of information an organised robber required. The idea of attacking an escort was not unprecedented.
In Victoria in 1853, a private gold escort travelling from the McIvor diggings towards Bendigo had been ambushed by six armed men. The gang divided into two groups, one attacking the police while the other seized the treasure. Four officers were wounded before the robbers escaped with more than 2,300 ounces of gold and approximately £800 in cash. The robbery attracted enormous publicity throughout the Australian colonies.
Whether Gardiner consciously modelled his own plan upon the Victorian attack cannot be established, but he could hardly have been unaware of the precedent. It demonstrated that an apparently formidable gold escort could be overwhelmed by a small, determined group striking from concealment.
More remarkably, warnings about precisely such an attack were being published almost on Gardiner's doorstep. On 30 January 1862 the Western Examiner criticised the arrangements protecting the Lachlan gold escort. Only four armed men accompanied the treasure, and rather than riding independently they were confined within the vehicle itself.
The newspaper warned:
"What would be easier than for half a dozen determined fellows—of which there are numbers on the Lachlan—to fell a tree, and when the coach had pulled up, to fire into the escort, the robbers all the time undercover."
Four men sitting together inside a coach, he argued, would offer little resistance to an equal number firing from concealed positions:
"What possible effective resistance could four armed men, cooped up in a coach, and placed in a row to be shot at, offer to the same number undercover? None whatever."
The article concluded that the Government was:
"Indirectly holding out a premium to the gang of marauders who have so long infested these districts."
According to his recollection:
"It was with Gardiner that the idea of taking the escort originated and took a fortnight to prepare for the attack."
Maguire remembered their motivation:
"They were getting full of the petty bailing-up business, and wanted to make a grand haul and then quit the country."
The answer was Eugowra Rocks.
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Foreground view of Escort Rock as Fagan would have seen on approach, 2013. My photo. |
Charters had family connections nearby. His sister Agnes Newell held interests around Bandon, only a short distance from the proposed ambush site, and Hall had travelled through the area repeatedly during his years as a stockman and grazier.
The Rocks were not an obscure location to these men. They knew the approaches. They knew the surrounding properties. They knew where horses could be hidden and they understood how isolated the escort would become once it entered the narrow section of road.
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View from behind Eugowra Rock as the coach approached the hidden bushrangers, 2013. My photo. |
Tom Richards a friend of Maguires who was appraised of the robbery by Maguire on the day commented the 'boys would be at it now.' During th court proceedings Richards also known as Matthews would recall the conversation with John Maguire approximately two weeks before the robbery:
"I was speaking to Maguire about the escort some two weeks previous at Forbes; he said what a good place the 'Rocks' would be to stick up the escort."
Once the location had been selected, Gardiner needed men. He did not have far to look. Around him already existed a loose fraternity of experienced horsemen who knew the district intimately and were accustomed to operating beyond the law.
The final party comprised:
Frank Gardiner, John Gilbert, John O'Meally, Ben Hall, Daniel Charters, Alex Fordyce, John Bow and Henry Manns. They were an unusually capable group, most were excellent riders. Several had extensive experience with cattle and horses. Hall, Charters and O'Meally possessed intimate local knowledge. Gardiner supplied criminal experience and leadership. The promise of gold supplied the incentive. The preparations drew the men increasingly towards Sandy Creek. Maguire later found his own property drawn into the investigation because Gardiner and his associates repeatedly visited the station. Some camped in the surrounding paddocks, while others gathered around Hall's residence and Maguire's home.
Later evidence characterised the property bluntly:
"Maguire's house was the rendezvous of Gardiner and his gang, where the attack on the escort was planned."
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| William Hall. c. 1910. (Penzig) |
Ben's elder brother William later provided an extraordinary account of the preparations. Interviewed extensively by Jack Bradshaw in 1912 for what became Frank Gardiner, Ben Hall & Gang, William claimed firsthand knowledge of the meetings surrounding the robbery. He had lived at Sandy Creek and knew many of the men involved.
His recollections were recorded fifty years after the event and contain dialogue that cannot safely be regarded as verbatim. Nevertheless, the broad sequence he described corresponds in important respects with evidence subsequently given during the prosecutions arising from the robbery. Most significantly, William portrayed his brother not as a reluctant recruit but as an active participant in the planning. Hall knew Eugowra. He knew the surrounding roads.
And, according to William, he was given a specific responsibility:
"Ben Hall knew the place well and had a good knowledge of the surrounding country. He was also appointed pilot."
Hall was also allegedly selected to gather intelligence in Forbes:
"Ben Hall was likewise chosen to go into Forbes and inquire particulars as to the escort."
William recalled:
"True to their promise, the lot turned up on that day. After receiving instructions on how to act, they rode away, and camped that night near Mrs Feeley's pub."
Baldwyn later gave sworn evidence concerning the transaction:
"I remember one Friday evening, the 13th June; on that evening I remember selling two double-barrelled guns to two young men."
Baldwyn continued:
"They also bought an American hatchet or tomahawk, and some other things were sold them by the shopman."
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| Daniel Charters |
According to William, they returned with:
"Six double-barrelled muzzle-loading guns, and moulds for making bullets."
According to William Hall, Gardiner instructed Charters:
"Now, go and lead us through the bush to Eugowra and keep off the roads; if there are any fences we will chop them down."
Charters was well suited to the task.
There they waited.
Meanwhile, on the morning of Sunday, 15 June 1862, preparations were being completed in Forbes for the gold escort's journey towards Orange.
The treasure was enormous. 2,719 ounces of gold. £3,700 in cash and banknotes.
There were also heavy mailbags. The gold alone represented years of labour by hundreds of miners and an extraordinary concentration of wealth within a single vehicle.
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| Sergeant James Condell |
Beside Condell on the box sat the driver, John Fagan.
Inside the coach were Senior Constable Henry Moran, Constable Haviland, and Constable Rafferty, who was comparatively unfamiliar with escort duty.
Four policemen. One driver. And a fortune.
The arrangement was almost precisely the vulnerability the Western Examiner had warned about five months earlier. Most of the armed escort was confined within the coach. The journey proceeded without incident for approximately twenty-seven miles. It was late afternoon when the escort approached the broken granite country near Hanbury Clements' station. The time was approximately half past four, ahead, two teams appeared to obstruct the road. Nothing about that was immediately alarming. Drays were common on the route. But as the coach approached, the passage narrowed. On one side stood the obstructing teams, on the other rose a mass of broken granite. There appeared to be only one way through. Fagan slowed the horses to negotiate the gap. Unknown to the escort, armed men were concealed among the rocks. Gardiner had prepared the position carefully. According to a later account, carriers had been compelled to position their wagons across the road while the bushrangers concealed themselves behind the granite overlooking the narrow passage.
The escort entered the trap.
Fagan called ahead:
"Make way for the Royal Mail!"
There was no response.
He called again.
"Make way for the Royal Mail!"
Only the echo returned from the rocks.
Then came the gunfire.
"Fire!"
The first volley crashed down upon the coach at close range.
Senior Constable Moran looked towards the rocks and saw armed men positioned above them:
"I saw four men in front and two behind them; they had guns pointed down at us."
Then he heard the command:
"Fire."
Another volley followed.
Moran was hit.
"I was wounded, and I called out to my mates, 'Look out, I'm wounded.'"
He later recalled:
"When the first volley came, I felt I was hit in the side."
Reaching down, he discovered blood.
"I put my hand to my side, and found a hole in my coat and blood coming from it."
Fagan later returned to find:
"The gold boxes were gone when we came back to the coach; the mail-bags were opened, and the contents scattered about."
He had also lost two coats. The horses had scattered during the attack. Some were recovered later around Clements' property and Forbes. But the treasure was gone.
Gardiner's gang had seized approximately 2,719 ounces of gold, valued at more than £14,000, together with about £3,700 in cash and banknotes. It was an extraordinary fortune. More importantly, the gang had successfully attacked an armed government escort in daylight, wounded police officers and escaped with the treasure. The robbery immediately became something larger than an ordinary criminal offence. It was a direct challenge to colonial authority. The Government could no longer dismiss Gardiner as merely an irritating horse thief or roadside robber. He had demonstrated that a sufficiently organised gang could overwhelm Her Majesty's armed escort and seize one of the richest gold shipments in the colony.
For Ben Hall, the implications were equally profound.
The man who only weeks earlier had stood in the dock at Orange accused of helping Gardiner rob a carrier's dray had now participated in a crime of an entirely different magnitude. There could be no plausible claim that he had merely happened upon this robbery. The gang had assembled beforehand. Weapons had been obtained. The route had been reconnoitred. The location had been selected. The escort's movements had been investigated, and Hall, according to his own brother's later account, had helped gather the intelligence and guide the conspirators towards their objective. Sandy Creek had been left behind. At Eugowra Rocks, Ben Hall had committed himself to Gardiner's world completely.
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| Jack Fagan. c. 1900's. |
Once the injured were secure, Hanbury Clements mounted his horse and set out for Forbes. His task was urgent. He had to "carry intelligence of the affair." The ride was approximately twenty-five miles. By the time the news reached Forbes, the robbery was already assuming the character of a major colonial crisis. The audacity of the attack shocked New South Wales. This was not merely another traveller robbed on an isolated road or a dray stripped of tobacco and spirits. An armed government escort had been ambushed in daylight.
Police had been wounded. The coach had been overturned. And a fortune belonging to three major banks had disappeared into the bush.
The Sydney Morning Herald recorded the breakdown of the treasure:
"The Escort consisted of 2067 oz. 18 dwts. of gold, and £700 in cash belonging to the Oriental Bank; 521 oz. 13 dwts and 6 grs. to the Bank of New South Wales; and 129 oz. and upwards of gold, £3000 in cash, to the Commercial Bank."
The Herald observed:
"Our citizens are awaiting with some impatience the result of the efforts that are being made to get upon the trail of the villains implicated."
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Sub Commissioner for Lachlan Goldfield J.G. Grenfell. 1829-1866 Newspaper Image c. 1867. |
The Courier later reported:
"Captain Brown and Mr Commissioner Grenfell were to have come down by the escort, but owing to special instructions from Inspector General M'Lerie, they came on horseback and were some miles in advance of the escort when the attack was made."
There is no evidence that they attempted to interfere. nor can it be known whether the gang recognised them. But the possibility is intriguing. Had Brown and Grenfell remained with the escort, the attack would have confronted Gardiner with two additional government officers—one of them directly connected with Hall's recent prosecution. Their presence might have increased the escort's ability to resist. It might equally have resulted in further casualties. The counterfactual cannot be resolved. What can be said is that, by little more than circumstance, two senior colonial officials avoided riding directly into the most famous gold-escort ambush in Australian history.
Behind them, at Eugowra Rocks, Gardiner and his companions were already disappearing into the bush with the treasure. The robbery was over.
The pursuit was about to begin.
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| Hanbury Clements. c. 1881. Private Source. First time published. |
The news must have stunned Sir Frederick Pottinger.
Only weeks earlier he had been pursuing Gardiner and his associates through the Lachlan. Now an armed government escort had been ambushed, two policemen wounded, and a fortune in gold and cash carried off almost within his own district.
Pottinger reacted immediately.
Before dawn on Monday, 16 June 1862, he assembled a substantial pursuing force and rode back towards Eugowra. With him were eleven troopers, around twenty settlers and two Aboriginal trackers.
The pursuit had become one of the largest police operations yet mounted against Gardiner. On the road towards Clements' station the party encountered the bullock-team drivers who had been forced to assist in creating the obstruction at Eugowra Rocks. Their evidence revealed another disturbing aspect of the attack. The bushrangers had compelled the men to lie face down upon the ground for several hours while preparations were completed. When the escort arrived, the terrified carriers remained caught between the opposing gunfire.
A contemporary report recorded:
Only after desperate appeals did the gang move them from the immediate line of fire. The detail exposes the danger concealed beneath later romantic accounts of the robbery. Gardiner's carefully planned ambush did not merely endanger armed police. Unarmed civilians were forced to remain beside the road while volleys of gunfire passed around them. No one could control where every bullet went. It was extraordinary that the casualties were not considerably worse. On reaching Clements' station, Pottinger began reconstructing the attack."The unfortunate men state that they had been made to lie upon the ground, face downwards, for several hours; and that whilst the firing was going on between the bushrangers and escort they were exposed to the bullets."
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Eugowra Escort Coach. Photograph was taken in 1917 at Orange, by W. H. Burgess. This was also the coach in which Cost Haviland died. Many thanks to Dick Adams. |
The vehicle itself had to be recovered and repaired before it could continue its journey.
But Pottinger's principal concern was pursuit. (A photograph seen Right was taken in Orange in 1917 has traditionally been associated with the coach attacked at Eugowra.)
The robbers had several hours' advantage, yet they were carrying an enormous quantity of gold and stolen property. Eight mounted men could travel quickly, but dividing and concealing such a fortune required time.
The Aboriginal trackers were therefore placed upon the trail almost immediately. At this stage the identities of all the offenders had not been formally established. Pottinger nevertheless had little doubt about the mind behind the operation. The tactics bore Gardiner's signature. The carefully selected ambush. The concealed gunmen. The obstruction of the roadway. The speed and confidence of the attack.
And the exceptional horses required for escape. Gardiner had finally attempted the "grand haul" towards which his earlier robberies seemed to have been building. Pottinger now intended to find him. The trail produced results quickly. At approximately six o'clock on Monday morning the pursuing party picked up the bushrangers' tracks and followed them away from the Rocks. Only about three miles from the overturned escort coach they discovered the first major evidence.
A contemporary report announced:
"About six o'clock yesterday morning Sir F. Pottinger, with eleven troopers, twenty settlers, and two trackers got on the track of the bushrangers. About three miles from the coach they found, near a camp fire, the gold boxes, which had been opened."
The discovery established the direction of flight and confirmed that the robbers had paused long enough to break into the containers, divide or repack their contents and prepare the gold for easier transport. For Pottinger, the abandoned boxes represented both encouragement and frustration. He was on the correct trail. But Gardiner already possessed a considerable head start. The pursuit that followed would carry police, trackers and settlers through miles of difficult country as the gang attempted to disappear with the greatest prize of Gardiner's career.
And, as the trail unfolded, suspicion would begin turning towards the stations and men Pottinger already knew so well. Sandy Creek, The Pinnacle, The Weddin Mountains. Ben Hall.
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| Hanbury Clements station Eugowra. Bailliere's New South Wales Gazetteer and Road Guide, 1866 |
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| NSW Police Gazette, August 1862. |
His force was divided so that separate parties could cover more country, while reinforcements began converging on the district from surrounding police stations. The scale of the response reflected the seriousness with which the Government regarded the robbery. An armed escort had been defeated, police wounded and a fortune carried into the bush.
By Tuesday morning Superintendent Morrisset had passed through Orange with another six troopers bound for Eugowra. Two additional troopers followed from Stoney Creek the next day. The pursuit was already taking its toll on men and horses.
Two members of Pottinger's party were forced back to Forbes for fresh mounts after their horses became exhausted. They reported that the tracks had been followed to within a short distance of Fenn's public house on the Lachlan and approximately ten miles from Forbes.
Then rain intervened.
The tracks disappeared.
The Aboriginal trackers had been able to distinguish the trail of only six horsemen. Whether this represented the whole gang at that particular stage of the retreat, or whether members had divided before reaching the Lachlan, remained uncertain.
Meanwhile the robbery was becoming international news. Reports quickly spread beyond New South Wales and eventually reached the British press. As investigations progressed, the names of Gardiner, Hall, Gilbert, O'Meally, Fordyce, Bow and Charters increasingly appeared in connection with the attack.
The secrecy surrounding Eugowra was beginning to collapse.
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| Mr Charles Cropper. c. 1900. Never before published. |
On the night of 15 June, after learning that the escort had been attacked, he rode out with Clements and his own stockman. They first went to Clements' station and, on the following morning, began examining the country surrounding the ambush.
Behind the Rocks they found clear evidence of preparation. Horses had been tied out of sight. Tracks crossed the broken country. A path led over the range. Then came the remains of the treasure containers.
Cropper remembered:
"We found tracks for about a quarter of a mile, when we came on some boxes and red comforters; there were four iron boxes broken open; there was the remains of a fire, and portion of burnt comforters."
Cropper observed:
"The rails were cut down; the mortice-holes were cut."
Cropper found:
"Some beef on a bone and some envelopes."
Cropper estimated that the pursuing party covered approximately forty miles while following a route that would have measured only twenty or twenty-five miles in a straight line. The gang was deliberately avoiding easy pursuit. By nightfall the trackers had followed them to within approximately five miles of Fenn's public house. Darkness forced the search to stop. The following morning they resumed. This time the tracks appeared to lead towards Wheogo Mountain. For Pottinger, the implication was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. The trail from Eugowra was pointing back towards the country surrounding Ben Hall.
Cropper's testimony is important because it does not depend upon later romantic recollection. He was physically following the tracks within hours of the robbery. He identified where horses had been concealed. Where the gold boxes had been opened. Where the gang had stopped. Where fences had been cut. Where the river had been crossed. And ultimately the direction in which the trail continued.
The evidence did not by itself prove which rider left which hoofprint. But it established that the retreat from Eugowra passed through country intimately connected with Hall, Charters and their associates. Sandy Creek and Wheogo were no longer merely places suspected by police. They now lay in the direction taken by the men who had robbed the escort. Hanbury Clements remained closely involved in the pursuit. He would live for another half-century, dying at Kilmessan near Sydney on 11 January 1912 at approximately eighty-four years of age.
His obituary remembered the event that had permanently attached his name to the bushranging era:
"At the time of the robbery of the gold escort, he, with Mr C. W. Cropper, the owner of Yamma station, took an active part in the pursuit of the bushrangers."
Sergeant Condell was wounded. Senior Constable Moran was wounded. Constable Haviland had survived the gunfire. Constable Rafferty had escaped serious injury. Driver John Fagan had survived bullets passing through both his hat and coat.
They had lost the gold but retained the mail. Along the way additional passengers had joined the vehicle, including Ellen Chandler, her servant and child, as well as a male passenger. At Orange the coach stopped at the Post Office and delivered the surviving mails. The worst appeared to be over.
It was not.
After leaving the Post Office the coach proceeded towards Dalton's Inn in Byng Street. Then a revolver discharged inside the vehicle. The report terrified the passengers.
A woman cried:
"My God, the man is shot!"
He later testified at the inquest:
"Haviland was sitting at the back of the coach opposite me; I said 'No! It can't be!'"
Then he saw the blood.
"I then put out my hand and felt the blood pouring down quite warm."
During the confusion of the Eugowra attack it had apparently fallen from its holster and remained unnoticed beneath or near Haviland's seat. As the journey ended, it discharged. Moran remembered seeing the flash in line with Haviland's chest and discovering afterwards that his revolver case was empty. Haviland had survived Gardiner's ambush only to be killed accidentally at the end of the following day's journey.
The coach continued immediately to Dalton's Inn. Haviland was carried inside and placed upon a bed in a verandah room while medical assistance was summoned. Dr Warren arrived at approximately seven o'clock. There was nothing he could do.
He later testified:
"I found him lying on the bed in the verandah-room, with blood running out of his mouth and out of a wound in his neck; he was quite dead."
The bullet had entered beneath the chin, passed backwards through the larynx and pharynx and lodged towards the base of the skull.
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| Mrs Haviland Gratuity |
He did not live to make another journey.There are difficulties with the identification—the coach involved in 1862 was operated by Ford & Co., with Phil Mylecharane among its proprietors, rather than necessarily being a Cobb & Co. vehicle.
John Fagan himself testified:
"I had four horses in my coach; I lost some of the horses in the attack; they were the property of Ford and Co.; Phil Mylecharane was one of the owners."
The historical coach itself had endured an extraordinary journey. Its timber had been riddled with bullets. Its horses had bolted. It had overturned beneath the Rocks. Two policemen had been wounded within it.
The treasure had been removed.
And before the battered vehicle finally reached its Orange destination, another constable had died inside. For Gardiner and his companions, Eugowra represented spectacular success. For the men of the escort, its consequences were only beginning.
The verdict reflected the tragic uncertainty of the incident.
Haviland had survived the volley at Eugowra only to be killed accidentally at the end of the following day's journey. His death carried particular significance for the recently reorganised New South Wales Police Force. Haviland became one of its earliest serving officers to die while engaged in active duty arising from the bushranging crisis. The tragedy was made more poignant by something he had said shortly before his death.
One report recalled:
"Amongst other observations made by the deceased prior to the tragic event, was one to the effect that so soon as he arrived at Orange, he would telegraph to his wife in Sydney, to allay any alarm she might entertain for his safety."
Haviland left behind a wife and two children.
His death was not caused directly by a bushranger's bullet, but it arose from the disorder created by the Eugowra attack. Moran's revolver had apparently been displaced during the violent overturning of the escort coach and remained unnoticed until it discharged in Orange.
The robbery had claimed another victim.
Senior Constable Henry Moran survived his own painful wound at Eugowra and continued his life for many years afterwards. In another curious echo of the violence surrounding the escort, he too eventually died as the result of an accident, passing away in 1890 after falling from a cart at Hilton Grove, Hartley.
The carriers whom Gardiner's gang had compelled to block the road also eventually reached Forbes.
Their arrival generated enormous public interest.
One of the drivers, Dick Bloomfield, described how the teams had been stopped approximately two hours before the escort appeared. The bushrangers commandeered the wagons, consumed spirits taken from the loads and positioned the drivers away from the road.
The men were then forced to lie face down.
A contemporary report stated:
"The bandits made free with two bottles of spirits, and placed the drivers some distance from the rest, compelling them to lie faces downwards."
Their absence is noteworthy.
They had observed the gang before the escort arrived and potentially possessed information concerning numbers, disguises, voices and behaviour. Whether their testimony could materially have altered the fate of Henry Manns or any other accused man is impossible to know, but their omission remains an interesting feature of the prosecution.
Hanbury Clements himself provided one of the earliest detailed descriptions of the attack in a private letter subsequently published in the press. He remembered hearing the gunfire from his property and riding immediately towards the sound.
Clements wrote:
"I was in the paddock on horseback, and, on hearing the firing, galloped over at once."
The first man he encountered was driver John Fagan.
Fagan believed the worst:
"He said the troopers were all shot, and the coach and horses gone, but where he did not know."
Clements regarded Sergeant Condell as the calmest member of the escort:
"The sergeant, or corporal, who was the only cool man of the lot, was wounded in the side."
Clements' account differed in some details from later evidence. He believed three bullock teams had been used to block the road and repeated the escort men's initial impression that perhaps fifteen bushrangers had attacked. In reality the gang was smaller. The discrepancy demonstrates the confusion of the moment.
He also observed that the attackers:
"Had blackened faces, excepting one who appeared to be the leader."
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George Burgess. c. 1930's Very rare photo. Private Source. |
Burgess had been travelling with a dray carrying hay, potatoes and bacon towards the goldfields. Dick Bloomfield was driving, while young George worked as his offsider—his "billy boiler."
At approximately eleven o'clock Burgess entered nearby pine scrub to cut a whip handle.
When he returned, everything had changed.
He found Bloomfield speaking with an armed stranger:
"A man wearing white moles and Wellington boots, with a red comforter round his head and his face blackened."
The stranger leaned upon a double-barrelled gun and simply instructed:
"I want you fellows, come along."
Burgess' old cabbage-tree hat happened to contain a small hole in its crown. Through it, he claimed, he could see. He remembered approximately seven captives, including a swagman, being placed behind a rock and warned not to look up.
Then the escort appeared.
According to Burgess, approximately seven armed men rushed from concealment and fired. The horses panicked almost immediately. The coach overturned. The police fled towards Clements' station. Within minutes, the robbers were stripping the vehicle. Burgess later claimed that after the treasure had been secured, one bushranger returned to the captives, removed their blindfolds and distributed both liquor and money. Each supposedly received £1. For a thirteen-year-old boy, it was an extraordinary windfall.
Burgess remembered:
"With my £1, I ate lollies continuously for about two weeks."
