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| "He was a popular man in the district." |
By the middle of 1863, a year had passed since the Eugowra Escort Robbery, yet the western districts of New South Wales remained gripped by lawlessness. The gold rush had transformed Forbes, Burrangong and the surrounding country; tens of thousands of miners, carriers, storekeepers, publicans and opportunists moved through the region, carrying cash, gold, supplies and livestock across poorly guarded roads, creating fertile ground for highway robbery.
On particularly bad days, several robberies could be reported within hours of one another as travellers were bailed up on lonely roads, mail coaches stopped and their bags searched, stores emptied of clothing, firearms, food and alcohol, and horses taken whenever fresh mounts were required. For police, the problem was exhausting; a gang could commit a robbery, change horses and disappear twenty miles into scrub country before word even reached the nearest station.
By this time Ben Hall had moved well beyond the uncertain position he had occupied only eighteen months earlier. He was no longer merely a grazier suspected of associating with Frank Gardiner; he was an armed bushranger. Alongside John Gilbert and John O'Meally, and joined periodically by men such as Fred Lowry, Hall was becoming one of the central figures in the western outbreak. The era of "Hall & Co."—as contemporary newspapers were beginning to characterise it—had begun.
One of the police's greatest problems remained the network of people willing to shelter, warn or otherwise assist the bushrangers. Not everyone acted from admiration; some were relatives, some were old stockmen, some accepted payment, and others were frightened. Yet to the police the effect was the same: a patrol could ride for days while Hall received warning of its movements before the troopers came within miles of him. It was the era of the Bush Telegraph. A correspondent to the Sydney Mail expressed his frustration in August 1863:
"It will be impossible to put bushranging down unless the harbourers are punished with the greatest severity."
He believed the problem extended through much of the country between Mount Macquarie and the Abercrombie, claiming that:
"There is scarcely a house ... that will not afford any criminal shelter when required."
Most troubling to the writer was the influence the bushrangers exerted upon younger men:
"There are hundreds of lads in that neighbourhood under twenty that would give one of their eyes to have the same notoriety as Gilbert or Gardiner."
Whether literally true or not, the complaint captures an important feature of the outbreak—bushranging had become fashionable among some sections of colonial youth, not merely profitable but romantic.
Under increasing pressure to produce results, Sir Frederick Pottinger continued moving through the borderlands between his own Lachlan district and Captain Zouch's southern command. Information now placed Hall and his associates farther south, and the country around Cootamundra, Jugiong, Murrumburrah and Marengo offered exactly what fugitives required: scrub, isolated stations, good horses, water and numerous routes through which a gang could disappear. Modern tradition associates Hall with rocky vantage points around Cootamundra, including places now bearing his name; such traditions are plausible given his documented presence in the district, but the exact use of particular modern "Ben Hall" sites should be distinguished from what contemporary records actually establish. What those records do establish is that Hall and his associates were active throughout the district.
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| Barnes, NSW police gazette April 1863 |
The word supposed is important. Gardiner's reputation had become so pervasive that robberies throughout the western and southern districts continued to be attributed to him even after he had long left the colony. Pottinger himself was becoming increasingly doubtful that Gardiner remained in New South Wales. The identities were confused, even if the crime itself was not; Barnes' store had been robbed, the offenders had pack-horses, they were heavily armed, and they were moving through precisely the country in which Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally were being hunted. Pottinger continued:
"I have received certain information which I believe will be the means of finding out how the gang got rid of the goods," and believed "they have a camp in the scrub between Berthong and the Merool Creek."
His horses were exhausted, and he requested permission to remain in the bush for another fortnight. The pursuit continued.
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| Nagle (Ned) Ryan 1815-1887. Private Source. |
Another name was now appearing beside them. Frederick Lowry, the tall escaped prisoner who had fled Bathurst Gaol, had found his way into the same bushranging circle, with reports beginning to describe him operating "in company with Gilbert and O'Meally." His appearance made him relatively distinctive; Lowry was reported at around six feet one or two inches—exceptionally tall for the period—while Hall was several inches shorter and considerably heavier built. Even so, newspaper identification remained imperfect, particularly where witnesses saw men only briefly, at distance, or under the stress of a robbery. What was becoming unmistakable was the existence of a loose but dangerous group moving between the western and southern districts: Hall, Gilbert, O'Meally, Lowry, and an assortment of temporary associates.
After Eugowra, John Gilbert initially seemed the obvious successor to Gardiner. He was young, daring, flamboyant and already notorious. During 1863, however, another pattern emerged. Hall was older; he knew the country intimately; he possessed an extensive network of pastoral acquaintances; he had experience managing men, horses and stock; and increasingly, eyewitnesses described him giving directions during robberies and determining how captives were treated. Gradually the press began treating Ben Hall as the principal figure. This did not mean the gang possessed a rigid chain of command—bushranger bands were fluid, men joined and departed, divided into smaller parties and reunited when circumstances suited them—but Hall increasingly provided the continuity around which others moved.