The detail has the ring of childhood memory.
His estimate that the gang seized about 5,000 ounces of gold was inaccurate, demonstrating the limitations of a recollection recorded many decades afterwards. But his broader description accords with contemporary evidence concerning the forced positioning of the drays, disguises, gunfire and rapid seizure of the treasure.
Burgess survived until 1945, dying at Molong aged ninety-six.
His obituary celebrated him as one of the last surviving civilian witnesses of the famous Eugowra robbery.
The press demanded arrests. The police needed results.
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The police original map of bushrangers track too and from Eugowra. Courtesy Bathurst Historical Museum. |
Their destination was significant. They headed towards the neighbourhood of Ben Hall and John Maguire. That choice was not accidental. Police already knew Hall's history with Gardiner. They knew Sandy Creek had been visited by men within Gardiner's circle. They knew Hall had recently faced trial for robbery under arms, and now the tracks from Eugowra were leading towards Wheogo.
Sanderson himself was an experienced and unusually professional officer.
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| Insp Sanderson |
He had served through the disturbances at Lambing Flat and earned a reputation for persistence and discipline.
A later description called him:
"A policeman to the core, by training and temperament, one of the most reliable officers in the force."
Desertion from the force was common. Drunkenness and misconduct among hastily recruited replacements further damaged public confidence. Sanderson represented the opposite tendency.
Steady, experienced and persistent.
Charters testified:
"After camping, Gardiner went down to some rocks, and brought back a pair of scales, some weights, and some grog."
Charters recalled:
"I heard him say there was £3561 in notes."
Gardiner then weighed the gold into separate shares.
Charters remembered:
"He weighed the gold off in lots and said there was about 22 lbs. weight for each man."
The tracks wound down the Lachlan towards Fenn's public house before turning towards the Pinnacle. There the trail became difficult. The party searched until darkness forced them to camp. The next morning, with tracker Charlie still accompanying them, they moved towards Wheogo Mountain.
Near Hall's property they discovered fresh tracks.
The newspaper described them as those of:
"A horse at full speed, well-shod, and well ridden, a thing rather unusual in that out of the way part of the country."
The police initially thought he might have ridden into it. Closer examination revealed something more remarkable. The horse had jumped the creek there tracks continued on the far bank. The police followed them towards the summit of Wheogo Mountain. At the top they discovered a recently abandoned camp. The bushrangers had left in haste leaving a camp containing bedding, bread, beef and tea.
The tea was reportedly:
"Ready-made and nicely warm."
An envelope bearing a Burrowa postmark was also found.
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View from Gardiner's camp Wheogo Hill. Weddin Mountains in the foreground. Courtesy Peter C Smith |
They followed.
Eventually tracker Charlie called out:
"Me see him."
The fugitives were faster.
They turned sharply among the pines and disappeared from sight. Then the police encountered something extraordinary. A riderless horse. The troopers approached cautiously, suspecting a trap. Instead they discovered the gang's packhorse. It was heavily laden. Lashed to a trooper's saddle were four bags of gold, two carbines were also attached. The quantity was initially estimated at somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 ounces. The police had recovered a substantial portion of the stolen treasure.
The gang had escaped. But their success at Eugowra had suffered its first major reversal. In fleeing the police through the Weddin scrub, they had abandoned a fortune. From that point the tracks of only four horses could be followed. The pursuing party continued around the Weddin Mountains until darkness again halted the search. They eventually returned to Forbes carrying the recovered gold. The discovery was enormously important for the beleaguered authorities.
Within days of the most humiliating robbery in colonial memory, police could announce that a substantial portion of the treasure had been recovered. More importantly, the physical trail had led them from Eugowra Rocks towards:
The Pinnacle, Wheogo and Hall's country. And a camp only moments abandoned by men carrying the stolen gold. The investigation was no longer based merely upon reputation or association. The bush itself had pointed towards the network surrounding Ben Hall. For Pottinger and Sanderson, the implication was obvious.
The Eugowra robbers had come home.
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| View of Wheogo Hill from Deaths Lane. 2013. My photo. |
Sanderson immediately gave chase.
As evening approached, the pursuing party followed the rider towards Wheogo Hill. The trail climbed into increasingly difficult country, and the sudden flight suggested to Sanderson that the man was acting as a warning rider—a bush telegraph sent ahead to alert those camped on the mountain.
Daniel Charters later gave sworn evidence describing the panic that followed when the gang realised the police were upon them.
"A lot of police coming from the direction of Hall's towards M'guire's. After that we all got ready to start; after we got ready, we could hear the tramp of the police horses coming up the mountain."
At that stage Charters said five men remained together:
"Myself, Gardiner, Gilbert, Fordyce, and Bow."
They hurriedly abandoned part of the camp, bottles, provisions and other articles were left behind because there was no time to gather them. The gang then plunged into thick scrub.
Charters recalled:
"Gardiner had got off his horse to take a drink of spirits and water, when I heard the police horses behind us."
Gardiner's reaction conveyed the urgency of the moment:
"O Christ, here they are."
When he caught up with Charters, he was furious at the loss:
"He had lost the gold and it was a bad job."
He stated:
"When we reached Ben Hall's house near Wheogo, the tracker noticed a man riding from it for all he was worth."
Sanderson immediately interpreted the rider's behaviour as suspicious:
"Surmising this was a bush telegraph, we followed him immediately."
He later explained:
"On leaving Forbes, I took four men and a black tracker, with the object of moving in a different direction, as it was only natural to suppose such a large party of bushrangers would separate."
The decision proved inspired.
After following the warning rider's trail through Wheogo, Sanderson reached the abandoned camp and pushed onwards atop the hill known as Wheogo Mountain. Soon the police saw the riderless packhorse among the trees.
Sanderson remembered:
"When we came up with it, we found four bags of gold, containing 1239 ounces, strapped to the saddle."
He later recalled the result with characteristic understatement:
The return of Sanderson's party created scenes of jubilation. Thousands gathered as the exhausted troopers entered Forbes with the packhorse carrying the recovered treasure."If we hadn't caught anyone, we had recovered part of the gold."
One report described:
"A pack horse carrying about 1600 oz. of gold, two rifles and a trooper's coat."
The estimated quantity varied in early newspaper reports, but Sanderson's later figure of 1,239 ounces was more precise.
The crowd was enormous:
"They were loudly cheered, and surrounded by some 3000 people, eager to learn the news and see how affairs stood."
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| Ben Hall |
The Aboriginal tracker Charlie, whose skill had been essential to the pursuit, appeared remarkably fresh:
"The black fellow who had served as tracker appearing the least fatigued, to judge by his self-satisfied and merry countenance."
The recovery provided the police with desperately needed success although they had not captured Gardiner. They had not captured Hall. But they had deprived the gang of a substantial part of its fortune.Hall himself appears to have avoided Sanderson's party by a narrow margin.
According to John Maguire's later account, Ben had already separated from the men on Wheogo Hill carrying his personal share of the proceeds.
Maguire claimed:
"He had 22lb of gold strapped to his saddle and £460 in notes in his pockets."
Hall supposedly rode down the opposite side of the hill and found a hollow log suitable for concealment. There he hid the treasure.
Maguire continued:
"Into this, he thrust the whole of his share of the spoils."
Hall then returned home with remarkable composure:
"Then he coolly cantered away home as if nothing had happened."
Maguire maintained that Hall continued denying involvement even to friends and relatives:
"He always pretended, even to myself and his other relatives and friends, that he knew nothing of the robbery."
If Maguire's recollection is substantially accurate, Hall had successfully hidden a personal fortune within only a short distance of Sandy Creek while police searched the surrounding country.
The episode also demonstrates just how close he came to capture. Had Sanderson arrived slightly earlier, Hall might have been encountered returning from Wheogo Hill with stolen gold physically strapped to his saddle. Instead, the police found the camp and the abandoned packhorse. Hall escaped.
Sir Frederick Pottinger's own pursuit initially proved much less successful. After dividing the search parties, Pottinger followed another trail southwards, convinced that some of the robbers might be making for Victoria. He travelled an extraordinary distance. From Eugowra the party rode through the western country towards Hay, approximately 225 miles away.
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| Patrick Lyons |
The journey produced nothing.
Tracks were found heading towards the Victorian border, but Pottinger eventually concluded they did not belong to the men he wanted.
By the time the party reached Hay, Gardiner and his companions seemed to have vanished. Pottinger turned back towards Forbes. Then, almost by accident, fortune changed. During the return journey, Richard Mitchell rode some distance ahead of Pottinger and Lyons. Near Merool, in the Temora district, he encountered three well-mounted young men.
Mitchell did not recognise them.
When Pottinger and Lyons caught up, the Inspector casually began speaking with the riders. One attracted his attention because of the quality of his horse.
Pottinger remarked:
"That's a nice-looking horse you're riding, young man."
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| John Gilbert |
Pottinger had unknowingly been conversing face-to-face with one of the men he had ridden hundreds of miles attempting to find.
Gilbert escaped. His companions did not. The police drew their revolvers and detained the remaining two men. They were Henry Manns, one of the Eugowra robbers, and Charles Gilbert, John's elder brother. Both were travelling under assumed names.
Pottinger's fruitless expedition had suddenly produced the first significant arrests connected with the escort robbery.
Gilbert responded with extraordinary speed.
He rode through the night towards the Weddin Mountains, covering an immense distance in an attempt to gather men capable of rescuing Manns and his brother.
The resulting rescue party has never been identified with absolute certainty.
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Marker commemorating the gunfight opposite Mrs Sproules Station. My photo 12/03/20 |
What followed was one of the most violent confrontations yet between Gardiner's associates and Pottinger's party.
The rescuers appeared suddenly and opened fire.
One of them, described later as a strongly built, bearded man, directed particular abuse at Pottinger.
The Sydney Mail reported the words:
"I know you, you bl---y ba---rd, Pottinger. I'll put a pill through you, you ba---rd."
According to the account, he fired three times at the man while Mitchell beside him was simultaneously engaging the attackers.
Whether the abusive gunman was Hall cannot be established with certainty. The identification rests largely upon later interpretation and Hall's well-documented hostility towards Pottinger.
But the episode demonstrates how far the conflict had escalated. Only months earlier Hall had complained that Pottinger repeatedly brought him before magistrates without cause. Now men from Hall's circle were exchanging gunfire with the Inspector in an attempt to rescue suspected escort robbers.
The confrontation had moved beyond resentment.
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Charles Gilbert. Private Source. |
For Pottinger the episode was humiliating.
He had finally captured an alleged member of the Eugowra gang, only to lose him in an armed rescue. But the Inspector now possessed something he had lacked immediately after the robbery. Names. Connections. Patterns of movement. The trail from Eugowra had led towards Hall's country. Sanderson had recovered stolen gold near Wheogo. Gilbert had been encountered travelling with Manns. And armed men had been willing to attack police to free them.
Pottinger's attention inevitably returned to Sandy Creek. Within weeks he and Ben Hall would confront one another again. This time, Hall would be arrested in his own country.
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| The arrest of Ben Hall, William Hall, and Dan Charters, by Sir Frederick Pottinger depicted by Monty Wedd, from Bold Ben Hall. c. 1970's © |
By late July 1862, Pottinger believed he had enough information to act.
"I apprehended Charters on 27 July. He was having supper with Benjamin Hall and William Hall. It was after dark."
"They expressed their surprise and asked to finish supper. I took Charters and Benjamin Hall."
One account explained:
"After hearing about the robbery, he had to combine one set of facts with the other, and before any charge was brought against him, he gave information to the police."
Despite the circumstances, Maguire's wife prepared supper for the prisoners and police alike.
When night came, the arrested men were chained together.
"Hall, Charters, Brown and I were handcuffed together and had to doss in our clothes on a rough shakedown, whilst Sir Frederick took possession of the sofa."
"Each of us was now handcuffed singly and bidden to mount our horses. Our hands were then strapped to the pommel of the saddle, and with a trooper each holding our reins..."
"Should anyone appear on the road suspected of having intentions to rescue us, each trooper was to shoot his man dead."
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| Arrest |
"Benjamin Hall, William Hall, John Maguire, John Brown, and Daniel Charters were brought up charged with being concerned in the late escort robbery."
"I often noticed Hall and Charters whispering together apart from the rest of the prisoners; I began to suspect that they knew something about the robbery."
"They haven't found anything on us, and they can do nothing to us."
"I was not confined in the same cell as Ben Hall. I was under the same roof, but not in the same apartment."
"I had no communication with Hall at that time; nor had I any with him on this matter after my release."
"I watched Ben's countenance, and noticed that he looked a bit upset when Charters got his freedom."
Maguire later claimed that after Charters' release Ben finally admitted the truth to him.
"Ben and I were now left alone together, and next morning he confided to me a full account of the robbery and the names of the men who took part."
"Himself, Gardiner, young O'Meally, Gilbert, Charters, Bow, Fordyce and the only man I was not acquainted with—Henry Manns."
"I remonstrated with Ben, as there had been no occasion for him to take that game on, but he said he had been run on to it by Gardiner."
At the later trials he swore:
"Neither directly nor indirectly have I had any communication with O'Mealy or Hall relative to this matter."
"I will swear that I have not been offered a sum of money to leave their names out of the information I have given in regard to this robbery."
Police associated the property with Gardiner. The Eugowra investigation had transformed a pastoral holding into what authorities believed to be a criminal rendezvous.
Maguire's own legal ordeal would continue into 1863. He was eventually sent to Sydney and tried before the special commission established to deal with the escort robbery cases. The first major trial ended without a verdict. The defendants were immediately placed before another jury.
Henry Manns, Alexander Fordyce and John Bow were convicted and sentenced to death.
Maguire was acquitted. Bow and Fordyce later had their sentences commuted to imprisonment for life.
Manns did not.
He would become the only member of the Eugowra gang executed specifically for the robbery, dying in a notoriously bungled hanging in March 1863.
Contemporary opinion remained divided over Maguire's acquittal.
One correspondent wrote with considerable bitterness:
"The Escort Robbers have been sentenced to death, except for Maguire, who is acquitted. I have no doubt he is the biggest scoundrel of the three."
"At any rate, that he was cognizant of the intended robbery."That was opinion, not verdict.
The jury had acquitted him. But the suspicion never disappeared. Decades later, Maguire continued portraying himself as a man drawn unwittingly into Hall's troubles. His memoir is invaluable because of his proximity to events. It is also self-protective.
He admitted enough to make the account compelling—his suspicions, his financial assistance to Hall, the use of Sandy Creek by Gardiner, the conversations he overheard—but repeatedly stopped short of acknowledging prior knowledge that could have made him criminally liable.
William Hall's later recollections create similar difficulties.
William apparently knew extraordinary detail concerning the planning of Eugowra, including Hall's role in gathering intelligence and equipment.
Yet neither man's later memory was subjected to the pressures of cross-examination at the moment when it might have mattered most. The result is a complicated historical record. There is little doubt that Sandy Creek was deeply entangled in the planning and aftermath of the robbery.There is little doub t that Ben Hall participated willingly.There is strong evidence that Daniel Charters did likewise.
What John Maguire knew beforehand remains harder to define. The jury ultimately gave him the benefit of that uncertainty.
Pottinger did not.
And after July 1862, neither Ben Hall nor Sandy Creek would ever fully recover from the accusation.
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John Maguire's Darlinghurst Gaol entry log February 1863.
Note that John Maguire was blind in his right eye until publication; this information was unknown. |
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| Robert Hall, Maitland Gaol 1862, released in 1863. |
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| Robert Hall. c. 1870. |
Around the same period that Ben was obtaining release from custody at Forbes, his younger brother Robert Hall was sentenced at Maitland to six months' imprisonment for unlawfully working two bullocks. The incident was comparatively minor beside the escort robbery, but it added to the increasingly unfortunate association between the Hall name and repeated appearances before colonial courts.
By February 1863, the Government had moved to deal with the Eugowra affair on a much larger scale.
A Special Criminal Commission assembled at Darlinghurst in Sydney to try those accused of participating in the escort robbery and related bushranging offences. Among the principal defendants were John Bow, Alexander Fordyce, Henry Manns and John Maguire.
Sergeant Charles Sanderson, whose pursuit near Wheogo had recovered a substantial portion of the stolen gold, was called to give evidence. His testimony provided one of the clearest contemporary descriptions of what police had discovered near Hall and Maguire's properties. Sanderson recalled approaching Wheogo when a mounted man suddenly appeared:
"I saw a horseman coming towards me from the Wheoga Mountains, in the direction of Hall's or McGuire's house; when he caught sight of me he turned round and bolted into the mountains."
Sanderson immediately pursued him. With the assistance of the Aboriginal tracker accompanying the party, the man's trail was followed by a circuitous route towards the summit of Wheogo Mountain, approximately a mile and a half from Maguire's residence. There the police discovered an abandoned camp. The occupants had left hurriedly.
Sanderson testified:
"There were sixteen empty bottles; some contained remnants of port wine, some of gin, some of rum, some of ale."
Food remained scattered around the site.
"There were biscuits about and tea with milk in it."
The rocky summit made tracking difficult, for a time the trail disappeared completely. Then the Aboriginal tracker recovered it.
Sanderson remembered:
"In about a quarter of an hour it was found by the black tracker, and we proceeded on it a distance of about twenty or twenty-six miles, through a dense scrub."
Eventually they encountered a riderless packhorse. The saddle carried the evidence everyone had been searching for.
Sanderson testified:
"The pack contained a bag with 1239 ounces of gold, a bag similar to that which I saw put into the escort which started on Sunday, 15th June, from Forbes."
The identity of the warning rider remained disputed.
Later accounts strongly associated him with Johnny "Warrigal" Walsh, Bridget Hall's teenage brother, who had himself become increasingly connected with Gardiner and the horse-stealing fraternity. The theory is plausible, particularly given the rider's apparent movement between Hall's property and the mountain camp.
But unless a contemporary witness positively identified him, the safest conclusion is that Sanderson pursued a rider believed by later accounts to have been Warrigal Walsh. What can be established is that someone fled from the direction of Hall and Maguire's homes and led police directly towards the Eugowra gang's camp.
By the second half of 1862, the consequences for Ben Hall were becoming profound. Only a few years earlier he had been remembered throughout the Lachlan as an exceptionally capable stockman and promising grazier. Now his name appeared repeatedly in connection with Gardiner. He had been arrested for the Bacon dray robbery, stood trial at Orange. His property had been searched. The tracks from Eugowra had led towards Wheogo. A camp containing stolen gold had been discovered within a few miles of Sandy Creek. And Hall himself had again been arrested with men suspected of knowing far more about the robbery than they admitted. The old reputation did not disappear overnight.
Many neighbours had known Hall for years and retained personal affection for him. But the accumulation of evidence made it increasingly difficult to maintain the fiction that he had simply been unfortunate in his choice of acquaintances.
Sandy Creek itself began to suffer.
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Report of the hold-up of Sale of Sandy Creek in 1865, for £3000. |
Hall's bail and Maguire's coming Sydney trial required substantial sums, and neither man could easily continue operating Sandy Creek while repeatedly imprisoned or absent. Wilson, meanwhile, was disposing of some of his interests in the Forbes mining economy.
One advertisement offered:
"A full share in the Britannia Prospecting Claim and a sleeping half share in the same claim, including a share in 200 tons' quartz now ready for crushing as soon as machinery is ready."
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July 1862. |
John Maguire later described the transaction plainly. While imprisoned and facing the expense of defending himself, he transferred his interest in Sandy Creek to Wilson:
"My wife and children were living at the White Hart Inn kept by a man named Wilson, to whom I had transferred the Sandy Creek Station whilst in gaol, in order to raise the wind."
The station that had represented Maguire and Hall's independence was now being used as security or consideration for the funds needed to survive their legal difficulties. The precise legal mechanism is less clear than Maguire's retrospective language suggests. Government records continued for some time to list Hall and Maguire in connection with the Sandy Creek lease, indicating that the practical transfer of possession and the formal alteration of the lease were not necessarily simultaneous.
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John Wilson c. 1872 New South Wales, Australia,Gaol Description and Entrance Books,1818-1930 |
Thomas Richards also testified that Mrs Maguire spent several days at his house. That arrangement ended abruptly after William Hall began visiting.
Richards recalled:
"Mrs. Maguire was stopping at my house whilst Maguire was in custody. She stopped eight or nine days."
Then:
"William Hall, who had been taken up about having some of these notes, came to my house, and my wife kicked up a row, and said she would not have people coming about the house at all hours."
After Maguire's eventual acquittal in Sydney, he returned to Forbes. He found his wife and children at Wilson's establishment and soon reached another arrangement with the publican.
Maguire remembered:
"Next day I arranged with Wilson to take over his hotel, as he wished to go out and work the station."
Susan Prior, Hall's new companion, also continued living there. The station had therefore not been abandoned. But it had changed fundamentally. Its original partnership had fractured, its owners were imprisoned, defending themselves in court or absent.
Its management had passed partly into the hands of William Hall and increasingly into those of Wilson. The pastoral enterprise Ben and Maguire had created together was slipping from their control.
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New South Wales Government Gazette Friday, 23rd October 1863. |
Wilson would eventually obtain control of Wheogo Station itself and later dispose of the lease. Thus, within only a few years, the two properties most closely associated with Ben Hall's married and pastoral life—Wheogo and Sandy Creek—passed increasingly into Wilson's hands.
Estimating the station's value is difficult. Later figures range widely, from approximately £3,000 to as much as £8,000 depending upon whether livestock, buildings, improvements and leasehold interests are included. What is clear is that Sandy Creek was no trivial holding. Hall and Maguire had invested years of labour in it. There were houses, stockyards, water improvements, cattle and horses, and thousands of acres of valuable grazing country.
Government records also reveal the financial strain under which the lease was operating. As late as 1864, Hall and Maguire still appeared as lessees with rent outstanding from November 1862. The arrears reportedly stood at £5 10s, with a partial payment of £3 15s made during 1863. The sums were comparatively small, but their significance was considerable. Men who had once operated a prosperous cattle station were now failing to keep even modest Crown rental obligations completely current. The pastoral success of 1860 had evaporated.
Sandy Creek had not been destroyed by a single event, its decline resulted from accumulation of factors, Hall's marriage collapsed. He withdrew from the station. Gardiner entered his life more fully. The Bacon prosecution followed. Then Eugowra, the arrest, remand. Then the Sydney prosecutions. Legal expenses mounted while cattle still required supervision and rents still had to be paid. Police surveillance further damaged the station's reputation and made ordinary business increasingly difficult.
By the time Wilson assumed practical control, Sandy Creek was no longer the symbol of Hall's ascent. It had become one of the principal casualties of his decisions. There is a striking irony in that transformation.
Hall had participated in the Eugowra robbery partly for the promise of instant wealth. Yet the consequences helped strip him of the legitimate wealth he already possessed. The gold taken from the escort could be hidden in hollow logs or divided on Wheogo Hill.
Sandy Creek could not.
And piece by piece, the life Ben Hall had spent a decade building was passing into other hands.
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Uoka Station, Bailliere's New South Wales Gazetteer, 1866. |
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NSW Gazette November 1862, a notice of forfeiture of Sandy Creek. |
There had been drought conditions during late 1861 and early 1862, but drought was a recurring feature of pastoral life in the Lachlan, and there is little evidence that Sandy Creek had been reduced to financial desperation.
Indeed, the surviving evidence points in the opposite direction.
The goldfields had created an enormous demand for meat. Forbes lay only about twenty-five miles from Sandy Creek, while Burrangong could readily be reached by experienced drovers. Cattle represented readily convertible wealth, and Hall and Maguire possessed both the stock and the pastoral knowledge necessary to exploit those markets.
Daniel Charters' later evidence provides particularly useful confirmation.
When Pottinger arrested him at Sandy Creek in July 1862, Charters explained that his presence there was connected with ordinary cattle business:
"Hall was gathering cattle; getting fat cattle for market, and I was there to get mine and my sister's cattle that might be brought in."