One of the most revealing encounters with the gang came not during a robbery but around a campfire. J. E. Richter, then a young traveller of about twenty-three, later recalled (in memoirs published decades afterwards) camping beside a waterhole while travelling through the district. He found signs that others were already there—a small fire, four saddles and other equipment—but initially no men. Presently four riders appeared and explained that they were drovers returning towards the Bogan country to collect another mob of fat cattle. Richter believed them; nothing about their appearance immediately suggested bushrangers.
"They seemed jolly fellows, and nothing about their habit, language or belongings indicated anything other than that they were drovers." They spent the evening in congenial conversation and story-telling; no firearms were visible. Richter remembered them as "all smart horsemen apparently, and their build and manner suggested to him that they were native-born bushmen. They left shortly after sunrise.”
Only then did Richter begin to wonder whether his companions might have been horse thieves; his own horse, however, was untouched.
A few hours later Richter met a station overseer who questioned him suspiciously, and then seven mounted police appeared at a canter. At their head was Sir Frederick Pottinger. The police questioned Richter closely: where had he slept, who had he seen, what did they look like? He described the four supposed drovers, and the answer astonished him—he had spent the night with bushrangers. Richter remembered being told that the men belonged to Gilbert's gang. Police ordered him to open his swag to ensure he was not carrying weapons or acting as one of their spies; nothing incriminating was found, the troopers apologised, and then they galloped away. Richter later added the dry observation that the pursuit ended "with the usual result of no capture." His account is valuable precisely because nothing dramatic happened; there was no gunfight, no robbery, no hostage-taking. For one evening the bushrangers behaved like ordinary bushmen. That does not diminish their crimes; it demonstrates why they could move so effectively through rural society. A skilled stockman, drover and bushranger could look very much like a skilled stockman and drover.
Richter later remembered the men as pleasant company. Such accounts have contributed greatly to the romantic image of Hall and Gilbert, but they should be interpreted carefully. The capacity to behave pleasantly around a campfire is not evidence that the same men were benign during robberies. The apparent contradiction is actually unsurprising; Hall's gang did not need to terrorise everyone they met. Violence was instrumental—where cooperation was immediate, charm could be useful; where resistance appeared, a revolver provided the alternative. This duality was one of Hall's strengths. He could appear entirely at home among ordinary bushmen because that was precisely the world from which he had come.
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John Frederick Barnes 1838-1915. Thomas Barnes (Right) 1836-1902. Sons of murdered John Barnes by O'Meally. Private Source. |
"Barnes' store, at Cootamundra, was stuck up yesterday evening by three armed men, supposed to have been Gilbert, O'Meally, and Ben Hall." Approximately £200 worth of property was reportedly taken. The same store had been robbed shortly beforehand, and the pattern was now unmistakable.”
Hall's gang was not merely hiding in the southern country—they were working it. The confusion over names is itself historically important. In 1861 and 1862, Frank Gardiner dominated the public imagination; newspapers saw Gardiner everywhere, his name sold papers, travellers expected to encounter him, and local correspondents attached his identity to robberies even when the perpetrators remained uncertain. But Gardiner had gone. The criminal network he helped create did not disappear with him; Gilbert remained, O'Meally remained, Hall remained, and Lowry joined them. Gradually the language changed—first there was Gardiner's gang, then Gilbert's party, and increasingly newspapers began referring to "Ben Hall and his gang."
The change reflects Hall's own development. He had entered Gardiner's orbit as an associate and pupil; within little more than a year, however, he had become one of the principal figures around whom the next phase of western bushranging revolved. His advantages were considerable: he was older than Gilbert and O'Meally, he knew the country intimately, he possessed an extensive network of pastoral acquaintances, he understood horses, cattle, stations and bush travel, and increasingly eyewitnesses described him giving directions during robberies and determining how captives were treated. This did not make the gang a disciplined organisation with a rigid chain of command—bushranger bands were fluid, men joined and departed, split into smaller parties and reunited when circumstances suited them—but Hall increasingly provided the continuity. The quiet grazier of Sandy Creek was gone. In his place stood a man whose name was becoming synonymous with bushranging across New South Wales.