When William Hall was arrested, he reportedly possessed more than £60—a substantial amount of ready money for an ordinary working man. John Maguire maintained a household sufficiently comfortable to employ Mrs Shanahan as a cook and domestic servant.
Sandy Creek itself contained valuable improvements, livestock and dwellings. These were not destitute men driven towards robbery because they could no longer feed themselves. Nor can Hall's participation in the Eugowra robbery plausibly be explained by an inability to meet a few pounds in annual Crown rent.
According to the familiar version, when Sir Frederick Pottinger arrested Hall in connection with the Eugowra Escort Robbery in 1862, cattle had been yarded at Sandy Creek. With Hall imprisoned, the property was supposedly abandoned, and the animals left confined without food or water until they perished.
The story is dramatic. The surviving evidence does not support it. Sandy Creek was not abandoned when Hall was taken into custody.
William Hall was living there with his wife Ann and their two children. Susan Prior, then pregnant with Ben's daughter, was also a resident at Sandy Creek, together with her mother, Mary, and siblings, William and Charlotte. John Maguire and his family occupied the neighbouring portion of the station, while members of the Walsh and Brown families lived within two miles of Sandy Creek.
The district was therefore populated by Hall's relatives, friends and pastoral associates. Cattle were valuable property and essential to the livelihood of everyone concerned. It is difficult to accept that a substantial mob could have remained trapped in yards, audibly suffering from thirst and starvation, while numerous experienced cattle people living on or immediately around the property simply allowed them to die.
More importantly, there is direct contemporary evidence. During the second Eugowra Escort trial in 1863, Pottinger was questioned under oath about his arrest of Ben Hall, William Hall and Daniel Charters at Sandy Creek.
He testified:
"Nothing was said beyond the expression of surprise. I took them to Maguire's, where I had arrested Maguire and Brown, and took them all into town. I did not notice any cattle in Hall's stockyard. They might have been mustering, but I saw nothing of it."
Furthermore, he specifically stated on the subject of monies found on Bill Hall:
I found £50 or £60 in notes on Hall. A great deal was said about them, and a long investigation was had into the matter, about there being notes that had been taken from the escort. I took some notes from the house of Ben Hall, and they were claimed by William Hall, to whom they were returned. There was an investigation before the Bench, and then they were returned. I took possession of them and produced them before the Bench to show that they were taken from the escort. They were placed before several witnesses; Mr Weakes and a clerk of the Commercial Bank who is not here.’ By the Judge: ‘An investigation took place; the notes were examined by witnesses, and the magistrates dismissed the case and returned the notes to William Hall."
There may therefore have been cattle being worked around Sandy Creek at the time. That is very different from evidence that animals were left locked in yards until they died. No contemporary evidence presently establishes such an event.
The starving-cattle story matters because it has subsequently been incorporated into a much broader explanation of Hall's criminal career. As such, a myth becomes a fact
In its most dramatic form, Hall is supposed to have explained his descent into bushranging by declaring, in effect, that his wife had run away, his house had been burned, and his cattle had been left to die. There are serious chronological problems with that account. Bridget's departure occurred around 1861. Hall was participating in armed robbery by 1862. He joined Gardiner in the Eugowra Escort Robbery in June of that year. The police destruction of Hall's Sandy Creek residence occurred considerably later. The burning of the house therefore cannot logically explain why Hall had already become involved in bushranging.
The same difficulty applies to the supposed destruction of his cattle. Pottinger's contemporary sworn testimony provides no support for the story that he arrested Hall and knowingly left a yard full of cattle to perish. Until a credible contemporary source for the alleged quotation can be produced, it should not be presented as Ben Hall's own explanation of his life. At best, it belongs to the later mythology surrounding him.
Therefore, the historical record tells a more complicated—and ultimately more revealing—story. Hall's legitimate pastoral life did deteriorate. His interest in Sandy Creek declined. He associated increasingly with Gardiner, Gilbert and O'Meally. He participated in armed robbery. He was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned. Police surveillance intensified. Legal expenses accumulated. Control of Sandy Creek gradually passed into other hands, and eventually his residence was destroyed during the campaign against the bushrangers.
Those events provide more than enough explanation for the destruction of Hall's former life without introducing starving cattle for which contemporary evidence has yet to be found.
The distinction is important.
Ben Hall certainly suffered personal loss and increasingly aggressive police attention. But those facts should not reverse the chronology. Hall was already involved in serious crime before the Pottinger arrest. The surviving evidence therefore presents something considerably more complex than the familiar story of an innocent grazier whose cattle were deliberately allowed to die and who was consequently driven onto the road. Hall's transformation into a bushranger had begun well before that. The tragedy of Sandy Creek was not that one vindictive arrest suddenly destroyed an innocent man's livelihood.
It was that Hall already possessed a viable livelihood—and progressively abandoned it for the road. When the myth becomes fact, print the myth.
The distinction matters.
Hall had spent more than a decade acquiring precisely what many young colonial men wanted: excellent pastoral skills, cattle and horses of his own, a substantial lease and access to extraordinarily profitable markets.
He did not need Gardiner in order to survive. Yet by 1861 the life that had given those achievements their meaning was collapsing.
Bridget had left.
Henry—the child Maguire remembered as "the sunshine of his home"—had been taken with her. Hall's interest in Sandy Creek declined markedly afterwards. He disappeared for days, spent increasing periods in Forbes and Lambing Flat, and associated more openly with Gardiner, Gilbert and O'Meally.
The station remained valuable. But Hall's attachment to it had changed.
This helps explain an apparent contradiction in his behaviour. A man could possess cattle worth selling and still neglect his rent. He could own a productive station while becoming indifferent to its future. Financial capacity and personal motivation were not the same thing.
Hall had not necessarily lost the means to maintain Sandy Creek, he was losing the desire to live the life Sandy Creek represented.
Gardiner offered something radically different.
There was easy money, certainly. A successful highway robbery could produce in minutes what cattlemen might labour months to earn. Eugowra demonstrated the extreme possibility: Hall's alleged share alone amounted to approximately twenty-two pounds weight of gold together with hundreds of pounds in banknotes.
But money was probably only part of the attraction. Gardiner's world offered movement, danger, companionship and defiance. There were fine horses, firearms, hotels and race meetings, long rides through country Hall knew intimately and the exhilaration of repeatedly escaping the police.
For a restless young man whose domestic life had disintegrated, the contrast with the routines of Sandy Creek must have been considerable. That does not make Bridget responsible for what followed. Hall's choices remained his own.
Many men suffered betrayal and family breakdown without responding by committing armed robbery. Hall had already moved within a social world where cattle duffing, horse stealing, and association with criminals were familiar, and Gardiner provided both the example and the opportunity to take those activities much further.
The important point is that Hall's descent into bushranging was not driven by poverty. If anything, it involved abandoning prosperity. He had land, livestock, marketable cattle, exceptional pastoral skills, a reputation that had once promised further advancement, and he threw much of it away.
The unpaid rent at Sandy Creek therefore becomes almost symbolic.
The amount itself was trivial compared with the wealth that had passed through Hall's hands. What mattered was that the man who once worked relentlessly to establish the station no longer cared enough to preserve it.
The hardworking stockman was giving way to the restless horseman. The grazier to the highwayman. The slow accumulation of cattle and property to the promise of instant wealth at the end of a six-gun.
Ben Hall had spent his youth building a future.
By 1862, he was beginning to abandon it. In stepped John Wilson.
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Government records continued to associate Ben Hall and John Maguire with the property for years afterwards. Wilson's occupancy was not formally recognised until the end of 1867, more than two years after Hall's death.
The long delay raises an obvious question.
Why?
One possibility is that completing the transfer required formal execution by the existing lessees, potentially including Hall's signature before an authorised witness or magistrate. Once Hall entered open bushranging, obtaining such a signature through normal administrative channels would have been extraordinarily difficult. Appearing before a magistrate to execute a pastoral transfer would have amounted to surrender.
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The Peak Hill Express, 5th July 1907. NLA. |
Bridget's position is equally interesting.
She remained legally married to Ben, yet there is no indication that she exercised any control over the disposal of Sandy Creek. Whether she possessed a legal interest capable of preventing or influencing the transaction depended upon the nature of Hall's leasehold interest and the restrictive property laws governing married women in colonial New South Wales.
Whatever the legal mechanism, the practical result was unmistakable.
Sandy Creek passed from Hall and Maguire's control.
Their labour had transformed the run. What had begun as rough scrub and grazing country had become a developed pastoral property capable of supporting a substantial cattle operation.
The irony is considerable.
Hall's participation in Eugowra promised instant wealth. Yet the consequences of that robbery, combined with his earlier abandonment of station life, helped cost him something potentially more valuable in the long term: a productive pastoral enterprise that he had spent years creating.
The twenty-two pounds of stolen gold could be hidden in a hollow log. Sandy Creek represented permanent wealth, and Hall lost it. John Maguire later claimed that the proceeds arising from the transfer or eventual disposal of Sandy Creek were to be divided into four shares. His wife Ellen Maguire was supposedly entitled to one-quarter.
According to Maguire:
"My wife was entitled to 640 pounds as a fourth part of the proceeds, but by some manner of means the executor never handed over a copper of it."
That figure provides a useful indication of the substantial value accumulated at the station, although it should not be automatically treated as the complete market value of Sandy Creek. The transaction may have distinguished between leasehold interests, livestock, improvements and other property.
What is clear is that the sums involved were substantial. Sandy Creek had become valuable enough to represent meaningful wealth for several families.
By this time John and Ellen Maguire's marriage had itself deteriorated. The couple eventually separated, and their relationship appears to have broken down completely during the later 1860s. Their domestic difficulties developed against an extraordinary background.
Maguire had been arrested over Eugowra. He had spent months in custody. Ellen and the children had moved between friends' homes and hotels while he awaited trial.
Sandy Creek had passed into Wilson's control.
Maguire had returned from Sydney and entered the hotel trade. The stability around which their married life had once been organised had disappeared. There were also rumours concerning Ellen and Daniel Charters.
Such allegations should be treated cautiously unless supported by contemporary evidence. Charters had been intimately connected with both Hall and Maguire and remained embedded within the same family and social network, making later gossip almost inevitable.
Another personal tragedy followed.
John and Ellen appear to have had another daughter, who died in 1867. Coming after years of legal, financial and domestic upheaval, the child's death may have placed further strain upon an already fractured marriage, which is identified as the cause of their final separation and control of his station passed to another man.
Yet Sandy Creek itself continued. The stockyards remained. The cleared country remained. The houses remained. The improvements Hall and Maguire had made increased the property's value long after they ceased to benefit from them. That may be the clearest measure of what Hall abandoned.
 | |
By mid 1862, Susan Prior, the young woman Hall had met around Lambing Flat after Bridget's departure, was pregnant with his child.
Susan had moved into the Sandy Creek household, where the circumstances were very different from those Hall and Bridget had known during the station's prosperous years. Hall no longer exercised the same control over the property, police attention was constant, and the extended household had become increasingly complicated.
Yet Susan's presence offered Hall something that had been missing since Bridget had taken Henry.
A home life.
Whether Hall regarded the relationship as an attempt to reform cannot be established. His behaviour certainly provides little evidence of a sustained withdrawal from crime. During the same broad period in which his relationship with Susan developed, Hall became more deeply involved with Gardiner.
Domestic attachment and criminality therefore existed alongside one another. Hall could return to Susan at Sandy Creek while continuing to ride with Gardiner.
A much later account published in the Gundagai Times and Tumut, Adelong and Murrumbidgee District Advertiser on 26 August 1924 preserved a tradition concerning the beginning of the relationship.
It described Susan—spelling her surname Pryor—as:
"A handsome young girl of 16 summers."
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| Reputed Image Susan Prior |
"Induced [her] to go and live with him at his home at Wheogo."
The newspaper made another interesting claim.
Hall's new relationship supposedly caused no hostility among Bridget's relatives:
"This action, or mode of life, provoked no resentment on the part of the Walsh family."
Most significantly, the writer believed Susan had a stabilising effect upon Hall:
"Ben now resumed his former energies and appeared as much enamoured of his mistress as he was of his wife."
Nevertheless, it preserves an interesting tradition. Susan may briefly have provided Hall with something resembling the domestic companionship he had lost. If so, it was not enough to reverse the direction his life had taken.
Susan's presence also raises an intriguing question concerning one of the photographs traditionally associated with Hall. A surviving image depicting Hall seated separately with a young woman has frequently been identified as showing Ben and Bridget Hall.
The chronology makes that identification problematic.
By the end of 1861, Bridget had left Hall for James Taylor. Their marriage had broken down bitterly, and Bridget remained with Taylor for the remainder of his life, eventually marrying him after the death of his first wife.
A formal studio portrait of the estranged Ben and Bridget together after their separation therefore appears highly unlikely. Susan Prior presents an alternative possibility. If the photograph dates from around 1862, when Susan was living with Hall, she becomes a plausible candidate for the unidentified woman found in the locket when Hall died.
But plausibility is not identification.
Unless the photograph can be securely dated and its provenance traced, the woman should not be definitively labelled either Bridget or Susan. There was speculation of a sister but that is highly unlikey as Hall had not seen any of them since he was thirteen.
The photograph remains an unresolved piece of Hall iconography. However, the image appears to depict a pregnant woman wearing a matinee jacket, a style common in the 1860s. Another later image shows a remarkable resembalance to Susan's youngest daughter Esther.
However, by this period Hall's old residence at Sandy Creek contained a substantial and unusual household. His elder brother William Hall remained there with his wife Ann and their two children, Mary and John.
Susan Prior was also in residence.
She was joined by members of her own family: her mother Mary Prior, her sister Charlotte, and her brother William.
Note: There is little else recorded of Susan Prior after 1864. Susan gave birth to her and Ben's child, a daughter named Mary, born in January 1863. Mary died in Newton, Sydney, in 1922. However, it has been noted that in old age, Susan was a very bitter and cantankerous woman. However, Susan would live at Burrowa in 1863/4, and due course, forms a relationship with one Alfred Stonham where Susan Prior produced a son, Alfred. The delivery was registered at Yass with Alfred Stonham named as the father. However, Alfred was still married to Mahalah Dengate, and in 1867 he and Mahalah had another child, Ambrose Stonham. By 1875 the marriage of Alfred and Mahalah collapsed. Therefore, it may well be that Alfred in all probability could be another son of Ben Hall and that the birth was attributed to Alfred to deflect any link to Ben Hall. ( See BH pt. 3.)
His presence adds another dimension to Sandy Creek's changing character.
The property was still functioning as a pastoral establishment and family residence, but men connected with the bushranging fraternity were also moving through it.
Sandy Creek occupied both worlds.
William's presence is particularly important because later mythology sometimes treats Sandy Creek as though it had simply been abandoned once Ben's legal troubles began.
It was not.
William continued living in his brother's house and appears to have assumed considerable responsibility for the property during Ben's repeated absences.
A later account observed:
"Bill Hall never turned out on the road, though he remained in the district whilst his notorious brother went through all his exciting experiences; in fact, he lived in Ben's house until it was burnt down by the Police."
After the Sandy Creek house was eventually destroyed, William increasingly turned towards mining. He moved towards the Pinnacle Range, working around the reef known variously as Pinnacle Reef and Maguire's Reef.
Ben himself would later use this country as a refuge during periods of intense police pursuit. William eventually settled at Parkes, where he spent the remainder of his life.
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Mary's Baptism Certificate. Purchased by author. |
She was named Mary.
The child appears to have been born at Sandy Creek, surrounded by the extended Hall and Prior household. For Ben, Mary's birth meant that he was a father for the second time.
His relationship with his first child, Henry, had been profoundly disrupted when Bridget left with James Taylor. Now, less than two years later, Hall had another child living at Sandy Creek.
Accounts suggest that despite his increasing difficulties with police, Hall periodically returned to see Susan and his infant daughter. The image is important because it complicates the familiar picture of Hall simply abandoning domestic life for the road.
He moved between the two.
At one moment he could be pursued as an associate of Gardiner. At another he could return to Sandy Creek to visit Susan and Mary. The two identities existed simultaneously.
Mary's birth presents another historical curiosity.
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Susan Prior and her youngest daughter Esther Stonham. Note the striking resemblance between Mother and Daughter. Susan right. c. 1862, aged 17. Esther Stonham never published before. Private Source. |
Why is uncertain.
The fact that Mary was born outside marriage may have influenced how and where the birth was registered, particularly given Hall's notoriety and Susan's relative unfamiliarity within the district.
But this remains conjecture.
Family connections, movements after the birth, delayed registration or the administrative arrangements governing registration may provide equally plausible explanations.
The Wellington registration should therefore be recorded as an interesting anomaly rather than evidence of deliberate concealment.
Mary's birth exposes the contradiction that increasingly defined Hall's life. At Sandy Creek there was once again a woman waiting for him. There was once again a baby daughter. There were relatives, cattle, horses and the remnants of the pastoral world he had built.
But Hall was no longer simply a grazier who occasionally mixed with questionable company. By the time Mary was born, he had ridden with Gardiner, participated in armed robbery, shared in the proceeds of Eugowra and had been arrested and imprisoned.
The police were watching the country around Sandy Creek, Wheogo, the Pinnacle and the Weddin Mountains with increasing determination. Susan may have restored some of the domestic companionship Hall had lost when Bridget left. But she could not restore the life that had existed before her.
By January 1863, Ben Hall possessed something resembling a family again. But the road was already claiming him. The police pressure around Sandy Creek did not diminish after Eugowra.
Sir Frederick Pottinger remained convinced that the country surrounding Sandy Creek, Wheogo, the Pinnacle and the Weddin Mountains formed part of the support network sustaining Gardiner and his associates. The discovery of the Wheogo Hill camp and Sanderson's recovery of stolen escort gold had given substance to suspicions police had held for months.
Patrols intensified. Yet the problem confronting Pottinger was not simply finding the bushrangers. It was finding them before someone warned them that the police were coming.
A correspondent writing from the Lachlan described a countryside in which old friendships between stockmen had become an intelligence network for the outlaws. Many residents of the Billabong and Bland Plains, he observed, had once worked and camped beside the very men now being hunted:
"Many of the residents there, to my certain knowledge, having been at one time hut mates and companions of the now noted bushrangers, whilst after cattle in bye-gone days."
The correspondent continued:
"There is little doubt they do wink at the evil practice of their former companions, and, when they see them, give them food and shelter."
Most dangerous of all were the scouts scattered through the district:
"It is impossible the police can take the bushrangers whilst they have such means afforded them of escape with scouts in all directions—'bush telegrams' as they are called."
A rider seeing police leave Forbes could gallop ahead, a station hand could pass a message or a publican could mention that troopers had been asking questions, a neighbour needed only to nod. As the old saying had it, a nod was as good as a wink to a blind horse. The result was an enormous tactical advantage.
"They may be within an hour's ride of the police, and still escape them."
The writer believed uniformed patrols alone would never succeed:
"They will never take these bushrangers openly, or in uniform; it will be done simply by stratagem."
The geography compounded the problem. Humbug Creek and the Weddin Mountains had been familiar country to Hall, Gilbert, O'Meally and their companions long before they became bushrangers.
"They know the ground well now—every bush and tree is familiar to them."
The very skills that had once made them valuable stockmen now made them extraordinarily difficult fugitives. Pottinger soon attempted precisely the kind of stratagem the correspondent recommended.
On 9 August 1862, intelligence reached him that Frank Gardiner intended visiting his lover, Ben Hall's sister-in-law Catherine "Kitty" Brown, at Wheogo.
This time Pottinger intended to be waiting.
He positioned himself with Sergeant Sanderson and a substantial party of police around the property, concealing men along the likely approaches. The information proved correct; under cover of darkness, a rider appeared.
Pottinger later described seeing:
"A man on a white horse with a gun slung by the saddle."
The rider moved quietly away from the house before turning onto a cattle track through the scrub. Pottinger and Sanderson shadowed him. Then the sound of hoofbeats began approaching their hiding place.
Pottinger waited.
The horse came closer. Ten yards. Five. The Inspector stepped suddenly from concealment and levelled his carbine across the horse's shoulder. The muzzle was within only a few yards of the rider.
Pottinger shouted:
"Stand!"
The man was Frank Gardiner. Gardiner reacted instantly. According to Pottinger:
"He immediately uttered a yell or shriek, and threw up his arms into the air, still holding the rein."
The horse wheeled. Pottinger pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The percussion cap had failed. For perhaps the best opportunity the police had yet obtained to capture Gardiner, the Inspector's carbine had misfired. The horse bolted into the darkness.
Pottinger shouted:
"Shoot the wretch!"
Sanderson fired twice with his revolver. Trooper Hollister also fired. They missed.
Gardiner disappeared into the scrub. The incident immediately became another source of embarrassment for Pottinger. One account claimed that Gardiner rode only about five hundred yards before dismounting, apparently confident that his pursuers would not catch him.
The writer concluded mockingly:
"The Battle of Wheogo was over, and the nine men remained masters of a barren field."
The press had found another opportunity to ridicule the Baronet.
Worse followed. Unable to capture Gardiner, police detained Catherine Brown's young brother, Johnny "Warrigal" Walsh, apparently on suspicion that he had assisted the fugitive or held his horse.
The episode inspired verse in the Yass Courier:
"Up started then Sir Fred. and his men, with cock'd carbine in hand,
And call'd aloud on the Ranger proud, on pain of death, to 'stand;'
But the Ranger proud, he laughed aloud, and bounding rode away,
While Sir Frederick Pott. shut his eyes for a shot, and miss'd—in his usual way."
It was unfair in one important respect. Pottinger had not simply fired wildly and missed. His weapon had failed at the decisive instant. But public perception mattered. Once again Gardiner had escaped. Once again Pottinger had been made to look ridiculous, and once again the legend of the "Darkie" grew.
The consequences extended beyond the men actually committing the robberies.
Bushranging had become entertainment. Newspapers carried detailed accounts of hold-ups, escapes and confrontations with police. Stories travelled rapidly by telegraph. Gardiner's name became familiar far beyond the districts in which he operated.
Children began imitating the outlaws. The development disturbed contemporary observers.
In October 1862 the Goulburn Chronicle warned:
"The amusement of playing bushrangers and sticking up one another may prove very exciting to the juvenile mind, but such amusements must necessarily tend to loss of moral principles and disregard of right and wrong."
The concern reveals how completely the bushranger had entered popular culture. Gardiner was no longer merely a wanted criminal; he had become a character children pretended to be. Before long Ben Hall would soon acquire the same notoriety.
Behind the newspaper mythology operated a much less romantic information system.
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Wanted notice NSW Police Gazette, 1863. |
Gardiner. Gilbert. O'Meally. Hall. Daley. Jamieson. The police intelligence net was tightening even if arrests remained difficult.
By January 1863, the bushranging outbreak entered another phase.
John Gilbert had returned.
After the chaos following Eugowra and his encounter with Pottinger near Merool, Gilbert had travelled south and eventually reached New Zealand with members of his family. For a time he found refuge around Clyde on the Dunstan goldfield.
But the Lachlan drew him back.
By early 1863 he was again operating around his old country near Marengo and the Weddin Mountains. His return reunited some of the most experienced young bushmen in the district. Gilbert. O'Meally. Hall. Around them moved a looser group including Patsy Daley, O'Meally's cousin, and John Jamieson, an associate of Warrigal Walsh.
"The Boys," as they increasingly became known, were taking shape.
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Hall Robbery NSW Police Gazette, 14th January 1863. |
What is significant is the broader pattern. Within days, armed robberies were again occurring throughout the country Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally knew intimately. The following day another traveller was stopped.
On 14 January, David M'Veigh of Forbes was travelling approximately ten miles from town on the road towards Lambing Flat when three mounted men confronted him. They were armed with revolvers. M'Veigh lost only thirteen shillings in silver.
The Police Gazette described one offender as:
"Young, fair, no hair on face; dressed in flash striped trousers and cabbage tree hat."
The other two had covered their faces with crape and could not be adequately described. Later proceedings connected John Jamieson and Patsy Daley with the robbery.
The Yass Courier subsequently reported:
"John Jamieson was also committed for trial... on a charge of having, in company with Patsey Daley and another, committed a robbery on the persons of David M'Veigh and David Pollon, on the Lachlan road."
The identity of the unnamed third man has subsequently been associated with Hall, but unless supported by further evidence of identification, it should be distinguished from the proven involvement of Jamieson and Daley.
What the incident demonstrates beyond doubt is the extraordinary imbalance between risk and reward. Three armed men could threaten travellers with revolvers for thirteen shillings. The "grand haul" of Eugowra had not ended petty bushranging.
It had merely returned.
Gilbert's return soon became unmistakable.
In early January 1863 a group of bushrangers descended upon stations and accommodation houses in the Marengo district. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Bentick-Morrell Station, associated with George Tout, had been ransacked, followed by an attack upon George Harcombe's roadside accommodation house.
Only £7 was obtained at Harcombe's.
But the number of men involved was alarming. Three entered the building. As many as six others were reportedly waiting nearby as a reserve, carrying property believed to have been taken from the previous station. Most significantly, Gilbert was recognised. Harcombe's sister-in-law knew him personally from Marengo, where he had once worked as a stockkeeper.
The newspaper reported:
"The rascals were under the leadership of one Johnny Gilbert, a henchman of Gardiner's."
His identification was considered certain:
"This is an undoubted fact, because a sister-in-law of George Harcombe's was present, and distinctly recognised him."
None of the men bothered to conceal their faces. The transition from Gardiner's carefully cultivated fugitive existence to the increasingly brazen style of the later gangs was becoming apparent.
Other attacks followed. Travellers were stripped of money, clothing, boots, horses and weapons. One man, John Grandylar, was stopped by two armed bushrangers approximately sixteen miles from Burrowa. They took the money they found. A substantial cheque escaped detection only because Grandylar had sewn it inside the waistband of his trousers. The bushrangers even removed his boots. They gave him an old pair in exchange. His coat went too. So did his swag—and the revolver he had foolishly packed inside it, where it was useless when armed men confronted him.
Such incidents reveal the everyday reality behind the bushranger legend. For the victim there was little romance. A stranger appeared with a loaded firearm. The traveller surrendered whatever was demanded; any resistance could mean death. The courtesy occasionally displayed afterwards did not remove the coercion upon which every robbery depended.
By the opening months of 1863, Hall's position had fundamentally changed. He was no longer simply the Sandy Creek grazier repeatedly suspected because of his friendships. Nor was he merely Gardiner's junior associate. The evidence accumulated from Eugowra, his movements, his companions and subsequent robberies increasingly placed him within the active bushranging fraternity.
His transformation was not instantaneous. It had unfolded over approximately eighteen months and a renewed association with Gilbert and O'Meally.
By January 1863, the process was approaching completion. Hall still possessed qualities that victims would later remember favourably. He could be quiet, personable and occasionally generous. He frequently avoided unnecessary violence and sometimes returned small sums to those he robbed. But those characteristics should not obscure what bushranging actually required. Hall confronted ordinary travellers with firearms. He deprived working people of wages, horses and possessions. His victims could not know whether resistance would bring a joke, a beating or a bullet.
The respectable stockman had become an armed robber.
Hall's circle was not the only one operating across the western districts. At the beginning of January 1863, another man who would later become associated with Hall was already demonstrating how quickly an armed hold-up could become lethal.
Fred Lowrie appeared at the New Year's Day races at Brisbane Valley near the head of the Fish River Creek. Lowrie and another wanted man, Foley, were reportedly among those attending. After the races and the distribution of prizes, Lowrie attempted to bail up the gathering. Two men refused to obey.
Lowrie fired.
The bullet grazed one man's cheek and struck a nearby horse in the hip. Then a young man named Foran rushed him. Lowrie fired again. The ball passed into Foran's right lung and was feared to have lodged near his spine. Yet Foran continued forward. Despite his wound, he seized Lowrie and held him until others came to his assistance.
The Bathurst Free Press reported:
"Notwithstanding that Foran was thus wounded, he sprang at once upon the villain, and was enabled to hold him till, other assistance coming forward, he was effectively secured."
Remarkably, Foran survived.
The episode offered a brutal reminder of what lay beneath the romance surrounding the "Wild Colonial Boys." A race meeting. A revolver. A refusal to obey. And within seconds, a man had a bullet through his lung.
Ben Hall and Fred Lowrie had not yet become companions. Their paths would cross soon enough. A nexus of hardened criminals was forming.
By late January 1863, Ben Hall was becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss as merely a suspected associate of other bushrangers.
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NSW Police Gazette, February 1863. |
Pollock knew him. So did others in the district. A later account of the robbery preserved an almost comic exchange between Pollock and the leading bushranger.
The robber demanded:
"What have you got in your pocket?"
Pollock replied:
"Damn all—a halfpence."
The answer apparently surprised his assailant.
"What are you driving about the country for, without money?"
Pollock explained that he had been looking for a mule and jokingly offered the bushranger a reward if he could find it and bring it into Forbes.
The robber concluded with mock advice:
"Now Pollock, never go on the road again without money."
The three then rode away. Contemporary newspapers initially speculated that the leader was none other than Frank Gardiner. That was understandable. Gardiner's reputation had become so pervasive that almost any accomplished highway robber operating around the Lachlan risked being identified as "The Darkie." By this time, however, Gardiner appears to have left the district. As one later correspondent would observe, there seemed to be almost as many supposed Gardiners in New South Wales as there had been Richmonds at Bosworth Field.
The more significant identification was Ben Hall.
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February 1863. Note; Hall's description- 5 ft 6 in. Hall's height would vary in future police Gazettes from 5 ft 6 in-5 ft 8 in. |
Mary Green was present. The bushrangers helped themselves to liquor, including gin and brandy. And Mrs Green recognised Hall. That identification carries considerably greater evidentiary weight than the many vague descriptions published after roadside robberies. A frightened traveller, seeing a masked rider for a few seconds, could easily mistake height, age, or complexion. Mary Green had known Hall for years. The respectable stockman was now returning to familiar stations armed as a bushranger.
The Uar investigation also demonstrates that police suspicion was not automatically equivalent to guilt. The Police Gazette initially associated Patrick O'Meally, younger brother of John O'Meally, with the robberies.
Captain Zouch investigated.
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| Captain Zouch |
The exoneration of Patrick O'Meally, therefore, strengthens rather than weakens the historical method required in these cases. Where identification failed, it should be acknowledged. Where witnesses who personally knew Hall positively recognised him, that evidence deserves considerably greater weight.
Only days later the bushrangers struck again.
On the evening of 2 February 1863, five armed men entered George Dickenson's store at Spring Creek, Burrangong. At first Dickenson seems not to have appreciated the seriousness of what was happening.
One of the newcomers announced:
"Bail up, we want what you have got."
Dickenson attempted to reach his bedroom, where he kept a revolver. He was stopped immediately. There would be no resistance. The storekeeper, his customer and other people passing along the road were placed under armed guard while the premises were systematically searched.
The Empire reported:
"The robbers searched them. From Mr Mead, they took £5 in notes, and searched no less than eleven other persons who were passing along the high road outside the store."
Inside the building, the gang found money, gold and goods. They took approximately £5 in silver. Between £10 and £11 worth of gold dust. A revolver, watches, boots and clothing.
Then they began drinking.
"They helped themselves to brandy, gin, &c., and in fact everything they fancied."
This was not the stylised "stand and deliver" of later bushranger mythology. It was an armed occupation of a business while civilians were detained outside.
A contemporary recollection noted that Dickinson initially wondered whether the intrusion might somehow be a joke.
John O'Meally reportedly settled the question by flourishing his weapon and declaring:
"There's no bloody mistake about it."
The remark captured the reality confronting those inside. Five armed men controlled the premises. Their victims obeyed because the alternative was potentially being shot. Then chance delivered another victim directly into their hands. A police constable named Stewart happened to pass the store. He was not on patrol in uniform and appears to have been unarmed. The bushrangers stopped him. They demanded his horse, saddle and bridle. The horse was Stewart's private property. He resisted. It was a courageous decision. It was also dangerous. One of the robbers struck Stewart violently across the hand and wrist, disabling the limb.
The Empire reported:
"The horse was the constable's private property. He consequently offered resistance, when one of the villains struck him a severe blow on the hand and wrist, quite disabling the limb."
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| NSW Police Gazette, February 1863. |
Hall noticed. His response reveals the importance of psychological control during a hold-up.
He warned them:
"You fellows think there are only five of us; there are others within coo-ee."
Whether reinforcements really waited nearby was irrelevant. The possibility was enough. The captives stopped. Hall had restored control without firing a shot. The episode illustrates one reason bushrangers could dominate much larger groups. The victims never knew how many armed men were concealed nearby. Nor could they know which robber might shoot if they resisted.
Months later, during Patsy Daley's trial, George Dickenson gave detailed evidence about the robbery. His identification was again based upon prior acquaintance.
"I had seen prisoner at Clark's public-house a few months before; we were both dining there, and I had an opportunity of noticing him."
Dickenson remembered Daley standing guard with a pistol for approximately fifteen minutes while the others searched the store.
"I have no doubt of him."
The evidence is valuable because it demonstrates the same recurring feature found in Hall's increasingly dangerous career. These men were operating in districts where people knew them. They had drunk in the same hotels. Worked on nearby stations. Attended the same races. Dined at the same inns. The bushranger mask could conceal a face. It could not erase years of acquaintance.
Sir Frederick Pottinger later gave another intriguing piece of evidence. Dickenson's stolen revolver was eventually recovered.
Pottinger testified:
"I handed to Mr Dickenson a revolver I got from a horse I believed to belong to Ben Hall."
The evidence must be stated precisely. Pottinger believed the horse belonged to Hall. That did not by itself establish Hall's ownership beyond dispute. But the recovery linked property stolen during the Spring Creek robbery with an animal police associated with him. Piece by piece, the evidence surrounding Hall was becoming more difficult to dismiss.
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Boland. Police Gazette 1863. |
Bell's Life in Sydney reported:
"A man named Christie Boland, alias Burtell, and supposed to be connected with Gilbert, Ben Hall, and O'Meally, in the sticking-up of Dickinson's and Solomon's stores, at Young, in February 1863, was arrested yesterday by the police."
The wording is important: "supposed to be connected." Boland's involvement was suspected but ultimately could not be proved sufficiently to secure a conviction. Again, the distinction matters. Bushranging investigations generated many suspects. Not every suspect was guilty.
But by early 1863, the evidence surrounding Hall himself was increasingly of a different character—positive identification by acquaintances, recovered property, known companionship, and repeated presence in the same sequence of robberies.
These events unfolded while New South Wales was attempting to construct an entirely new policing system.
The Police Regulation Act of 1862 brought the colony's previously fragmented police organisations under central control. The reorganisation was enormous. Mounted police, Foot police, Gold escort forces, Water police, Detectives and District constabularies. These disparate organisations were progressively brought under a unified structure headed by Inspector-General John McLerie. The reform looked impressive on paper. The country the new force was required to police was another matter entirely.
New South Wales contained immense districts connected by primitive roads and tracks. A handful of constables might be responsible for hundreds or thousands of square miles. The gold rush magnified every weakness. Thousands of people moved rapidly between new fields. Tent settlements appeared almost overnight. Hotels and sly-grog shops multiplied. So did theft, assault, fraud and robbery. Police recruitment struggled to keep pace. And the men they were pursuing were often among the best horsemen and bushmen in the colony.
Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally knew country that many newly posted troopers had never seen. They possessed better horses. They had friends scattered throughout the district. And they could disappear into country where a uniformed patrol stood out immediately.
The Cowper Government increasingly turned to money. If ordinary policing could not capture Gardiner and Gilbert, perhaps someone who knew their whereabouts could be persuaded to betray them. By February 1863, enormous rewards were being offered. A contemporary correspondent observed sarcastically that Charles Cowper—popularly nicknamed "Slippery Charley"—was discovering the limitations of his grand police reforms:
"Cowper is getting quite convinced of the inclemency of the 'Grande idee' about the New Police."
The Government offered:
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NSW Police Gazette, Frank Gardiner & John Gilbert. |
£500 for Johnny Gilbert.
And critically, payment was offered for their apprehension, not merely after conviction.
The correspondent concluded:
"The only chance of capturing these ruffians seems to be by offering a large reward."
It was an enormous inducement. But money could not instantly overcome the complicated loyalties of the pastoral districts. Many small settlers—the "cockatoo squatters" of contemporary slang—had grown up, worked or traded alongside the men police now pursued. Old convict distrust of authority remained powerful. Some feared retaliation. Some sympathised with the bushrangers. Others simply wanted no involvement. The bush telegraph continued operating.
Meanwhile, Gardiner's name refused to disappear. Every unexplained robbery produced rumours that "The Darkie" had returned. Reports placed him almost everywhere. Yet reliable sightings were becoming increasingly scarce.
One correspondent, after investigating another supposed appearance, found nothing:
"After every enquiry could hear of no confirmation of the report, nor of any stranger having visited that quarter bearing any resemblance to the redoubted bushranger."
He concluded with an apt Shakespearean joke:
"Verily, there are as many Gardiners in the colony as there were Richmonds at Bosworth field."
The observation marked an important transition. Gardiner was becoming a ghost. His name still haunted every robbery, but the criminal movement he had helped create no longer depended upon him. Others had learned the trade. Gilbert had returned. O'Meally was active. Daley and Jamieson were emerging. And Ben Hall—the former stockman who had once ridden these same roads on legitimate business—was had cast of resectability stepping into the position Gardiner had left behind. By February 1863, the question was no longer whether Hall had become a bushranger. It was how formidable a bushranger he would become.
By February 1863, Hall was operating through country he had known intimately as a stockman and grazier. One of those who encountered him during this period was Ernest Bowler, a prominent pastoralist who had known Hall before his descent into bushranging. Bowler's later recollections, preserved in The Moleskin Gentry, provide an unusually personal glimpse of the changing relationship between Hall and men who had once regarded him as a respected neighbour.
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| Earnest Bowler 1830-1896 Private Source. |
One—a fine bay—belonged to him. The other, a dappled grey, belonged to a friend. Someone had apparently taken the horses and concealed them for later use. Bowler released the hobbles and drove both animals back towards the Pinnacle stockyards. That evening, he was eating in the kitchen of the station's public house when word began to circulate that "The Boys" were nearby.
Then Ben Hall appeared.
Bowler remembered Hall standing silently in the rear doorway, wearing what appeared to be a new cabbage-tree hat. With one hand resting against each doorpost, Hall said nothing. Neither did Bowler. The silence itself carried meaning. Eventually Bowler offered:
"Good evening."
Hall responded with little more than a curt acknowledgement before moving away. Bowler interpreted the encounter as a warning. He had interfered with horses that Hall or his associates had hobbled in the bush, and Hall wanted him to know that the interference had been noticed. Yet despite the menace of the encounter, Hall did not harm him. Perhaps some remnant of their former respect remained.
Those gathered at the Pinnacle feared the bushrangers intended returning to rob the public house. Two men therefore hurried approximately three-quarters of a mile to the recently established police station and persuaded the constable stationed there to come back with them.
On 7 February 1863, during Knox's absence, Ben Hall and Patsy Daley were suspected of entering the Pinnacle Police Station and helping themselves to the contents.
A contemporary newspaper called it:
"The most impudent of robberies it has ever been our lot to record."
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NSW Police Gazette, February 1863. |
The Pinnacle police post had been established specifically to inhibit bushranger movement through a locality already regarded as suspicious. The bushrangers responded by robbing the police themselves. Trooper William Hollister recorded the incident in his personal diary.
His entry listed the stolen property:
"One rifle one carbine 10 rounds of rifle ammunition one pouch and bridle one pair of saddle bags belt one gunnysack one flask of powder two pair of handcuffs two Crimean shirts &c."
The police were not merely embarrassed. The thieves had increased their firepower at the police's expense.
Hollister's diary also recorded the conclusion reached by the pursuing officers:
"Ben Hall was tracked from the barracks to Uar by constable Knox."
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Pinnacle Station with Weddin Mountains in the background. |
Dargin later testified:
"Followed them at that time with Prince Charlie and Trooper Hollister. Chased them for three miles and a half, and should have taken them but for Hollister getting thrown from his horse through running against a tree."
During the pursuit, Daley repeatedly attempted to fire at one of the trackers:
"Saw Daley snap his revolver three times at Charlie."
The weapon failed to discharge. The coincidence was striking. Only months earlier Pottinger's carbine had misfired at the critical moment when he had Gardiner at close range. Now another firearm failure may have saved an Aboriginal tracker from being shot.
Hollister's own record provides an even more immediate account. On Sunday, 8 February, he wrote that he and Dargin had met Knox at Uar and taken up the tracks. They followed them for approximately twelve miles.
Then:
"Came upon Ben Hall and Patsy Daly within about 3 miles of the Pinnacle reefs."
A chase followed. Hollister remembered:
"Chased them about one mile when my horse ran me against a tree."
Daley again attempted to fire:
"Daly tried to shoot one of the Black Trackers."
Hollister's fall ended the pursuit.
"Through me getting the fall Hall and Daly escaped."
This is particularly valuable evidence. Hollister was not writing decades afterwards. He was recording events as a serving policeman immediately after they occurred. And he named the two men he believed he had pursued: Ben Hall and Patsy Daley. The location itself deserves attention. A correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald described the Pinnacle in 1863 as a mountain range lying only a short distance from the Forbes–Young road. Its reputation had already been established during the Eugowra trials because Daniel Charters lived there with his sister.The surrounding terrain was ideal fugitive country.
The newspaper observed:
"The locality has long been regarded as a suspicious one, because the Pinnacle Range, like that of the Weddin, affords complete shelter, in its many almost inaccessible fastnesses."
Its position beside the main road increased its usefulness:
"It offers a ready asylum through being so near the road."
Inspector-General McLerie had therefore established a police post there. The intention was obvious. A permanent police presence would disrupt bushrangers' ability to use the Pinnacle as a refuge. Instead, within a short time of its establishment, the station itself had been plundered. The symbolism was impossible to miss.
The affair proved disastrous for Constable Knox. He had been specifically instructed to remain at his post. He left it. The bushrangers walked in behind him. Whatever the circumstances that persuaded Knox to accompany the residents back towards the Pinnacle public house, the result was an embarrassing breach of duty, and his police career did not survive it.
There were also persistent stories connecting Knox romantically with Margaret Feehily, Daniel Charters' widowed sister and proprietor of the Pinnacle establishment. Such gossip may help explain later suspicion surrounding his movements, but unless supported by stronger contemporary evidence, it should remain local tradition rather than a settled fact.
Hall later attempted to distance himself from the Pinnacle robbery. The explanation followed a pattern already familiar from the Bacon affair. He had merely encountered Daley. They had stopped for a drink. They happened to be riding through the district. Then police began chasing them. But the Pinnacle incident was becoming increasingly difficult to explain as coincidence. Hall had been seen in the locality. Police believed his tracks led from the robbed barracks. Hollister identified him during the pursuit. He fled rather than stop.
Daley attempted repeatedly to fire upon an Aboriginal tracker. This does not mean every allegation ever levelled against Hall was correct. Patrick O'Meally's recent exoneration demonstrated the opposite. Police could be mistaken. Informers could be wrong. Descriptions could be inaccurate.
But Hall's recurring defence—that he simply happened to be present whenever Gardiner, Daley or another bushranger committed an offence—was becoming increasingly implausible. One unlucky encounter might be believed. Then another. And another.
By February 1863 the coincidences had accumulated into a pattern. The chase also appears to have intensified Hall's personal hostility towards the police pursuing him. Hall later complained that Hollister had threatened to shoot him. The feeling appears to have been reciprocated. The frontier between arrest and armed confrontation was narrowing rapidly. A constable approaching Hall could no longer assume that the suspect would submit. Hall, in turn, increasingly treated pursuit as something to be defeated by speed or gunfire.
Contemporary shorthand was already becoming blunt:
"Ben Hall, Daley, and O'Maley, three well-known bushrangers."
Whatever Hall had been in 1861, the authorities were no longer treating him as a grazier under suspicion. He was becoming an armed fugitive. Only days after the Pinnacle affair, another disturbing report appeared in the New South Wales Police Gazette.
It concerned Mrs Mary Finnigan, an elderly widow who operated a humble shanty used by travellers in the Forbes district. She was remembered sympathetically as:
"An elderly widow whose generous hospitality to penniless travellers keeps her poor."
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NSW Police Gazette, February 1863. |
Unlike the Uar robberies, where Hall was recognised by people who already knew him, the Finnigan case does not, from the evidence presently available, appear to contain an equally secure positive identification. A physical description may make Hall a plausible suspect. It does not make him the proven offender. The distinction is particularly important because of the severity of the allegation. The attack should therefore be described as an offence suspected at the time of being connected with men from Hall's circle, unless stronger identification evidence can be produced.
The historical case against Hall does not need uncertain accusations to strengthen it. There is already enough documented evidence. For men such as Ernest Bowler, Hall's transformation must have been difficult to comprehend. Bowler remembered the earlier Hall as a first-class stockman and companion at musters. Others remembered the young grazier with good horses, cattle and prospects.
Yet by February 1863 the same man was associated with robberies of travellers, stores and now a police station. It was no longer his friendship with Gardiner alone that attracted police attention. Hall was establishing a criminal reputation of his own. The process had taken time. Stock duffing and questionable companions.
Gardiner,The Bacon robbery, Eugowra, Repeated arrests, Gilbert's return, The Uar robberies, Spring Creek and now the Pinnacle. The pattern was unmistakable.
Contemporary newspapers attempted to explain the new outbreak of bushranging by looking at the social world from which men such as Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally emerged. Their explanations must be read cautiously. Colonial journalists often wrote in sweeping terms about class, convict ancestry and the supposed moral deficiencies of rural youth. Those assumptions tell us as much about nineteenth-century attitudes as they do about the bushrangers themselves.
Nevertheless, one observation was perceptive. The new generation of bushrangers differed fundamentally from the escaped convicts of earlier decades. They were Australian-born bushmen. They knew horses, cattle and they knew the landscape. They had friends and relatives scattered across enormous districts. And many had begun their working lives as stockmen, drovers or horse-breakers.
The Empire made precisely this argument in March 1863:
"PEISLEY, GARDINER, GILBERT, are each and all 'bush natives;' at first stockmen, drovers, or horse breakers, suspected or found guilty of cattle stealing, and taking to the bush to avoid as long as possible apprehension and punishment."
The newspaper believed this made them more formidable than the fugitive convicts of earlier generations:
"Horses they have the pick of the country and friends and brothers wherever they go."
That was the crucial difference. These men were not strangers hiding in unknown country. The country was their home. The tracks police struggled to follow were tracks they had ridden since childhood. The stations where troopers asked questions were staffed by old friends. The mountains used as refuges had once been their mustering grounds. The skills that made Hall an outstanding stockman were the same skills that now helped him evade capture.
The Empire regarded cattle stealing as an important gateway into more serious crime:
"If once detected in cattle stealing, they become depredators on a large scale, bushrangers of a more dangerous kind than the colony has yet known."
Its language became increasingly alarmist, warning that the influence of men such as Gardiner was corrupting younger colonial-born stockmen. Some had already paid the ultimate price. John Peisley had been hanged. Henry Manns was under sentence of death. Others appeared to be heading towards the same fate.
The newspaper warned:
"The influence they have exercised over their young countrymen has been of the most pernicious kind and disastrous consequences."
Its conclusion was characteristically apocalyptic:
"A given number of GARDINERS and GILBERTS, obtaining the ascendancy, must soon transform Australia into a howling wilderness."
That was journalism, not detached social analysis. But the fear behind it was genuine. The colonial authorities were confronting a type of outlaw particularly well adapted to the Australian interior: young, mobile, superbly mounted and supported—actively or passively—by networks of relatives, former workmates and acquaintances. Ben Hall embodied that problem almost perfectly. He had once used his knowledge of the bush to muster cattle. Now he used it to evade the men sent to arrest him. And after the Pinnacle raid, those men had increasing reason to approach him with their weapons already drawn.
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| J.H.M. Abbott. c. 1919. |
Decades after Ben Hall's death, historian J. H. M. Abbott attempted to explain why the bushranging outbreak of the early 1860s had found such fertile ground among young Australian-born stockmen.
Writing in Truth in 1935, Abbott rejected the simplistic idea that the countryside was populated entirely by unreformed convicts and criminals.
Many former convicts—the "old hands" of colonial terminology—had become respectable settlers.
He wrote:
"A great many ex-convicts—'oldhands' was the generic term—were scattered about the bush on small holdings, and a large proportion of them were hard-working, honest people who were doing well in the development of the country they had been compelled to adopt."
Yet Abbott believed something of the convict experience remained.
Transportation, punishment and resentment towards authority had left many former prisoners suspicious of the institutions that had once controlled their lives."Deeply ingrained in their characters, was an antagonism to the laws that had made them exiles and to those who administered them."
According to Abbott, these attitudes were sometimes transmitted to the next generation. Around evening campfires, another influence operated. Shepherds, bullock drivers, stockmen, dovers, shearers and axemen. Men living for weeks in isolated country entertained one another with stories. Among the favourite tales were those of earlier bushrangers—Jack Donohoe, Matthew Brady, Martin Cash and William Westwood, better known as Jackey Jackey. Songs celebrated their escapes and daring exploits. Over time, brutality faded from some of the stories. Adventure remained. The outlaw became romantic.For an impressionable colonial boy, the bushranger could appear less like a thief and more like a rebel hero. Abbott was writing more than seventy years after Hall's career, and his interpretation should be recognised as retrospective social commentary rather than contemporary evidence. Nevertheless, he identified an important feature of the bushranging culture. The legends existed before Hall. He inherited them.
Frank Gardiner himself later offered a much less romantic explanation. Asked why young men drifted into horse stealing and bushranging, he blamed the limited employment available in remote districts.
"Young men can find no employment in the country districts except herding sheep or stock-riding."
Stock riding, he believed, created a particular temptation:
"The latter occupation leads to horse-stealing simply because you become wholly engrossed in horseflesh, and the crime is so easily committed that you do not think of the consequences."
Gardiner's explanation was undoubtedly self-serving. Thousands of stockmen spent their lives among horses without becoming thieves. But his description nevertheless reveals something of the world from which he, Hall and Gilbert emerged. A valuable horse might stand in an unfenced paddock. Brands could be altered. Animals could be driven hundreds of miles. Ownership could become difficult to establish. And a gifted horseman possessed precisely the skills necessary to exploit the opportunity.When Gardiner was asked why he himself had chosen crime, his answer was strikingly ordinary:
"I do not know; I was young at the time and spent my money as quickly as I got it. I thought it an easy life for a while."
There was no great political philosophy. No Robin Hood principle. Just youth, money and the attraction of an apparently easy life. That explanation may come closer to the realities of Hall's own descent than much of the mythology subsequently built around him.By early 1863 the practical advantages enjoyed by Hall and his associates were considerable. They possessed excellent horses. They knew the country intimately. Firearms were readily available from stations, stores and—after the Pinnacle raid—even police barracks. Most importantly, they possessed information.
The so-called bush telegraph could warn a wanted man long before a patrol appeared. Small settlers, station hands, publicans and acquaintances watched the roads. Some assisted from loyalty. Some from fear. Some because they disliked the police. Others expected payment.
The bushrangers might provide cash, stolen goods or favours in exchange. These isolated smallholders were sometimes dismissively called cockatoo squatters—men occupying modest or occasionally informal holdings away from the great pastoral establishments. Not all assisted criminals. But those who did could provide precisely what a fugitive needed: a meal; fresh horses; a hiding place; directions or a warning that police were approaching.
Against such a network, uniformed patrols were at a severe disadvantage. The bushrangers could see them coming. The police rarely knew who had already passed the message ahead. In the short term, Hall and his companions held the tactical advantage.
By February 1863 the Government had had enough. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on 17 February that the Executive Council had authorised stronger measures designed not merely to capture the bushrangers but to dismantle the network sustaining them. The Inspector-General had supposedly accumulated considerable intelligence concerning both the offenders and those assisting them. The newspaper predicted that some revelations would surprise the colony:
"The public will be surprised to find that Gardiner and Co have been sheltered and supplied with provisions if not with the munitions of war, by individuals who carry their heads somewhat high amongst their fellow colonists."
This was significant. The Government was no longer depicting bushranging solely as the work of a handful of mounted criminals. It was treating the problem as a support network. Unlicensed public houses could be closed. Squatting licences might be cancelled. Suspected harbourers could face prosecution. Detectives and selected police were dispatched into the affected districts.Captain Battye was already operating around Murrumburrah, Burrowa, Marengo and the goldfields. The Herald also noticed another ominous development. Recent robberies increasingly targeted firearms.
"The robbers chiefly sought for firearms, although well-armed, themselves."
That suggested recruitment. More men required more weapons. The Pinnacle raid appeared especially significant:"The police station at Bogolong (Pinnacle) was attacked for that purpose."
The newspaper warned:
"Unless the police are successful in breaking up the gang, some desperate work will be done before the winter sets in."
The prediction was grimly accurate.
For residents of Forbes the situation was increasingly alarming. The town had expanded enormously during the gold rush, yet the apparent number of police was tiny compared with the fluctuating population. A February 1863 report listed approximately 47 police at Forbes, compared with 22 at Young and 17 at Bathurst. Numbers on paper did not necessarily translate into officers available on the streets.Troopers were constantly away. Some escorted prisoners. Others attended courts. Mounted patrols spent days searching distant districts. Detectives disappeared on investigations. Bushrangers exploited the gaps.
One correspondent complained that Forbes itself was almost without protection. The situation occasionally produced frontier justice. A would-be robber attempted to bail up a man in Rankin Street.
The victim shouted. A local pugilist rushed over and administered what the newspaper called:
"A sound thrashing to the would be robber."
The writer then offered Sergeant Rush, keeper of the Forbes lock-up, some sardonic advice. After the bushrangers had successfully robbed the Pinnacle Police Station of its arms, perhaps Forbes itself should prepare:"Keep his powder dry."
It was half joke. Half warning.
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Joseph Jehoshaphat Harpur |
Harpur recalled:
"I remember when old Ben Hall robbed one Brown of a splendid horse, which he almost worshipped."
According to Harpur, a man who knew who had taken the horse was afraid to speak openly:
"If it were suspected that he had given the information, he would not be safe for a moment."
Harpur himself accompanied the horse's owner in pursuit. He claimed that he narrowly escaped death. He then drew a direct line between the earlier generation and the younger Hall:"Such was the state of things on the Hunter in the time of old Ben Hall, the father of the present Ben Hall, who had always been bad. They were connected with a gang of cattle stealers."
Whether Harpur's assessment of young Ben was entirely fair is another question. But the statement is significant because it came from a man with unusually close family connections to the Walsh-Hall circle. Those same connections complicated Harpur's relationship with Sir Frederick Pottinger.Pottinger's scrutiny of the Walsh family—particularly young Johnny "Warrigal" Walsh—created resentment. Harpur became one of Pottinger's outspoken parliamentary critics. At one stage he publicly characterised the Inspector as a coward. The insult became serious enough that it was later reported that Pottinger had sent an intermediary seeking satisfaction from the member for Patrick's Plains. Parliamentary debate subsequently turned Harpur's family connections back upon him.
One opponent remarked that nobody would imagine Harpur knowingly defending criminals:
"No, not even were some of them his own blood relatives."
The insinuation was unmistakable. Yet it would be unsafe to conclude from these family connections alone that Harpur knowingly benefited from bushranging proceeds or actively protected Hall. It can be established that his political criticism of Pottinger took place in an unusually personal context. For Harpur, the bushranging controversy was not entirely remote. It touched his extended family.Meanwhile the situation around Lambing Flat deteriorated further. John O'Meally had already developed a reputation for violence. Then came the killing of Mr Cirkel. The murder produced widespread alarm. Rumours again claimed Frank Gardiner had returned.
One report described the atmosphere:
"For some days, the whole town has been in consternation, and several rumours of Gardiner intending to make a general attack on the town have been afloat."
Gardiner had become so deeply embedded in public imagination that every new outbreak seemed to summon his ghost. Yet the men actually operating in the district were increasingly Hall, Gilbert, O'Meally and Daley. And after the Pinnacle robbery they were better armed than before.The theft from the Pinnacle Police Station particularly disturbed the press. Firearms were understandable. Ammunition was valuable. Saddles and bridles could be used immediately.
But police clothing?
Bell's Life in Sydney wondered why bushrangers would bother stealing uniforms unless they intended using them. The paper speculated:
"Bushrangers would scarcely carry about property of this description, for sale, neither would they wear it except to accomplish some daring outrage in the disguise of mounted troopers."
Perhaps another escort? Perhaps a bank? The writer considered neither possibility fanciful. The district had recently experienced robberies at stations, stores and accommodation houses. Again and again the offenders took: firearms; ammunition; clothing; saddles; bridles.The conclusion seemed obvious:
"What does all this mean but that the force is to be well armed and mounted."
The bushrangers already knew where to obtain horses. Stations across the district contained hundreds of them. The police uniforms provided something different.Disguise.
And only days later four armed men arrived at Little Wombat dressed to resemble police. Contemporary accounts identify the party as Hall, Gilbert, O'Meally and Daley.
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| NSW Police Gazette |
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the men had come prepared:
"They had three led pack-horses in readiness to convey spoil."
This was not an opportunistic roadside robbery. They intended to empty the store. Inside were Meyer Solomon and his heavily pregnant wife Julia. She was only days away from giving birth to their second child, Samuel. The approaching riders caused immediate alarm. Solomon armed himself with a musket. Unlike many victims of Hall's gang, he intended to fight.As the men reached the premises, Solomon confronted them. He fired. The ball reportedly grazed the neck of one bushranger and tore through the collar of his coat.
The gang fired back.
Solomon fled through the rear of the premises towards a nearby Chinese camp, hoping either to escape or obtain assistance. Two of the bushrangers pursued him. He was caught. Solomon was brought back to his store and placed with the other captives. The gang now controlled the premises.Then came an extraordinary act of resistance. A young employee in Solomon's store—identified in later accounts as George Johnstone—saw a revolver within reach. He seized it. The boy levelled the weapon at one of the bushrangers. For a moment the balance changed. Then another robber grabbed Julia Solomon. She was pregnant and effectively helpless. A firearm was placed against her head.
The threat was explicit. Drop the revolver or Mrs Solomon would be killed. The boy had no real choice. He lowered the weapon.
Later tradition credited him with the defiant remark:
"If it hadn't been for Mrs Solomon I'd have stopped your run."
Whether those were his precise words or a later embellishment, the essential fact remains remarkable. A shop boy had attempted armed resistance against Hall's gang. The response was not gentlemanly restraint. It was a threat to kill a pregnant woman.The encounter became darker still. The bushrangers referred openly to the recent killing of Mr Cirkel. Contemporary reports record that Solomon was warned that if he resisted further they would treat him as they had the man at Stoney Creek and:
"Blow his bloody brains out."
The statement is important. It demonstrates how the murder itself had become a weapon. Whether every member of the gang had participated in Cirkel's killing was irrelevant to the immediate victim. They invoked it deliberately. They wanted Solomon to understand that resistance might end in death.Once control had been established, the bushrangers settled into the task. They did not snatch a handful of money and flee. For several hours they systematically ransacked the store. Goods were selected and packed. The three packhorses were loaded.
Jewellery and other portable valuables were taken. The gang remained remarkably calm. One contemporary account described the work as being carried out in a:
"Cool, deliberate manner."
They finally departed around seven in the evening, riding towards the country they knew best. The Weddin Mountains. The following morning police attempted to follow. They managed perhaps ten miles. Then exhaustion and the absence of an effective tracker brought the pursuit to an end.The Little Wombat robbery gave an ominous answer to the question raised after the Pinnacle raid. Why steal police clothing? Because a mounted man dressed like a trooper could approach a store without immediately causing alarm. Uniform represented authority. Hall's gang had turned that authority into camouflage.
It was another example of the developing sophistication of these bushrangers. They knew how police operated. They understood local assumptions. They knew the roads and stations. They could steal the Government's weapons, wear something resembling its clothing and then disappear into country the Government itself struggled to police.
By February 1863, the new police system faced an opponent increasingly adapted to exploit every weakness in it. And Ben Hall was no longer merely following Frank Gardiner's example. Gardiner had largely disappeared.
Hall was becoming one of the men shaping what came next.
The robbery was widely reported, including in 'The Newcastle Chronicle and Hunter River District News' on Saturday 7th March 1863. The evidence presented in these reports suggested that it was indeed Jack O'Meally who had earlier fired the fatal shot that killed Mr Cirkel. (In colonial Australia, hundreds of newspapers existed and re-produced the same articles from their original source thru the Electric Telegraph.)The Goulburn Chronicle was scathing about the response. Only one constable was stationed at Little Wombat, and he apparently considered himself unable to abandon the post lest the police station itself be robbed. The correspondent could not resist the obvious comparison with the Pinnacle:
"For fear it too should be robbed of perhaps an old corroded pistol or two."
Two Chinese residents volunteered to ride into Young with the alarm. The police camp knew of the robbery by approximately eight o'clock that evening. Yet officers did not reach Solomon's store until around two o'clock the following morning.The newspaper described Detective Wolfe arriving with a sub-inspector and two troopers. Darkness prevented immediate tracking. At daylight the trail was recovered and followed for more than ten miles towards the Weddin Mountains.
Then the pursuit failed. The officers lacked an effective tracker and many of the police horses and men were exhausted after recent operations around Yass. The trail disappeared into familiar bushranger country. Once again the Weddins swallowed the fugitives. The frustration expressed by the correspondent reflected a broader problem. Police were being asked to cover enormous districts, escort prisoners, attend courts, investigate robberies and pursue superbly mounted men through country the fugitives knew intimately. But to residents who had just spent three hours at gunpoint, such explanations offered little consolation.
For them the reality was simple. The bushrangers came. They robbed and they escaped. Contemporary accounts connected the Little Wombat robbery with the group then operating around Hall, Gilbert, John O'Meally and Patsy Daley. Patrick O'Meally's name also appeared in some reports surrounding the broader outbreak, but, as his earlier exoneration at Uar demonstrates, individual identifications must be separated carefully from suspicion and association. What is particularly interesting in the Solomon account is the behaviour of the apparent leader. Solomon described one man as issuing orders and rebuking the others if they were too slow.
The reporter wrote:
"The ruffian, supposed to be Gardiner, ordered and directed everything that was to be done, pushing and swearing at the others if they did not obey his orders quickly enough."
Yet Gardiner was almost certainly nowhere near Little Wombat. If Hall was the commanding figure—as later evidence and the development of the gang strongly suggest—the mistake is revealing. Hall was beginning to occupy Gardiner's old place. He was older than several of his companions. He had confidence. He knew the district. And increasingly he appears to have exercised authority during robberies. The man once mentored by Gardiner was developing into a leader himself. The press itself had begun recognising the absurdity of Gardiner's supposed ubiquity.
Bell's Life in Sydney remarked:
"Not a highway robbery takes place, not a store or station is stuck-up, but the cry immediately is 'Gardiner'—'Gardiner!'"
The newspaper joked that to commit all the crimes attributed to him:
"He would want a railroad, with a carriage, to carry him sixty miles an hour."
Gardiner was becoming less a man than a label. Any daring robber. Any well-mounted leader. Any masked figure with authority. Gardiner. But the real Gardiner had already left the Lachlan. After his narrow escape from Pottinger at Wheogo in August 1862, Gardiner and Catherine Brown gradually disappeared from the district. By late 1862 they were travelling north. Their eventual destination was Queensland, where Gardiner would attempt to create another life far from the Lachlan. At the time, however, nobody knew where he had gone. Rumour placed him everywhere. South Australia. Portland. Gippsland. Melbourne. The press even repeated reports that Catherine Brown might be travelling disguised in male clothing.
One September 1862 report claimed:
"Gardiner, the supposed leader of N.S.W. escort robbery, is reported as either at Adelaide or Portland Bay accompanied by a woman named Brown, in boy's clothes."
The same report speculated about Gilbert's whereabouts. Much of it was wrong. Gilbert had indeed travelled away from New South Wales, including a period associated with New Zealand, but by January 1863 he was back in the Weddin country. Gardiner was not. The old leader had gone. His successors remained.
Ernest Bowler later remembered a revealing conversation with Hall after his acquittal at Orange in May 1862. They met at Toogong, where coaches changed horses. Bowler discussed Hall's recent prosecution.
Hall made a prediction:
"The next time the police should want him he would give them a 'jant'."
Bowler understood the expression to mean that Hall would lead police a difficult chase. He later reflected:
"I little thought that his word would come true."
By early 1863 it had. The Pinnacle pursuit alone demonstrated it. Hall no longer intended submitting quietly whenever Pottinger or another officer arrived with handcuffs. He would run. If necessary, those around him would shoot. The former station-holder had become a fugitive prepared to match is bushcraft and horsemanship against the police. The transformation was remarkable because Hall had once possessed almost everything that respectable pastoral society valued. Skill, horses, cattle, a station, A wife and child, and a reputation for reliability.
The "moleskin gentry" of the colonial interior were working pastoralists—men whose standing came not from aristocratic title but from competence, stock, land and independence. Hall had belonged among them. Now he belonged increasingly to another fraternity. The gentry of the bush. His former qualities had not disappeared. His horsemanship remained exceptional. His knowledge of cattle and country remained. He could still be personable. He could still inspire loyalty. But those abilities now served robbery and evasion rather than pastoral advancement.
Not everyone believed Hall's transformation could be understood simply as personal choice. One of his former legal advocates, Mr Redman, later presented a markedly sympathetic interpretation. Redman remembered Hall before bushranging as a man of excellent standing:
"Ben Hall, prior to his entering upon the career of a bushranger, bore an unexceptionable character."
He described him as:
"A hardworking, industrious, and honest man, who had by his own efforts risen from a humble position to be the proprietor of a station."
Redman also recalled the high opinion in which some Lachlan squatters had once held him. One supposedly declared that he:
"Would have trusted him with all he possessed."
That testimony accords with other recollections of Hall's early life. Ernest Bowler remembered an excellent stockman. Others remembered a capable and promising grazier. The dispute lies not in what Hall had once been. It lies in explaining what he became.
Redman believed repeated police suspicion played an important part. In his telling, Hall had been arrested on accusations that failed in court and consequently came to believe that the police had marked him permanently. Redman recalled the extended detention of Hall and young O'Meally and argued that repeated imprisonment without successful prosecution produced resentment rather than reform.
He concluded:
"After he came out of prison there was no incentive to virtue; he knew he was watched by the police, and he felt disgraced by being imprisoned, and not being a man of great mind, he took to the bush."
It is an important contemporary or near-contemporary interpretation because Redman knew Hall's legal circumstances personally. It should not simply be dismissed. Hall certainly experienced repeated arrests. Police pressure was intense. Pottinger regarded him with profound suspicion. Some allegations against men in Hall's circle proved incorrect. Extended remands could destroy livelihoods even when convictions did not follow. Such experiences may have intensified Hall's bitterness. But Redman's explanation encounters a serious chronological problem.
Hall's involvement with criminal associates did not begin after all police pressure had exhausted an innocent man. Evidence places him within Gardiner's circle before the major imprisonments on which Redman's argument depends. He was identified in connection with the Bacon dray robbery in April 1862. He participated in Eugowra in June. His association with Gardiner, Gilbert and O'Meally was already established. Police attention therefore did not arise in a vacuum. Cause and consequence fed one another.
Hall associated with known criminals. Police watched him. Hall resented being watched. He became more deeply involved in crime and Police pressure increased. The cycle hardened. The temptation when writing Hall's life is to choose between two extremes. In one version he is an innocent settler relentlessly persecuted until authority forces him into rebellion. In another he is simply a naturally vicious criminal whose respectable youth was meaningless. Neither adequately explains the evidence. Circumstances mattered. The collapse of his marriage mattered. Losing daily contact with Henry mattered. Gardiner's influence mattered. Police suspicion mattered. Repeated imprisonment mattered. The social culture of the Lachlan mattered.
His lack of formal education may have narrowed some opportunities, although his success as a grazier demonstrates that it had not prevented economic advancement. But circumstance is not the same as compulsion. Hall repeatedly made choices. He chose Gardiner's company. He participated in armed robbery. He participated in Eugowra. He continued associating with Gilbert, O'Meally and Daley.
He fled armed police. He took part in robberies in which civilians were threatened with death. Whatever grievances he held against Pottinger, those grievances did not require him to point firearms at travellers and shopkeepers. Many colonists endured injustice without becoming bushrangers.
Hall had agency.
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| John Oxley Norton. (1829-1880) Private Source. Never Before Published. |
On 1 March 1863, the increasingly violent contest between Ben Hall's associates and the New South Wales Police reached a new level.
Inspector John O. Norton was patrolling the country around Wheogo, Sandy Creek and the Pinnacle accompanied by the Aboriginal tracker Billy Dargin. It was country both men knew to be dangerous. Hall, John O'Meally and Patsy Daley were operating nearby, and only weeks earlier Hall and Daley had escaped Hollister and his trackers following the robbery of the Pinnacle Police Station.
At approximately nine o'clock Norton observed two mounted men about five hundred yards ahead. One led another horse; the other carried a gun across his thigh.
Norton signalled Dargin. As the pair approached, the riders immediately made off. Norton later testified:
"On nearing the men, they made off; we followed them for some distance into the scrub, and got off, and then fired on them."
Unable to catch the fugitives, Norton and Dargin eventually returned for their led horses. The two riders reappeared, apparently watching them from a distance, and another brief pursuit and exchange of fire followed.
Norton's horses could not match theirs. Recognising the disadvantage, he abandoned the chase and headed towards a police station where reinforcements were supposed to meet him. They never arrived.
Three or four miles farther along, Dargin suddenly warned Norton that riders were approaching rapidly from behind. Norton could hear them shouting:
"Bail up!"
The situation had reversed completely. The pursued had become the pursuers. Dargin dropped his led horse and moved away. Norton did the same, turned and prepared to face the approaching men. There were now three. They spread themselves across the country, separated sufficiently to make it difficult for Norton to concentrate his fire upon any single target. One moved along each side of the road. Another approached nearer its centre.
Norton later identified them as Ben Hall, John O'Meally and Patsy Daley, although his degree of certainty differed considerably between the three men. The attack began at around eighty yards.
Norton recalled:
"The man on the left charged and fired a double-barrelled gun."
Then came the revolvers.
"O'Meally cried out, 'Throw up your arms,' repeatedly; they then commenced firing with revolvers."
Norton and Dargin fired back. The bushrangers may have discharged between fifteen and eighteen shots. For several minutes the scrub echoed with gunfire. This was no longer simply an attempt to evade arrest. The three men had deliberately ridden after the police, overtaken them and opened fire. Eventually Norton exhausted his ammunition.
His position became hopeless. Hall and the man Norton believed to be O'Meally advanced.
Norton testified:
"Hall and the prisoner a little farther off; O'Meally cried out, 'Throw up your arms,' repeatedly."
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Artist's impression of Billy fleeing after Norton capture. c. 1933. NLA. |
"Hall was the one who was in conversation with me, and whom I would swear positively to."
This distinction is important. Norton had seen O'Meally only once previously and could not positively swear to Daley's identity at the subsequent proceedings. Hall was different. He knew who stood before him.
Once the shooting stopped, something remarkable happened. Hall began talking. The conversation provides one of the clearest contemporary accounts of how he represented his own grievances against the police. Hall raised the subject of Trooper William Hollister, whose pursuit after the Pinnacle robbery had nearly resulted in Hall and Daley's capture.
According to Norton, Hall said Hollister had threatened to shoot him:
"Hall spoke of a trooper named Hollister, who had threatened to shoot him, and that he would return the compliment when he got hold of him."
The significance is difficult to overlook. Hall was not merely complaining about police harassment.
He was threatening to kill a policeman. And the officer he singled out was the same man who had recently pursued him after the Pinnacle Police Station robbery. Hall then turned to his longstanding enemy, Sir Frederick Pottinger. He complained that Pottinger had repeatedly taken him into Forbes and secured successive remands while attempting to build cases against him.
Norton remembered Hall saying that Pottinger:
"Had him several times into Forbes, and had him remanded from time to time, until really the magistrates were inclined to believe that there was some charge against him."
Hall believed Pottinger detained suspects while searching for sufficient evidence to prosecute them. He also complained about the imprisonment of young Walsh, comparing Walsh's treatment with his own earlier experiences in the Forbes lock-up. For Hall, these incidents had become part of a personal narrative of persecution. Whatever validity some of his complaints possessed, the circumstances in which he now delivered them were extraordinary. He was explaining alleged police injustice to an Inspector whom he and his companions had just fired upon and disarmed. Yet Hall did not kill him.
After the confrontation, Norton remembered Hall saying:
"They had nothing against me and that I might go."
Hall even returned one revolver because, according to Norton, he considered it useless. When Norton asked for his horses, Hall agreed. But the bushrangers retained Government property that had been abandoned during the fighting. They took a Government revolver. A Government carbine dropped by Dargin. A Government saddle and bridle. And the horse Dargin had been riding.
There was a vindictive touch to the theft. Norton recalled them saying that they intended to shoot the horse:
"And so teach people not to lend horses to policemen."
Before leaving, the man Norton believed to be O'Meally warned him:
"You had better not give our description when you return to town."
The warning was almost absurd. Norton had spent several minutes speaking directly with Ben Hall. There was no realistic prospect of anonymity. Billy Dargin faced a different ordeal. While Hall remained with Norton, two bushrangers pursued the tracker. Dargin abandoned his horse and ran. He was exceptionally fit and possessed an intimate knowledge of bush country, but the distance before him was formidable. The Pinnacle Police Station lay roughly eight miles away. Behind him were mounted men who had already fired repeatedly.
Dargin used the timber for protection, changing direction through the scrub and putting trees between himself and his pursuers. Eventually they abandoned the chase and returned to Hall. Dargin continued on foot. A contemporary report recorded simply:
"Billy, the black, being the only person with him at the time, escaped and had arrived without his horse."
The brevity conceals an extraordinary effort. He had survived an armed confrontation, escaped mounted bushrangers on foot and then carried the warning to the police. At the Pinnacle, the alarm was raised. Constable Hogan sent word to Forbes. From there, the news was rapidly transmitted by telegraph to Inspector-General McLerie in Sydney.
Initial reports made the situation appear considerably worse than it actually was. Inspector Norton had been captured. His fate was unknown. Rumours multiplied. One claimed fourteen bushrangers were involved. Another claimed Gardiner himself had returned. Still another alleged that Norton would be executed if the Government hanged the convicted Eugowra robbers.
Reinforcements were ordered west. Six mounted constables left Forbes. Sydney prepared a much larger contingent. The recently reorganised Police Force suddenly confronted one of its most embarrassing crises: a senior officer had apparently disappeared into the bush in the hands of armed outlaws. Former policeman George Boyd, then a raw recruit, remembered the reaction decades later. He had been training only seven weeks when:
"The startling news arrived of the capture of Superintendent Norton by Ben Hall."
According to Boyd:
"That news threw the barracks into a tumult."
Superintendent Black assembled approximately twenty-two men, many of them inexperienced recruits. They departed rapidly with horses and equipment. The railway then extended only as far as Penrith, so the remainder of the journey west had to be made by road. Boyd remembered the young policemen being excited by the prospect of confronting the famous bushrangers. By the time they reached the western districts, however, the crisis had already changed. Norton was free. The bushrangers had vanished.
While Forbes prepared for the worst, an extraordinary volunteer response developed. News of Norton's supposed captivity spread through town and hundreds became eager to join a rescue expedition.
Bell's Life in Sydney reported that:
"In a few minutes there were nearly 100 names down."
Storekeepers, miners and other residents assembled with whatever weapons they possessed. Captain Browne was expected to lead them. Forbes appeared ready to send a civilian posse into the bush. Then, to everyone's astonishment, Norton rode into town. Safe. Unwounded. The rescue expedition was unnecessary.
Norton immediately telegraphed Sydney:
"Forbes, 3rd March, 5.10 p.m. I am just returned here in safety and have not been wounded."
He explained:
"I was detained about three hours on Sunday morning."
And confirmed why he had surrendered:
"I surrendered to the bushrangers after having expended all my ammunition; having been surrounded by them, with their revolvers presented at me."
There was also an important explanation for why he and Dargin had been so badly outnumbered:
"The men I took with me, did not meet me at the place appointed, according to agreement the previous evening; consequently, I had only the blacktracker with me."
Had those reinforcements arrived, the encounter might have ended very differently. The sensational press accounts soon went considerably further than Norton's own sworn evidence. Bell's Life reported that Hall had fired several shots at Norton while the Inspector was already a prisoner.
According to its correspondent:
"One more determined than the rest, of the name of Ben Hall, did while he was a prisoner actually fire at him several shots."
That claim requires qualification. Norton's detailed testimony certainly establishes that Hall and his companions fired extensively during the armed confrontation before Norton surrendered. It also establishes that Hall later stood guard over him while armed. But in the evidence reproduced from Norton himself, he does not say that Hall subsequently fired several deliberate shots at him after he had surrendered. The distinction matters.
The newspaper account may preserve additional information supplied by Norton or another person, but it should not automatically be merged with Norton's sworn version as though they were identical. There is, however, further physical evidence that shots passed dangerously close to Norton during the encounter.
After returning from Sydney, Pottinger resumed operations in the Lachlan. Billy Dargin later took him to the locality where Norton had fought the bushrangers. Dargin pointed out the position Norton had occupied. Pottinger dismounted and examined a nearby tree.
The newspaper account reported:
"Frederick Pottinger descended from his horse and minutely examined the tree, and found the imprint of two large bullets."
Their positions were disturbing. One appeared to have passed just above where Norton's head had been. Another struck roughly at chest height. Whether those particular bullets were fired by Hall cannot be established merely from their location. Three bushrangers had been shooting. But they demonstrate how close the exchange came to killing the Inspector.
Norton had been fortunate.
Hall's relative restraint towards Norton had limits. According to a later report, the bushrangers told Norton that his fate would have been very different had he been Sir Frederick Pottinger.
Bell's Life reported:
"Had he been Pottinger, they would have 'shot him dead as a crow.'"
The newspaper added dryly:
"There's a consolation for Sir Fred. Pottinger."
The remark reveals how personal the struggle had become. Pottinger was no longer simply another policeman. To Hall and some of his companions, he embodied the pursuit they believed had persecuted them. There had already been an armed rescue attempt against Pottinger after Merool. Hall had now threatened Hollister. And Norton was supposedly told Pottinger would be killed if captured. The language was escalating towards assassination.
At the same time, Sydney was deciding the fate of the convicted Eugowra robbers. Henry Manns and John Bow were under sentence of death, while Alexander Fordyce had received a reprieve.Petitions circulated seeking mercy. Questions were also being raised about Daniel Charters' evidence and about why Hall and O'Meally had escaped prosecution despite later claims that they too had participated at Eugowra. Then an extraordinary rumour emerged.
An early telegraphic report claimed Norton had been captured by fourteen bushrangers and that Dargin had brought a message threatening to hang the Inspector if the condemned escort robbers were executed:
"A black tracker has forwarded to the telegraph station a statement informing the authorities that if the men sentenced in Sydney were executed Norton would be hanged."
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Ben Hall's pursuers promotions in March 1863. |
It transmitted rumour just as rapidly. The controversy surrounding the Eugowra convictions nevertheless continued. A March report in the Maitland Mercury alleged that Charters had initially protected Hall and O'Meally when he turned Crown approver.
It claimed that:
"It is now pretty clear that these two were present and took part in the robbery."
The newspaper suggested the issue was being placed before the Executive as part of efforts to save Bow and Manns. The allegation is significant because it demonstrates that by March 1863 Hall's involvement at Eugowra was entering public discussion more explicitly. Whatever doubts remained in 1862, the veil was lifting. Manns ultimately received no reprieve.
He went to the gallows.
Bow was spared. And Hall remained free.
The Goulburn Herald responded to the Norton affair with characteristic sarcasm. The newspaper ridiculed reports that Norton was to be:
"Hung as high as Haman or as Gilderoy."
It mocked the Government for dispatching large numbers of police westward and dismissed the most dramatic versions of the encounter. Its summary was substantially closer to Norton's own account:
"The fact simply was that the acting-sub was out with only a black-boy, when he fell in with some bushrangers—or they fell in with him and as they were superior in number, he was taken prisoner, kept for three hours, and then let go."
The correspondent even criticised Norton's shooting:
"He certainly says he used all his ammunition; if he did, he must be a doosid bad shot not to kill or maim some of his foes."
It was an easy observation to make from a newspaper office. Norton had faced three mobile horsemen firing from separated positions while accompanied by only one tracker. The remarkable fact was perhaps not that he failed to hit them. It was that neither Norton nor Dargin was killed.
The Norton encounter marks an important stage in Hall's criminal development. At Bacon's dray he had participated in an armed robbery. At Eugowra he joined an ambush in which police were shot. At the Pinnacle he was pursued after the robbery of a police barracks. Now Hall and his companions deliberately turned back upon pursuing police, chased them, surrounded them and engaged them in a sustained exchange of gunfire. Hall then threatened Hollister. Pottinger was reportedly marked for death. The conflict was becoming personal.
Yet the episode also demonstrates the contradictions that would continue to shape Hall's reputation. He could participate in an attack capable of killing Norton and then, once the Inspector was helpless, spare him. He could return an unwanted revolver. He could permit Norton to leave. These acts later fed the legend of the humane or gentlemanly bushranger. But they occurred after Norton had already been shot at repeatedly and forced to surrender at gunpoint. Sparing a defeated opponent does not erase the violence required to defeat him. For Norton, the difference between death and survival had been measured in inches on a tree trunk.
And Ben Hall's war with the police was only beginning.
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| Fred Lowry. Penzig. |
Only days after the extraordinary encounter with Inspector Norton, another dangerous figure appeared in the districts surrounding Lambing Flat.
His name was Frederick Lowry, sometimes associated with the name Frederick McGregor. Lowry was no inexperienced youth drifting casually into crime. He already possessed a violent history and had spent time on Cockatoo Island, where he became acquainted with Frank Gardiner. Like Gardiner, Lowry understood horses, firearms and the opportunities offered by the immense distances of the interior.
By early 1863 he was already notorious. On New Year's Day, at races held at Brisbane Valley near the head of the Fish River Creek, Lowry had attempted to bail up those attending. When two men refused his order, he fired.
One bullet grazed a man's cheek and struck a nearby horse. Then a young man named Foran rushed him. Lowry fired again. The ball passed through Foran's right lung and was feared to have lodged near his spine. Remarkably, Foran did not fall back. Despite the wound, he threw himself upon Lowry and held him until others came to his assistance.
The Bathurst Free Press reported:
"Notwithstanding that Foran was thus wounded, he sprang at once upon the villain, and was enabled to hold him till other assistance coming forward he was effectually secured."
Lowry was taken into custody, Foran survived. Lowry was subsequently confined in Bathurst Gaol. He did not remain there. In February 1863 he escaped. The escape immediately produced the familiar combination of alarm and romantic exaggeration that followed prominent bushrangers.
The Empire complained that Lowry appeared to have:
"Run through the town in daylight under the eyes of hundreds of people and to have left no traces behind him."
Rumour rapidly transformed the fugitive. Within days he was supposedly riding towards the Abercrombie Mountains, armed with revolvers and mounted upon an animal worthy of Dick Turpin:
"One animal equal to Turpin's Black Bess."
The newspaper was unimpressed.
"Some have already lifted him into a hero."
Autors Note: Dick Turpin’s famous mare Black Bess belongs more to legend than established history. The romantic story—that Turpin rode the magnificent black mare from London to York, covering roughly 200 miles in a single night—was not part of contemporary accounts of Turpin’s life. It was popularised about a century later, particularly through William Harrison Ainsworth’s 1834 novel Rookwood. The extraordinary ride itself had earlier been associated with another highwayman, John Nevison.
By the nineteenth century, however, “Black Bess” had become shorthand for the perfect outlaw’s horse: exceptionally fast, courageous, enduring and capable of carrying a fugitive beyond the reach of the law. Thus, when an 1863 newspaper compared Frederick Lowry’s mount to “Turpin’s Black Bess,” it was not merely praising the animal. The writer was invoking one of Britain’s great highwayman legends and, perhaps unintentionally, participating in the same romanticisation of Lowry that the article otherwise criticised. The comparison neatly demonstrates how colonial bushrangers were being fitted into an older British tradition of the glamorous highwayman.
The process was familiar. A violent offender escaped custody. Almost immediately, legend began replacing reality. Lowry had known Gardiner in confinement, and it is reasonable to assume that he would seek out familiar criminal connections after his escape. But Gardiner was gone.
The network he had helped create remained. Hall, Gilbert, O'Meally, Daley. And numerous associates scattered across the western districts. Lowry soon appeared around Marengo and the surrounding country. One traveller was stopped by an exceptionally tall bushranger dressed in a poncho and robbed of twelve shillings and sixpence. The description immediately suggested Lowry. Unlike Hall, whose height was repeatedly recorded around the middle range, Lowry was conspicuous at six feet one or two inches.
The Government had already offered £100 for his apprehension. Another experienced and violent man had entered the field. Hall, meanwhile, continued moving through Wheogo and the surrounding countryside with remarkable confidence. This was hardly surprising. He had lived there. Worked there. Married there and owned cattle there.
His relatives and former associates remained scattered across the district. The tracks through Sandy Creek, Wheogo, the Pinnacle, Humbug Creek, and the Weddin Mountains were not unfamiliar escape routes he had learned after he became a fugitive. They were the landscape of his adult life. Police increasingly recognised that this familiarity gave Hall an enormous advantage.
Contemporary commentary also challenged the notion that every bushranger was driven into robbery by poverty. One particularly hostile newspaper description complained that many offenders were:
"Not needy marauders, but well-to-do settlers."
The language that followed reflected the class and convict prejudices of the period and should not be adopted uncritically. But the observation is relevant to Hall. He had not been destitute. He had possessed cattle, horses and a productive pastoral interest. His criminal career cannot adequately be explained by hunger. The relationship between Hall and the residents who occupied his old haunts could be complicated. Some assisted the bushrangers. Some feared them. Some probably did both.
A much later account published in the Freeman's Journal in 1889 under the name "Viator" recalled an incident supposedly witnessed during a coach journey between Lambing Flat and Forbes. The coach stopped at a public house along the route. In the yard stood several mounted men. Viator subsequently learned that bushrangers were among them. According to the story, the landlady had recently been away in Forbes. During her absence, employees left in charge of the premises had consumed an extraordinary quantity of food and alcohol. When their employer returned to find the stock missing, they invented a convenient story. The bushrangers had done it. Unfortunately for them, the landlady was friendly with men from Hall's circle. Word reached Hall. He returned. The supposed victims confessed.
The anecdote is revealing about whether every remembered detail is correct. Hall's reputation could itself be used as camouflage. If provisions disappeared, blame "The Boys." Few people were likely to ask too many questions. Viator's account was written more than twenty-five years after the event, and one feature requires particular caution. He remembered seeing Hall, Gilbert, O'Meally and Vane together. If the encounter is correctly dated to early 1863, the inclusion of John Vane is chronologically questionable, since Vane's well-established association with Hall's gang belongs later in that year.
The physical descriptions may likewise have been influenced by later familiarity with published accounts. Viator even remembered Hall as:
"A rather tall robust-looking man."
Other evidence places Hall closer to approximately five feet six or seven inches and stoutly built. The account should therefore be used for atmosphere and to remember local relationships, but not as precise evidence of contemporary identification. Its broader observation, however, is consistent with many other sources. The bushrangers maintained cordial relations with selected residents, and those relationships produced intelligence.
Viator wrote:
"It was the general opinion that they were afforded valuable information as to the movements of the police by a very large proportion of the residents in these localities."
That was the bush telegraph at work. The Government increasingly concluded that chasing riders through the Weddin Mountains was insufficient. The refuges themselves had to be attacked. One of the most notorious was Arramagong, associated with the O'Meally family. The property and its accommodation house had long been connected in police intelligence with men moving through the Weddin country. After Inspector Norton's capture, the Government acted.
The Maitland Mercury reported approvingly:
"The government appear to be vigorously carrying out their plans for the suppression of bushranging in the south-western district."
Then came the significant announcement:
"We hear that O'Mealy's farm has been taken possession of for a police-station."
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O'Meally's holdings Weddin Mountains. c. 1863. |
"If a few more of these resorts of bushrangers were served in a similar manner the roads about Lambing Flat and Forbes would again assume a state of order."
Captain Zouch was tasked with establishing the post. The Burrangong Star reported that he intended:
"To form a police station at O'Mealy's station (at the Weddin Mountain), ejecting by orders of the government, him and his family, thus breaking up that rendezvous for bushrangers and their accomplices."
The building required repairs, including work to its roof. But its strategic value was considerable. The Government was attempting to turn a suspected bushranger refuge into a police base. For a short period the increased patrols appeared to work. The Lachlan Miner, not ordinarily overflowing with praise for the police, acknowledged the improvement:
"It is very satisfactory to know that we are really receiving some benefits, in exchange for the money expended by the government in sending up extra police to look after us."
The Lambing Flat road was being patrolled. Wheogo was watched. The Weddin Mountains were penetrated by police parties.
The newspaper concluded:
"The neighbourhood of Wheogo, and Weddin Mountain is rendered safe to travellers and dangerous to bushrangers."
It was premature. But for the moment the pressure forced Hall and his companions away from some of their most familiar haunts. Hall appears to have withdrawn towards country he had known since his stockman days—the Bland Plains, Lake Cowal and Humbug Creek. This was ideal country for him. He had mustered cattle there. Friends and acquaintances were scattered throughout the district. Water was available. The broken ranges and scrub offered concealment.
A contemporary description captured the landscape:
"The Humbug Mountain to the west impresses me with the notion that I am on the verge of a wilderness."
Granite outcrops and steep ravines contrasted with open green country and pools along Back Creek. Wildlife was plentiful. A competent bushman could live comfortably enough there. Hall was considerably more than competent. The Bland also possessed a powerful personal connection. Bridget and James Taylor were living in the broader district around the country associated with Alice Gibson.
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| Henry Hall c. 1900 |
For Taylor, however, Hall's presence in the surrounding country could hardly have been reassuring. The man whose wife he had taken was now an armed and increasingly notorious bushranger. Hall also continued returning to Sandy Creek. Susan Prior remained there. So did their infant daughter Mary. The property therefore retained both practical and emotional significance even after Hall had lost effective control of the station. But Sandy Creek was under increasingly intense police scrutiny.
Pottinger knew its history. He knew Gardiner had used the district. He knew stolen escort gold had been recovered near Wheogo Hill. He knew Hall's relatives and associates remained nearby. And he knew the Pinnacle and Weddin ranges provided ideal concealment. The Inspector's attention never really left the district. By this stage Sir Frederick Pottinger had become almost as controversial as the bushrangers he pursued. Some newspapers portrayed him as heavy-handed, aristocratic and vindictive. Others believed he had been subjected to an extraordinary campaign of ridicule while attempting an exceptionally difficult job. The truth was more complicated than either caricature.
Pottinger could be aggressive. He used remand proceedings relentlessly. He pressured suspected harbourers. He favoured vigorous enforcement over conciliation. But the district he policed genuinely contained extensive networks assisting wanted men.
Criticism of his methods should therefore be distinguished from claims that his entire campaign amounted to persecution. The contemporary press itself was deeply divided. Much controversy centred upon the small settlers scattered through bushranger country. The Crown Lands Alienation Act 1861, associated with John Robertson's land reforms, attempted to open land to smaller selectors.
The system was rapidly exploited through practices such as dummying, whereby land was selected nominally by one person for the real benefit of another—often a large pastoralist. Against this already bitter political background, police pressure upon small settlers could easily be interpreted as another attack by authority upon the poor. Some newspapers took precisely that position. Others regarded selected smallholders as essential components of the bushranger support system. Both things could be true in individual cases. Some settlers were innocent. Some were intimidated. Some disliked police. Some actively supplied bushrangers. And some expected payment for doing so.
The countryside could not be divided neatly into policemen, criminals and innocent bystanders. Pottinger's philosophy of policing was undoubtedly severe. An incident involving Constable Hassen illustrates the culture within which he operated. Hassen had shot a man named Boyd during a confrontation in custody or connected with police detention. A jury ultimately returned a verdict of justifiable homicide.
Pottinger appeared as a character witness. His evidence contained a revealing remark. He said Hassen had received only one previous complaint during his service:
"And that was for excessive leniency."
The line could almost have served as a description of Pottinger's own approach. He did not regard leniency as the principal requirement of frontier policing. Newspapers such as the Empire frequently criticised police treatment of smaller settlers and suspected harbourers. Other publications considered the attacks on Pottinger excessive.
The Courier argued that his title should provide no immunity from criticism:
"There is nothing in the fact that he wears a title which places his official acts beyond the pale of honest and impartial criticism."
But neither should he be attacked simply because attacking him had become fashionable.
"Let Sir Frederick Pottinger, like every other public man, be dealt with upon his merits."
The newspaper concluded:
"Persecution we detest, and have small respect for that class of scribblers who hound a man down for fashion's sake."
Pottinger had become a polarising figure. To his enemies he was an incompetent aristocrat bullying small settlers. To his supporters he was one of the few officers prepared to confront a deeply entrenched criminal network. What Pottinger desperately needed was a clear success. On 11 March 1863, Billy Dargin gave him one. Pottinger was patrolling between the Wheogo and Pinnacle ranges with several troopers and Billy Dargin.
They were near Maguire's Reef when Dargin noticed something. Fresh hoofprints crossed their route. The tracker pointed them out. Pottinger immediately changed direction. The party followed. Soon Dargin recognised the locality where Norton had recently fought Hall, O'Meally and Daley. He pointed out the tree that had sheltered the Inspector. Pottinger dismounted and examined it. Two large bullet marks remained in the timber. One appeared to have passed close above Norton's head. The other was approximately chest height. Then the patrol moved on. A mounted man appeared through the trees.
Pottinger reacted instantly.
"At once gave orders for pursuit."
Two troopers were sent around the hill in an attempt to cut off the rider. Pottinger, Dargin and the remaining men continued directly after him. The fugitive disappeared near the Pinnacle Reef. Then the police found his horse. The animal stood saddled beside several apparently deserted miners' huts. Pottinger recognised it. He had seen the horse the previous evening in Ben Hall's paddock. It had then been, in his words:
"All in a sweat."
Dargin noticed something else. The girths attached to the saddle appeared to be part of the property stolen during the robbery of the Pinnacle Police Barracks. The clues were converging. Hall's country. Hall's paddock. Stolen police equipment. A fleeing rider. Pottinger entered the huts. Several men were inside. They were reluctant to answer questions. Pottinger threatened them. Eventually someone spoke.
The rider had gone down a mine shaft. Pottinger hurried to the reef. The shaft descended approximately sixty feet. A fixed ladder ran down its side. The Inspector stood at the opening and called for the man below to surrender. Silence. He called again. Nothing. Minutes passed.
Pottinger tried once more. Still no response. His patience ended. If the fugitive refused to climb out, Pottinger announced that he would:
"Burn and smoke him out like an opossum."
That produced a result. The man below decided that discretion was preferable to suffocation. He climbed the ladder. At the top waited Sir Frederick Pottinger and his troopers. The fugitive surrendered.
His name was Patsy Daley.
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| Patsy Daley c 1870s |
A reporter described him as:
"A mild, youthful whiskerless looking person, with light-blue eyes and fair complexion."
There was:
"Nothing in his physiognomical expression outwardly, to denote the degraded villain."
But the reporter noticed his eyes. Daley kept his head lowered and glanced rapidly around the court:
"As if were in the habit of looking under his eyebrow and 'taking stock' of those around him."
Only weeks earlier he had been pursued with Hall after the Pinnacle robbery. Norton had identified him, albeit cautiously, as one of the three men involved in the armed confrontation near Wheogo. Now Pottinger had him. More precisely, Billy Dargin had found the track that led Pottinger to him.
The contemporary report recognised that fact:
"Sir Frederick Pottinger undoubtedly deserves great credit for his prompt action and discernment in this matter; and doubtless, he is willing to accord his portion of the merit to the acute sight of his black tracker."
It was a rare public victory. For once the bush telegraph had not been fast enough. The superior horse had not carried the fugitive clear. The scrub had not concealed him. The mountains had not swallowed him. A tracker had seen the marks in the dirt. And sixty feet beneath the Pinnacle Reef, one of Ben Hall's companions had finally run out of road.
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| Patsy Daley 1874 |
Sir Frederick Pottinger had good reason to be pleased with the capture of Patsy Daley.
On 24 March 1863, Daley was brought before the Police Court at Forbes. The circumstances of his arrest were already damaging. When he abandoned his horse and disappeared down the Pinnacle mine shaft, police found property associated with the earlier robbery of the Pinnacle Police Station among the equipment carried on the animal.
Daley now faced serious charges, including robbery and attempted murder. One of the most important witnesses against him was Billy Dargin, the Aboriginal police tracker who had been with Inspector Norton during the armed confrontation near Wheogo earlier that month. Dargin had already demonstrated considerable courage and skill.
He had tracked bushrangers across difficult country, survived sustained gunfire, escaped mounted pursuers on foot and carried news of Norton's capture back to the police. Now he faced another challenge. A colonial courtroom.
Before Dargin could give evidence, questions arose concerning whether he sufficiently understood the religious meaning of an oath. Such examinations were common when Aboriginal witnesses appeared before nineteenth-century colonial courts, whose rules of evidence were framed around Christian concepts of divine punishment and sworn testimony.
The magistrate, D. W. Irving, J.P., questioned Dargin. Asked what would happen if he told a lie, Dargin answered:
"That he believed in another world, and that he would be punished if he told a lie."
He could not provide a technical definition of an oath, although he knew of the Testament and understood that he was required to tell the truth. A contemporary report nevertheless remarked:
"Billy answered all the questions put to him with an amount of intelligence quite surprising."
The wording reflects the racial attitudes of the period more than Dargin's capabilities. His subsequent evidence demonstrates a man with a sharp memory, excellent observational skills and a clear understanding of the events he had witnessed. Dargin told the court that he was approximately twenty years old, had been baptised at Windsor about twelve years earlier by the Reverend Mr Styles, and was employed by the police. The Bench allowed his statement to be heard without administering the formal oath.
Dargin positively identified Daley.
"Some called him 'Jonny' and some 'Patsy Daley.'"
He then described the confrontation with Inspector Norton. According to Dargin, he and Norton were travelling near Wheogo when they encountered men on horseback. He identified them as Daley and John O'Meally. Later Ben Hall joined them. The three eventually came after Norton and Dargin, shouting:
"Bail up!"
A gunfight followed. Dargin remembered Norton exhausting his ammunition and surrendering.
He also stated:
"Saw the prisoner Daley fire at Mr Norton."
Dargin's testimony differed from Norton's sworn account in some details, particularly regarding which bushrangers pursued him after Norton surrendered. That discrepancy should be acknowledged. Norton remembered Hall remaining with him while Daley and O'Meally chased Dargin. Dargin recalled Hall and Daley pursuing him.
After a chaotic firefight, with men moving through scrub and changing position, some confusion is hardly surprising. On the central points, however, both accounts agree. Hall was present. Daley was present. O'Meally was present.
Shots were exchanged. Norton was forced to surrender. And Dargin was pursued. Dargin's own account of his escape is extraordinary. According to his testimony, Hall ordered him to bail up against a tree. Dargin refused. His answer was effectively that he would see them damned first. Then he did something remarkable. Having thrown down a pistol earlier, he recovered it and hurled it at Hall.
It struck Hall around the side of the head. Dargin told the Bench:
"The pistol struck Ben Hall on the right ear."
Hall called for assistance:
"Come on with the revolvers."
Dargin remembered Daley loading two revolvers while O'Meally supplied another firearm. Realising he could not outrun mounted men while burdened by equipment, Dargin stripped down. He removed his boots, his leggings, his coat, and ran. Across hard ground and through bush country, he attempted to keep trees and scrub between himself and the mounted men. He threw sticks back at his pursuers. Shots followed him. Dargin claimed the pursuit continued for miles towards the Pinnacle.
At one point his pursuers threatened to beat him to death with sticks. Dargin's response was characteristically defiant. If they wanted him, he challenged them to get off their horses and fight him on equal terms. Eventually the tone changed.
Dargin recalled Hall saying:
"Well, old man, you're a plucky one, and we'll let you off."
The bushrangers rode away.
Dargin survived.
Dargin also connected Daley directly with the earlier chase following the robbery of the Pinnacle Police Station. He told the court:
"Am certain the prisoner is the same man who was with Ben Hall when the police barracks were stuck up."
He recalled pursuing Hall and Daley with Trooper Hollister and the tracker Prince Charlie. The chase ended only when Hollister's horse collided with a tree. Dargin further testified that Daley had attempted repeatedly to fire at Charlie:
"Saw the prisoner Daley snap his revolver three times at Charlie."
On Daley's identification, Dargin was emphatic.
"Can swear that prisoner is one of the three men who stuck up Mr Norton, and likewise to being the same we chased with the trooper Hollister."
The evidence helped transform Daley from suspected associate into an accused bushranger facing serious prosecution, and it further strengthened the case that Hall's presence around the Pinnacle robbery was no accident.
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John Wilson, mate of Sir Frederick and John Maguire. |
Susan had recently given birth to Hall's daughter Mary. Wilson wanted possession of the property. At the same time, government officials were intensifying action against people occupying Crown land without recognised legal authority.
The two issues converged.
Under the Crown lands legislation then in force, magistrates possessed powers to remove people occupying Crown land without lawful authority. Section 32 provided that once Justices were satisfied that occupation was unauthorised, they could issue a warrant requiring the appropriate Crown Lands or police officer:
"Forthwith to dispossess and remove such person from such land and to take possession of the same."
The legislation itself was not created specifically for Ben Hall. Illegal and disputed occupation of Crown land was widespread throughout New South Wales. But by 1863 the bushranging crisis gave enforcement a new purpose. Government officials increasingly believed that some unauthorised huts and small holdings were being used as refuges, supply points and intelligence posts for wanted men.
The Lands Department therefore supplied police in western districts with information concerning recognised leaseholders and unlawful occupiers. Hall's former residence was included in the resulting campaign.
Wilson had his own reason for supporting the eviction. He wanted the occupants removed from the property he now controlled. Pottinger was therefore acting at the intersection of private ownership interests and government policy.
This is important.
The destruction of Hall's hut should not be reduced simply to an act of personal revenge by Pottinger. Nor should it be presented as an ordinary, uncontested eviction. It occurred during an aggressive government campaign against suspected bushranger refuges, and the police deliberately destroyed the dwelling after its occupants were removed. The action was lawful in the view of those carrying it out. Its proportionality and humanity were debated immediately.
Pottinger later defended his conduct in a memorandum to Inspector-General McLerie. His language reveals the attitude with which he approached the problem. He wrote:
"I accordingly deemed it my duty to at once summarily interfere and conclusively show Hall and those of his class in the district that at any rate, as yet, they could not have everything exactly as they thought fit."
The phrase "those of his class" is revealing. Pottinger had come to regard the problem as extending beyond individual bushrangers. Hall belonged, in his mind, to a broader network of associates, harbourers, small settlers and relatives who frustrated police operations. Breaking that network had become part of the campaign.
The Sydney Morning Herald explained the policy in April 1863.
It argued that the remarkable success of Gardiner and other bushrangers had depended partly upon:
"The assistance and shelter that have been afforded them by a class of unauthorised occupants of Crown lands, known in the provincial slang as 'Cockatoo squatters.'"
Police at Bathurst, Young and Forbes had therefore been provided with lists of lawful occupiers. Anyone found occupying Crown lands without recognised authority could be proceeded against under the Crown Lands legislation. The territory involved was enormous—stretching across much of the country affected by the western bushranging outbreak. The Government hoped that removing suspected harbourers would deprive the gangs of food, intelligence and sanctuary. The approach had enthusiastic supporters.
Bell's Life argued that unauthorised homesteads should be destroyed:
"All squatters, who cannot show a legal right to their occupancy, are to be driven off the land, and their homesteads razed to the ground."
The writer admitted innocent people might suffer. But compared the policy to surgery:
"A few of the truly honest must suffer, to enable the strong arm of the law to reach the large majority of real offenders."
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Hollister's actual diary entry, March 1863. Courtesy R.A.H.S. |
The final action at Sandy Creek occurred on 14 March 1863. Trooper William Hollister recorded the event in his diary with characteristic brevity:
"At Wheogo burnt Ben Halls house down."
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Constable John Bohan who would assist Constable Hollister at the burning of Hall's home, and later act in Hall's death. |
A newspaper correspondent writing under the name "Veracity" defended the action. The writer described Hall's former hut as:
Rrendezvous of Gardiner and his infamous gang."
According to Veracity, the dwelling had become:
"A pestilence and plague-spot in the community."
The correspondent also stated that Wilson, as the recognised lessee, wanted Hall's former household removed. Most importantly, Veracity claimed the occupants had been given repeated warning:
"This hot-bed of rascality was not destroyed until after frequent notice was given to the occupants to clear out."
When the eviction finally occurred, the occupants' furniture and belongings were supposedly removed first:
"The furniture and other valuables were first removed, and left at the disposal of their owners."
That does not make the event gentle. A dwelling was deliberately destroyed. But it does challenge later versions in which police supposedly arrived without warning and immediately set fire to an occupied home.
Among those affected were Susan Prior and her infant daughter Mary. Mary had been born only weeks earlier. Susan therefore lost the home in which she had been living with Hall's extended family while caring for a newborn child. Contemporary correspondence treated her situation with little sympathy.
One hostile writer described Susan as:
"The lady pro-proprietress of Ben Hall's household."
The same correspondent emphasised that she was unmarried and had borne Hall's child. Such language reflects the moral judgement directed towards unmarried mothers in nineteenth-century colonial society. Whatever one's view of Hall, Susan and the infant Mary were not responsible for his robberies. They nevertheless experienced the consequences of the campaign against him.
News that the house was to be interfered with reportedly enraged Hall. A correspondent claimed he threatened:
"To scatter a considerable quantity of brains, to whomsoever belonging, if his mansion were in any way interfered with."
The quotation should remain attributed rather than treated unquestioningly as Hall's exact words. But it accords with his increasingly violent rhetoric towards police. Only weeks earlier Norton had heard Hall threaten Hollister. Now interference with Sandy Creek supposedly brought another threat of lethal retaliation. Pottinger proceeded regardless. The occupants were removed. Their possessions were taken outside. The house was burned.
The destruction became a powerful symbol. To Pottinger's supporters it was evidence that police were finally attacking the infrastructure that allowed bushrangers to operate with impunity. To his critics it demonstrated the brutality of an increasingly authoritarian campaign. The weather reportedly worsened the spectacle. Rain fell. A woman with a newborn infant had watched her home disappear.
The incident provoked resentment well beyond Hall's immediate circle, particularly among those already suspicious of Pottinger's methods. What it did not do was create Ben Hall the bushranger. By March 1863 Hall had already robbed, fled, fought and fired upon police. But the destruction of Sandy Creek almost certainly deepened an existing conflict. The last physical remnant of the life he had built as a grazier was now gone.
The Government's attack on unauthorised huts rested upon the belief that bushrangers survived through extensive local assistance. There was considerable truth in that. But assistance was not always inspired by affection. Some supporters expected payment. Food cost money. Fresh horses cost money. Information cost money. Silence could cost money.
Hall himself was later reported to have complained that his associates extracted substantial tribute from him. A correspondent in 1864 attributed to Hall the claim that escape from bushranging had become almost impossible because:
"His friends ... looked to him for tribute as the price of his security."
The newspaper considered the claim plausible:
"It is not probable that those who have so long fattened on his ill-gotten gains would quietly submit to his quitting the scene of his exploits."
If accurate, it complicates the traditional image of the bush telegraph as simply a network of loyal sympathisers. Some were friends. Others were business partners in crime. Hall's freedom had a price.
Following the destruction of the residence, Susan Prior eventually left Sandy Creek. She appears to have returned towards the Lambing Flat and Boorowa districts. There she subsequently became associated with Alfred Stonham. Susan later had a son named Alfred. The child's registration attributed paternity to Stonham. There are reasons to question aspects of the chronology and family circumstances, particularly because Stonham remained legally married elsewhere during part of this period. That has led to speculation that the child might instead have been another of Ben Hall's sons.
At present, however, the evidence does not establish that conclusion. It should remain a hypothesis unless stronger documentary or genetic evidence emerges. What is better supported is that Hall continued to move through the Boorowa country during his later bushranging career and retained connections with Susan. Whether those visits were primarily personal, practical, or both is another question that deserves careful separation from later family tradition.
The burning of Hall's home subsequently became one of the central episodes in the mythology surrounding him. Later retellings sometimes transformed it into the decisive injustice that forced an innocent grazier onto the road. The chronology does not permit that interpretation. Hall had already crossed that boundary. But the event still mattered. Sandy Creek represented his former identity.
Stockman, husband, father, grazier and landholder. By March 1863, nearly every element of that life had fractured. Bridget was gone. Henry was living elsewhere. His station had passed into other hands. He was wanted by police. His associates were being arrested. Now the house itself had been destroyed. The burning did not create the bushranger. But it helped extinguish whatever remained of the life the bushranger had once possessed.
The destruction of Ben Hall's former home at Sandy Creek provoked an immediate and bitter controversy.
Furthermore, to Sir Frederick Pottinger and his supporters, the building was a known refuge for bushrangers and their associates—an unlawful occupation standing on land now controlled by another lessee.
To Hall's friends and sympathisers, the episode was something very different: women and children driven from their home, their shelter deliberately burned around them while rain fell across the district.
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Rare portrait of William Jameison father of bushranger John Jameison. c. 1860. |
Jamieson wrote to parliamentarian Joseph Harpur, whose mother, Sarah Walsh, was stepmother to Bridget Hall and the Walsh children.
His account was uncompromising.
"I must tell you about burning of houses and turning women and a baby out in the cold to get shelter under the trees in wet."
According to Jamieson, one of the women subsequently required medical attention:
"One of the women is now under the doctor's care, from being out with only a small bit of calico to keep the night air and cold from her and a baby of two months old."
His description became more accusatory:
"Sir Frederick burnt the house down and turned the women out. The two women and baby had to stop out in the wet."
If accurate, the scene was bleak.
Susan Prior had only recently given birth to Hall's daughter Mary. Whatever responsibility Hall bore for his own actions, an infant child plainly bore none.
Jamieson's letter contains another important detail. Ben Hall himself was allegedly close at hand during the operation.
Jamieson claimed:
"The man was only a hundred yards from them on a knocked-up horse."
Hall attempted to escape. His exhausted mount lasted only a short distance before giving out.
"He only galloped a quarter of a mile, and then his horse gave in, and he jumped off and let the horse go."
The police recovered the horse.
Hall disappeared.
Jamieson used the episode to attack Pottinger's priorities. Rather than personally continuing the pursuit, he alleged, the Inspector remained arguing with the women while Hall escaped.
His judgement was severe:
"That is the way he has always acted, for he has not yet taken a man that tried to get away; and then his excuse is to the Government that the squatters harbour them."
Jamieson was no detached observer. His son John Jamieson moved within the same circle as Hall, Johnny Walsh and other young men suspected or convicted of armed robbery. His account should therefore be read as the testimony of an interested contemporary. But that does not make it worthless. It provides one side of an event that quickly became politically explosive.
Jamieson apparently remained furious about the incident. After his death, John A. Hux recalled a conversation in which Jamieson had discussed Pottinger in surprisingly balanced terms.
He conceded the Inspector's courage:
"I admit he is the most courageous and plucky policeman that ever I knew."
He even suggested Pottinger would have been formidable against the earlier cattle-stealing gangs:
"Had he been here some few years since he would have played hell with the cattle racket."
Then came the qualification:
"But he is a damn wretch to turn women out of house and shelter."
That remark is valuable because it shows that criticism of Pottinger did not necessarily stem from the belief that he was cowardly or incompetent. Jamieson could admire his courage while condemning his conduct.
The controversy travelled rapidly from the Lachlan to Macquarie Street. Questions were raised about police treatment of unauthorised occupiers and the destruction of dwellings associated with suspected bushrangers. Colonial Secretary Charles Cowper required an explanation. Inspector-General McLerie sought information from the officer responsible.
Pottinger responded with a memorandum defending his actions. His version differed markedly from Jamieson's.
He stated:
"But one ejectment has been enforced by Lachlan police. Ben Hall's house was alone burnt down, and that at the request of the then (by mortgage) actual proprietor."
According to Pottinger, the occupants included Henry Gibson, Mrs Maguire, Susan Prior and another woman whom he incorrectly identified as Hall's mother.
He described the residence as:
"Daily frequented by bushrangers."
Most importantly, he insisted:
"A week's notice was given and nothing destroyed—no woman or child frightened or molested."
However, here lies the central historical problem. Two contemporary accounts describe the same event. One says women and a two-month-old baby were left sheltering beneath trees in rain. The other says nobody was frightened or molested and that adequate notice had been given.
Both cannot be accepted uncritically. Several facts are considerably firmer than the competing interpretations surrounding them. The occupants were ordered to leave. The dwelling was deliberately destroyed. Police carried out the destruction.
The date was 14 March 1863.
Trooper William Hollister recorded the event in his diary:
"At Wheogo burnt Ben Halls house down."
The brevity of the entry is almost startling. There is no attempt at explanation or justification. For Hollister it was simply another day's police duty. That terse contemporary record independently confirms the central fact around which the later controversy developed. Hall's house was intentionally burned by the police.
Joseph Harpur subsequently raised the incident in Parliament. His version largely reflected the account supplied by Hall's sympathisers. He claimed Hall appeared while the police were at the property, mounted his horse and fled. Two policemen pursued. Hall then abandoned his exhausted mount and, armed with revolvers, confronted his pursuers.
According to Harpur:
"Ben Hall with two revolvers jumped from his horse and faced them."
The policemen returned with the horse. Harpur then criticised Pottinger for failing personally to continue the pursuit:
"Instead of going after the robber, he ordered them to set fire to the house."
Harpur further alleged:
"They burnt it down, the women not being allowed to bring out their clothes. It was raining at the time, and the women and children took shelter under a gum tree."
His conclusion was difficult to dispute as a moral proposition:
"However bad Ben Hall was, it was not right to punish these poor women and children."
Whether every factual detail of Harpur's parliamentary account was correct is another matter. But the incident had plainly become political.
An important complication emerged afterwards. Much contemporary commentary linked the destruction of suspected bushranger refuges with the Government's campaign against unauthorised occupiers of Crown land. Police had been supplied with lists of lawful leaseholders.
Section 32 of the Crown Lands legislation provided mechanisms for dispossessing people occupying land without authority.
It is therefore tempting to regard Hall's eviction as a straightforward application of that policy. But Lands Minister John Robertson subsequently denied that Hall's house had been burned under the Act.
He stated, in substance, that although police action against illegal occupiers had been discussed:
"He believed the police had burnt down the residence of the notorious bushranger, Ben Hall; but it was the only case, and was not done under the Land Act."
That distinction is important. The wider policy against unauthorised occupation provides the administrative background. But the burning of Sandy Creek appears to have rested primarily upon the particular circumstances surrounding Hall's former residence, Wilson's claim to the property, and police belief that it remained a bushranger refuge. The legal basis should therefore not be stated more confidently than the contemporary record permits.
It was insigated by John Wilson who had an obvious interest in removing Hall's household. He had acquired control of Sandy Creek and wanted possession of the property. A correspondent using the name "Veracity", was strongly supportive of Pottinger, emphasised precisely this point.
Hall, he wrote, held no legitimate interest in the land, while the recognised proprietor wanted the occupants removed. The hut itself was characterised in exceptionally hostile language as:
"A rendezvous of Gardiner and his infamous gang."
And:
"A pestilence and plague-spot in the community."
According to Veracity, its destruction occurred:
"In obedience to an expressed wish of the lessee himself, who was desirous of being ridded of such a neighbour."
This account substantially supports Pottinger's defence. It also reveals that the affair involved more than simple law enforcement. There was a property dispute intertwined with a police campaign against bushranging. Were the Women Given Warning? Veracity claimed they were. Indeed, he insisted that repeated opportunities had been provided:
"This hot-bed of rascality was not destroyed until after frequent notice was given to the occupants to clear out."
He also contradicted claims that their belongings were burned:
"The furniture and other valuables were first removed, and left at the disposal of their owners."
Again, the testimony conflicts directly with Harpur's assertion that the women were prevented from removing their clothes and possessions. The historian is therefore left with competing contemporary narratives. The safest conclusion is not that one must necessarily be entirely true and the other entirely false.
It is that the occupants had apparently received notice to leave, but the actual execution of the eviction was sufficiently harsh to produce immediate allegations that women and an infant were left inadequately sheltered in bad weather. That conclusion preserves what can reasonably be established without turning partisan correspondence into uncontested fact.
Hall reportedly knew the house was under threat. One contemporary correspondent claimed he had promised:
"To scatter a considerable quantity of brains, to whomsoever belonging, if his mansion were in any way interfered with."
However, as with many colourful quotations attributed to bushrangers, it should remain explicitly attributed. But the threat fits the increasingly violent language Hall had already used. He had threatened Hollister, reportedly regarded Pottinger as deserving death. Now the destruction of Sandy Creek was allegedly to be answered with bullets. Yet when the decisive moment came, Hall did not stop the police from burning the house.
He escaped. The building burned.
Years later, little remained. R. Fitzgerald remembered passing through Wheogo in 1876.
He wrote:
"There I saw the remains of Ben Hall's Hut, it had been burnt down, and there were only the burnt stumps remaining."
By then Hall himself had been dead for more than a decade. The blackened remnants had become part of the physical landscape of his legend. But the chronology remains essential.
The burning occurred on 14 March 1863. Hall had already participated in the Eugowra Escort robbery nine months earlier, had already been associated with armed robberies, and had exchanged gunfire with police.
The destruction of Sandy Creek therefore did not turn Ben Hall into a bushranger.
It did something different. It removed one of the final physical connections with his former settled life and gave Hall another deeply personal grievance against the police pursuing him. That distinction is fundamental.
William Jamieson did not live long after the controversy. His death later acquired an air of mystery. He had travelled to Goulburn on financial business and was returning from town when he was discovered unconscious beside the road approximately four miles away. His pocketbook and valise were reportedly missing.
His horse Merrylegs was found nearby. Another mare, Lauristina, disappeared. Jamieson never regained consciousness and died the following morning.
A £50 reward was subsequently offered for the missing mare in the hope that recovering her might clarify what had happened.
She was apparently never found.
Jamieson's reputation as an accomplished horseman made a simple riding accident seem questionable to some who knew him. But suspicion is not evidence. There is presently no secure basis for linking his death to Pottinger, Hall, bushranging, or the controversy over Sandy Creek. It remains what it was at the time: an unresolved death surrounded by unanswered questions.
The destruction of the house did not prevent Hall from returning to Sandy Creek. Indeed, within days Pottinger again encountered him near the property. Susan Prior and others displaced from the dwelling were reportedly living nearby under temporary calico shelter.
On the evening of 15 March, Pottinger and several men approached the area. Two figures were seen near the women. They were identified as Hall and John O'Meally. The alarm was given. The bushrangers ran for the scrub. Pottinger pursued as night was falling.
The fugitives were pressed so hard that Hall abandoned his horse and escaped on foot. This time the police recovered considerably more than an exhausted mount.
Pottinger later reported:
"Hall had to give us the slip-on foot, leaving his horse and swag, containing ammunition and firearms."
Among the recovered weapons was:
"Magnificent Tranter revolver and Government pistol."
The Government firearm was particularly significant because police associated it with property stolen during the Pinnacle raid. If correctly identified, Hall's possession of such property provided powerful circumstantial evidence connecting him with the robbery. Hall might dispute eyewitness accounts. He could claim coincidence. Stolen police property found among his equipment was harder to explain.
William Hollister recorded the episode independently in his diary. He remembered riding with Pottinger and Constable Day towards Hall's place. At approximately five hundred yards, they saw two men. The pair bolted. The police pursued, but darkness allowed them to escape. Returning, Hollister recorded finding: a horse; saddle and bridle; a swag; ammunition; a bottle of port wine; a poncho; a Government horse pistol; and a Tranter revolver.
Mrs Maguire reportedly identified the men as Hall and another companion, although Hollister's entry differs from Pottinger's later identification of O'Meally. Such discrepancies again demonstrate the importance of not forcing every contemporary account into perfect agreement. The broad event, however, is clear.
Hall escaped on foot. His equipment did not.
The following morning police resumed tracking. For approximately 26 miles, they followed signs through the countryside. During the operation they arrested William Prior, Susan's teenage brother.
Pottinger wrote:
"Whom I hope to make very useful."
The phrase says much about frontier policing. Relatives and associates of bushrangers were not merely suspects. They were potential sources of intelligence. Pressure upon family members was one way of attacking the bush telegraph. Pottinger's men were exhausted. He reported that they had slept in no beds and their horses had received no proper feed since leaving Forbes. Whatever criticisms could be made of his methods, the physical demands of the campaign were real.
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William Hollister Police Employment |
He accompanied Pottinger during the attempt to capture Gardiner at Catherine Brown's residence in Wheogo. He pursued Hall and Daley after the Pinnacle Police Station robbery. His horse struck a tree during that chase, allowing the fugitives to escape. Norton later testified that Hall specifically mentioned Hollister and threatened:
"That he would return the compliment when he got hold of him."
Then, on 14 March 1863, Hollister participated in the destruction of Hall's home. The relationship between the two men had therefore become intensely adversarial. But it is better to describe Hollister's participation as part of the organised police action than as his personal "counter-blow." There is no evidence in the diary entry itself that Hollister burned the house as private revenge for Hall's threat. He was acting as a serving constable under orders.
That distinction matters.
Meanwhile, pressure upon the western police continued in Parliament. Pottinger eventually submitted a lengthy memorandum explaining the extraordinary conditions under which his men operated. His district was immense. He estimated the Lachlan Police District at approximately 600 miles by 200 miles.
Forbes lay about ninety-five miles from Young. Police under Pottinger's direction regularly operated in plain clothes. They removed obvious military equipment. They avoided roads and public houses.
Their orders were to:
"Bush out."
Pottinger explained:
"The Lachlan police do duty in the bush invariably in plain clothes, saddles, &c., without swords, disguised in fact as far as possible like bushrangers."
The reason was obvious. A uniformed police patrol could be spotted and reported long before it reached a bushranger camp. Instead, police attempted to disappear into the same landscape.
Pottinger claimed he personally spent long periods living in the bush:
"From the 15th of June to the 1st of December, 1862, I slept out in the bush ninety-three nights."
Whatever else might be said about Sir Frederick, he was not commanding the campaign exclusively from a comfortable office in Forbes. He rode, camped, pursued and repeatedly he failed. That combination of effort and frustration helps explain both his determination and the increasingly severe methods he adopted.
Yet the greatest obstacle was not always the country. It was information. Ernest Bowler later described an encounter that captures the dilemma perfectly. He was suddenly surrounded by bushrangers:
"Four revolvers at my head, so close I could see the bullets in the chambers."
One of the men demanded his horse. Then Hall arrived.
Hall recognised him.
"It's Mr Bowler. It's alright—let him go."
Bowler rode away unharmed. He did not immediately report the encounter. When police later learned what had happened, they called him away from a dance and demanded an explanation. Why had he said nothing?
Bowler answered:
"Because I thought it was useless; the police always told where they got their information, so I had made up my mind to tell no more."
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| Ernest Bowler |
The police would eventually ride away. The settler still had to live there. And so silence became self-preservation. Pottinger called it obstruction. The bushrangers called it loyalty. For many ordinary settlers it was neither.
It was survival.
That was the environment in which the police were trying to capture Ben Hall—and the environment that allowed Hall, again and again, to disappear.
Note on Earnest Bowler; FORBES, Monday, 7th September 1896.- "This morning news was brought to the town of the death of Mr Ernest Ulysses Bowler, managing partner for Messrs. Suttor and Co, of Boyd station, about 20 miles from Forbes. The deceased gentleman had been suffering from a weak heart for some years and as he was 67 years of age, his demise was not altogether unexpected. He was judging at the Grenfell show that week and returned home on Saturday. On Sunday night he retired to bed in his usual health but awoke at about 2 o'clock and died in less than half an hour. His remains will be brought into Forbes tomorrow for interment. Mr Bowler was the son of Major Bowler a well-known colonist of the early days. Mr Earnest Bowler was one of the earliest pioneers of the Lachlan country and has been a resident of this part of the country for about fifty years. He was greatly respected in this district and great sympathy is expressed with his family. He leaves a widow, one son, and one daughter." |
| Electric Telegraph. Image courtesy NLA. |
Inspector-General of Police John McLerie stood at the centre of the newly reorganised New South Wales Police Force, overseeing circulation of the Police Gazette—the colony's primary instrument for identifying wanted men, stolen property and criminal movements. By the beginning of the 1860s, however, McLerie possessed something his predecessors had never enjoyed: the electric telegraph. The first line opened between Sydney and Liverpool in December 1857 and expanded rapidly, reaching Albury and eventually linking Sydney with Brisbane, and before long the outer districts of NSW. However, for the police, this utterly transformed communication: a robbery committed hundreds of miles from Sydney could now be reported to headquarters with extraordinary speed, and descriptions of offenders, stolen horses, and suspected movements could be transmitted between districts long before a mail coach could carry the same information. Yet the Gazette remained slower—reports still had to be collected, assessed, typeset, printed and distributed throughout the colony, meaning officers in remote locations might not receive printed intelligence for days or even weeks. Consequently, mounted police often acted upon telegrams and local intelligence long before the official Gazette reached them.
The Government also attempted to make betrayal profitable, offering substantial rewards for the apprehension and conviction of notorious offenders including Gardiner, Ben Hall, Gilbert and other wanted bushrangers. These rewards were governed by specific proclamations and conditions; they did not simply fall to the officer who made the arrest and often required successful prosecution before payment was authorised. But money alone did not guarantee information. Thus, while rewards encouraged some men to cooperate with authorities, others considered silence safer. Australian colonial society had inherited a deep contempt for the informer—the "rat"—and for an outlaw, betrayal from within was often more dangerous than any uniformed patrol. Rewards and pardons gave police powerful incentives to exploit weakness inside criminal groups, and men facing long sentences or the gallows might suddenly remember everything.
While the police had the electric telegraph, the bushrangers possessed one of their own. The expression "bush telegraph" described the informal intelligence network that warned Hall, Gilbert, O'Meally and others of police movements, and it was remarkably effective. Young riders could leave a station, cross miles of rough country, and deliver a warning before a police patrol arrived; some were relatives, some friends, some paid, and others may have acted out of fear or resentment towards the police. Johnny "Warrigal" Walsh, Hall's young brother-in-law, became closely associated with this world of messages, horses and rapid movement. Women could participate as well, as girls capable of riding quickly between isolated stations attracted far less suspicion than an armed young man galloping through bushranger country. The network carried much more than warnings: it reported police patrols, the direction in which troopers had ridden, valuable travellers, mail coaches, large cash movements, fresh horses, and safe places where wanted men might obtain food and shelter.
"A perfect system of 'bush telegraphy' had been established in every locality where their friends resided."
The writer compared these informants to military scouts:
"Upon these 'telegraphs' the bushrangers depended as absolutely as do the officers of an army upon their scouts when in the territory of an enemy."
The comparison was apt; Hall's gang did not wander blindly, for intelligence was one of their principal weapons.
Hall possessed a particular advantage over many police officers sent west from Sydney, having spent years working the country and knowing stockmen, graziers, publicans, horse breakers, carriers and station hands across the Lachlan, Bland and Weddin districts. One contemporary observation put the matter simply:
"Other people, under the influence of fear, were compelled to supply them with food and arms."
Former Superintendent Charles Sanderson later described the intelligence problem faced by police. He recalled that bushrangers were:
"Surrounded with such a crowd of sympathisers and friends, who often acted as bush telegraphs for them, that it was often impossible to keep our movements secret."
He believed some informants were financially rewarded:
"These people were well paid for their trouble and shared in an indirect way in the proceeds of robberies and sticking-up cases."
Fear was equally important.
"Even when people were willing to give information they were afraid to; it would mean that they might be shot themselves, or at least get their farms, stables, or haystacks burnt."
Sanderson therefore developed an unusual investigative rule:
"I never went into a respectable house if I wanted to learn anything."
He had learnt that outward respectability did not necessarily mean cooperation. Nor did information necessarily mean truth.
"We had scores of persons who wilfully came and gave us the wrong information."
False intelligence could send an entire police patrol twenty miles in the wrong direction while the bushrangers rode peacefully away somewhere else.
Sanderson adapted accordingly.
"When an 'affair' was reported, I never looked for the perpetrators in the locality where it had taken place."
By the time police arrived, he assumed the gang was already far away.
Sir Frederick Pottinger exploited the Government's communication network aggressively. After the destruction of Hall's Sandy Creek residence and the subsequent pursuit through Wheogo, information indicated that Hall had left the area with Mrs Maguire, heading towards the Fish River country. Pottinger followed, but heavy rain and flooded ground eventually destroyed the tracks. On 23 March 1863 he telegraphed McLerie:"Returned here last night, without any further definite results."
He reported tracking Hall's party from Wheogo:
"Till foiled, some twenty miles from Wheogo, by inundated Plain."
Information subsequently placed Hall around the Weddin Mountains, prompting Pottinger to search routes leading towards Fish River. Again he found nothing. His conclusion was that Hall had probably crossed into the Southern Police District:"Ben Hall and party must have crossed onto the Fish River via Marengo or Burrawang."
The patrol nevertheless discovered bush camps and recovered stolen equipment. Pottinger ended with a complaint characteristic of the jurisdictional problems confronting police:"Please telegraph touching the limits of my district towards the Weddin."
He wanted authority to operate freely across the boundary. The bushrangers recognised no police districts—an ironic plea given that bushrangers recognised no police districts while the police did.The weather was another participant in the contest. After a prolonged drought, the Lachlan began receiving substantial rain; for settlers, it was salvation as creeks filled, waterholes replenished, and grass returned, but for trackers, the same weather could be disastrous. One day's rain could erase hoofprints followed for twenty miles, and flooded plains could make a trail impossible to distinguish. A contemporary report described the transformation of the Lachlan:
"An extensive fresh has come down, by which the channel of the river has been completely filled."
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| Money Order Form |
"Gardiner and his colleagues are certainly helping to increase the business of the Money Order Office, by making it so unsafe to enclose notes in letters."
The newspaper hoped widespread adoption might strike at the economics of mail robbery.
"We hope that the Money Order Office will be brought into extensive use for the suppression of highway robbery."
The logic was simple.
Take away the cash, remove the reward, reduce the robbery—and the writer imagined a frustrated bushranger opening a mailbag only to discover paper that could not readily be converted into money. A correspondent wrote:"The professional highwayman would become an extinct animal."
That prediction was premature, but the principle was sound: crime could be reduced not only by capturing offenders but by making the crime less profitable. Colonists did not immediately change their behaviour, however, and many still posted banknotes; some even cut notes in half and sent the pieces separately. Newspapers became increasingly exasperated, with one correspondent observing that bank drafts, cheques and money orders were virtually useless to robbers while cash remained a perfect prize, concluding The conclusion was direct:"If people would only come to the determination to alter this plan of forwarding money, we should have fewer mail robberies."
Bushranging therefore helped accelerate a broader transition in colonial finance. The gun was being challenged by bureaucracy. Where a piece of paper redeemable only through a recognised institution could be more effective than another armed trooper on the coach.The Eugowra prosecution demonstrated the power of the informer. Daniel Charters had participated in the Escort robbery, but when pressure mounted he turned approver, and his evidence became central to the Crown's case against the men subsequently brought to trial. For his cooperation, Charters received a pardon and a financial reward; the Crown obtained inside information, and the informer secured survival. But turning approver also placed a man in a perilous position, as former associates might regard him as worse than the policeman who arrested them—a policeman was doing his job, but an informer had betrayed his mates. The police therefore attempted to protect informants' identities whenever possible, though they were not always successful. In April 1863 the Empire published an extraordinarily dangerous piece of information: that the police it reported had dispatched a party into bushranger country accompanied by:
"A person familiar with Gardiner and his mates in criminal acts as a guide."
That sentence effectively announced that someone from within the criminal world was helping the police, and for Hall, Gilbert, and O'Meally, it was a warning that a traitor existed somewhere among them. Another suspected of turning on the bushrangers was John Jameison. |
| John Peisley & Zahn |
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"Gilbert, you wretch, you wouldn't hit a haystack!"
Gilbert reportedly responded:
"Your goose is cooked."
Herring was deliberately trying to provoke him. If Gilbert stopped to fight, perhaps the police could close the distance. Hall, Gilbert and Lowry continued riding; their horses were better, the police mounts began to tire, and once again the principal bushrangers escaped. Gibson did not. Attempting to take a different route, Gibson found himself hemmed against a substantial fence, and Detective Coward and the others closed upon him; the chase was over, and Gibson surrendered his weapon. Police subsequently examined tracks around the bush camp and compared the impressions with the nails in Gibson's boots; the physical evidence supported their conclusion that he had been with the fleeing party. Coward questioned him, asking who the others were, but Gibson refused to say, claiming merely that he was returning towards the Weddin Mountains—the old code held, and no names were given.
News travelled faster than certainty. The arrest caused considerable excitement around Yass and Marengo, and a correspondent eager for a sensational scoop announced that police had finally captured Ben Hall. They had not; the prisoner was Henry Gibson. The mistake is a useful reminder of how bushranging news developed during the telegraph age: information moved faster than ever before, but so did error. The same network that enabled McLerie to communicate across hundreds of miles could transform a rumour into news before anyone had properly checked the man's identity. The electric telegraph had revolutionised policing, but it had not abolished human fallibility. And while police increasingly mastered their new technology, Hall and Gilbert continued to rely on something older and, in their own country, often faster: a good horse, a trusted friend, and a whispered warning carried through the bush.
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| Mr Percy Scarr. c. 1905. |
The men had arrived at one of Mr Broughton's out-stations near Marengo, accompanied by a woman and child, and wanted breakfast. "The prisoner, with three other men, two of whom had firearms, with a woman and child, called at one of the out-stations of Mr Broughton, near Marengo." Breakfast was prepared, and the party remained for approximately an hour and a half. When Scarr arrived and asked whether the station was being attacked, he, too, was ordered to dismount and join them. The encounter then took an almost convivial turn; the men asked whether Scarr could cook (no), could he track (again no), and apparently deciding he possessed few useful qualifications for bushranging, they invited him to join them for a nobbler instead. Then they left.
Scarr's testimony provides an intriguing clue to Hall's movements during March 1863 but raises more questions than it answers. Pottinger had previously believed Elen Maguire was travelling with Hall, yet Scarr's evidence establishes only that a woman and child accompanied Gibson's party—it does not identify them. However, another possibility deserves consideration. Susan Prior had recently given birth to Hall's daughter Mary, and following the destruction of the Sandy Creek residence, Susan had every reason to leave the immediate Wheogo district. It is therefore possible, though by no means certain, that the woman was Susan Prior and the child the infant Mary; that interpretation would also explain the presence of only one child more readily than the suggestion that the woman was Elen Maguire, who had her own young family. Without positive identification, however, the matter must remain unresolved. What Scarr's evidence does establish is that the supposedly desperate bushrangers were moving through the district in a mixed party containing a woman and child, and the men associated with Gibson were subsequently identified as members of Hall's circle, including Gilbert and others operating through the Marengo country.
While Gibson's case proceeded, another drama was unfolding in Forbes. John Walsh, younger brother of Bridget Hall, Elen Maguire and Catherine Brown, was dying. Known as "Warrigal" Walsh, the young man had become deeply entangled in the world surrounding Frank Gardiner; he had been suspected of acting as a messenger and horseman, had been associated with the events around Wheogo, and when Pottinger failed to capture Gardiner during the celebrated confrontation at Catherine Brown's residence in August 1862, young Walsh was taken into custody. The Sydney Morning Herald reported:
"On the 19th instant, the young lad John Walsh, brought up on suspicion of being a mate of the bushranger Gardiner, was further remanded for three days."
Whatever his precise involvement with Gardiner, Walsh would not survive his imprisonment.
By March 1863 the seventeen-year-old was seriously ill. He had been confined in the Forbes lock-up under Senior Sergeant Rush when Dr J. J. Connell was called to attend him for what was described as colonial fever. His condition deteriorated until Rush eventually allowed his mother to remove him from the gaol to the White Hart Inn in Rankin Street, where Drs Flatan and Nutt attended him. Their diagnosis was grim: the illness was described as having begun as gaol fever before developing into violent congestion of the brain. Nineteenth-century treatment was equally grim—the doctors opened both temporal arteries and the jugular vein in an attempt to relieve the congestion—but nothing worked, and John Walsh died. An inquiry was subsequently held at the White Hart Inn, and its finding was unequivocal: "The said John Walsh had died of the effects of gaol fever." He was approximately seventeen years old.
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| Memorial Forbes |
Not everyone accepted the matter quietly. Soon afterwards a newspaper reported: "A lad named John Walsh, who was apprehended at the time of an unsuccessful attempt to catch Gardiner, has lately died in the gaol at Forbes under rather peculiar circumstances." The official finding—"died of gaol fever"—was acknowledged, but the correspondent added that it "does not give public satisfaction," and there was even discussion of seeking "a special commission of inquiry." Whether such suspicions had any substantive foundation is another matter; the medical evidence attributed Walsh's death to disease, and there is no evidence that he was deliberately harmed. But his death inevitably became another grievance in a district already bitterly divided over the conduct of police. Only days earlier Hall's former home had been burned, and now his teenage brother-in-law was dead after imprisonment. The conflict was becoming increasingly personal.
Walsh's death attracted nothing like the mythology later attached to Hall, Gilbert or Gardiner. He had died before becoming a celebrated bushranger; there was no spectacular last stand, no reward proclamation bearing his name, no famous photograph. His grave at Forbes was eventually lost or left unmarked. In more recent times, local historical efforts have placed a memorial plaque in Forbes Cemetery that does not necessarily identify the precise place where his body lies but does something perhaps more important: it records that he existed.
Meanwhile, Henry Gibson's prosecution began to unravel. The evidence concerning the incident at Broughton's station was insufficient to sustain a robbery charge: the supposed bushrangers had demanded breakfast, eaten it, and departed without apparently robbing anyone. After examining the depositions, the Attorney-General declined to file a bill, and Gibson was discharged. As one correspondent observed, "There was nothing upon which he could file a bill."
His freedom lasted only hours. Sir Frederick Pottinger immediately had Gibson rearrested, this time for allegedly having "harboured, aided and assisted certain notorious bushrangers, to wit, Johnny Gilbert, Johnny O'Meally, and Ben Hall." Pottinger himself gave evidence concerning Gibson's association with Hall and his companions. Despite objections from Gibson's solicitor, Mr Prendergast, to the form of the warrant, Gibson was remanded to Forbes. The episode demonstrated Pottinger's determination to pursue Hall's suspected network even when a prosecution on the original charge had failed.
While the courts dealt with Gibson, Pottinger returned to the larger problem. Where were Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally, and—perhaps most importantly—where was Frank Gardiner? Rumours continued to place "The Darkie" almost everywhere: Fish River, Weddin, Marengo, Burrangong, Victoria. The newspapers still routinely attached Gardiner's name to robberies, but Pottinger was becoming sceptical. On 4 April 1863, preparing another extended patrol, he telegraphed Inspector-General McLerie. Information from separate sources suggested that Gardiner, Gilbert, O'Meally, and Hall might be operating around Fish River, and Pottinger accepted part of the intelligence but not all. He wrote:
"The three latter are, I believe, in that district, the former I still think is out of the colony."
It was an important judgement. Pottinger was beginning to recognise what much of the press had not—that Gardiner was probably gone, and that the bushrangers operating through the western districts increasingly belonged to a new phase in which Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally were becoming the principal figures.
Pottinger intended to cooperate with Captain Zouch's Southern Police and expected to remain away for approximately fourteen days. Four additional troopers and trackers were sent to scour Wheogo. The Inspector also pleaded with McLerie not to transfer Sergeant Sanderson:
"Sanderson's presence here till matters are quite settled is indispensable."
The telegram paints a revealing picture of a police district stretched thin. Sergeant Rush was ill, Detective McGlone—apparently the district's only detective—was also ill, and Pottinger wanted Swainson returned. Men were being shifted between districts while Hall and Gilbert crossed those same administrative boundaries without the slightest concern for police bureaucracy.
Hall, meanwhile, appears increasingly to have gravitated towards the broader Lambing Flat–Burrangong country. The district was becoming prosperous again; gold meant people, people meant money, and money meant opportunity. For Hall and his associates, the revived diggings offered travellers, stores, public houses, horses and, just as importantly, information.
But just as the district required experienced police leadership, the Government transferred one of its best-known officers. Captain Battye was moved from Burrangong to Bathurst, and local reaction was furious. Battye knew the country, the bushrangers and their haunts. At a farewell dinner, leading residents expressed their dissatisfaction, with one correspondent complaining:
"No officer in the force knows the haunts of Gardiner's gang better."
The timing seemed incomprehensible:
"Now when proper force is sent here, the very man who should command them is removed."
It was another example of the administrative difficulties confronting the newly centralised Police Force. Officers who had accumulated invaluable local knowledge could suddenly be transferred elsewhere; the bushrangers, by contrast, recognised no police districts and crossed administrative boundaries whenever it suited them.
After Gibson's capture, something unusual happened. Hall disappeared. So did Gilbert. O'Meally became difficult to find. Reports of robbery diminished and, for once, the roads appeared quieter.
The explanation was probably simple: police pressure had become intense. Patrols were operating through Wheogo, the Pinnacle was watched, the Weddins were penetrated, detectives and trackers had been sent into the district, known associates were being arrested, and homes suspected of providing shelter were being targeted. Faced with that pressure, the bushrangers did what experienced fugitives had learned to do—they ceased making themselves visible.
One newspaper remarked:
"Bushranging is quiet just now."
But there was little cause for celebration. The correspondent understood what the silence probably meant:
"The spasmodic efforts made by the police to capture the members of the firm of Hall and Co. making it necessary for those pests to keep close to their haunts."
The quiet was not the end of bushranging. It was a temporary withdrawal.
The phrase "Hall and Co."—contemporary newspaper language rather than anachronistic framing—is significant. Gardiner's name was beginning to recede, and Hall's was replacing it. The former grazier who had once ridden quietly into Forbes for the races was becoming the recognised centre of a new bushranging fraternity. For the moment, however, the country was quiet. The police searched, the telegraph wires clicked, trackers examined the earth, informers whispered, and Hall waited. The lull would not last.
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