The bushranging campaign involving Ben Hall and his companions entered a curious phase during 1863 as reports repeatedly confused the identities of the men involved. Frank Gardiner had apparently left the district, yet his name continued to surface whenever armed men struck throughout the western and southern country. In some cases Hall may simply have been mistaken for Gardiner; in others, Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally appear to have exploited the confusion surrounding the notorious Darkie, allowing victims to believe that Gardiner was nearby or still directing their operations. Whether Hall ever deliberately represented himself as Gardiner remains uncertain—misidentification is well established, deliberate impersonation less so—but what is clear is that Gardiner's reputation had become useful in its own right. During some robberies, victims were told that Gardiner was watching from a nearby hill or waiting close at hand; true or not, the implication was obvious: resistance might bring down not merely the men standing before them, but the most notorious bushranger in the colony. Gardiner's name had become a weapon.
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| John Barnes |
"Bushranging and sticking-up seems to be the order of the day in this district."
He described four mounted and armed men descending on his son's store shortly after sunrise:
"The property valued at about £100 was stolen and taken away on pack horses."
But Barnes reserved his sharpest criticism for the police. He believed the same men had been openly riding the district several days earlier:
“Apparently courting the appearance of the police, who of course could be seen going the other way."
His conclusion was biting:
"The usual course being to put in an appearance about a week after the commission of a robbery."
Barnes' sarcasm reflected a growing problem for the colonial police. The public did not see the days spent tracking, camping and searching; they saw the bushrangers arrive, they saw the police fail to stop them, and then they saw the troopers appear after the gang had gone.
Barnes was not alone. Another Cootamundra correspondent wrote to the Yass Courier asking pointedly:
"Would you inform me what does Captain Battye do with his troopers in this district, as there is bushranging daily going on?"
The writer complained that people had been stuck up around Cootamundra while the bushrangers travelled openly with pack-horses. Why, he asked, could they not simply be tracked? His explanation was contemptuous:
"The fact is they are too well housed and clothed to stand bush work."
It was an unfair simplification of the conditions under which many mounted police actually operated, but it reveals the depth of public frustration. Every successful robbery became evidence of police incompetence; every failed pursuit strengthened that perception.
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John Hurley's Station, 1866. |
On 29 April 1863 another raid struck the district. This time the target was the store at Cootamundra Station, a large pastoral property associated with Mr Hurley. Four armed men entered the station store; the storeman, alarmed by their appearance and number, attempted to escape, and the bushrangers fired after him. He got away unharmed. That detail is important. Whatever later mythology attached itself to Hall's supposedly restrained approach to violence, men associated with his gang were prepared to shoot at a fleeing, unarmed employee during the commission of a robbery.
After taking provisions and clothing, the robbers continued their journey and soon encountered Basil Bennett, who was travelling with a bullock team from the Lachlan. One of the bushrangers demanded his money; Bennett explained that he had none and had already suffered the misfortune of losing a bullock that morning. The response displayed the peculiar mixture of threat and humour that frequently characterised bushranger encounters.
The robber reportedly replied that "one misfortune was enough in one day," and therefore declined to search Bennett, but took his horse. The animal, the bushranger explained, was required as a pack-horse and might even be returned if Bennett happened to travel through the district again. Two stolen horses were subsequently loaded with approximately £120 worth of property, and the gang then headed in the direction of the Weddin country. Police tracked them for many miles; articles fell from the poorly secured packs along the route and were recovered, but the men themselves escaped.
Another contemporary account describes a particularly remarkable confrontation associated with one of the Barnes robberies. According to a correspondent writing from Young, three bushrangers arrived at Cootamundra with several pack-horses, bailed up the inhabitants and began filling large bags with goods selected from the store. But this time two local men decided to resist. They armed themselves, moved some distance from the township and concealed themselves behind a tree to wait for the robbers. When the bushrangers approached, the settlers opened fire; the gang fired back, and what followed was an extraordinary exchange:
"Twenty-seven shots were exchanged."
Episodes such as this contributed heavily to the romantic image later constructed around Hall, Gilbert and their companions. A bushranger could threaten a man with a revolver one day and admire another man's courage the next. But this should not be mistaken for a genuine code of chivalry; their admiration of bravery existed alongside armed robbery, threats, shootings and intimidation. The better interpretation is that these men belonged to a highly masculine horse-and-stock culture in which courage was prized intensely. A man who stood his ground could earn their respect. That did not make him safe, nor did it make the bushrangers gentlemen; it merely reveals something about the values of the world from which they themselves had emerged.
The newspapers were becoming another participant in the struggle. Local correspondents reported robberies, police movements, arrests and rumours from districts increasingly dominated by Hall's gang. Their reports informed the public, but they also irritated almost everyone involved. Police complained that publication could expose their operations; bushrangers could learn how much authorities knew; informants feared being identified; harbourers worried that descriptions might bring police to their doors; and men already suspected of helping bushrangers could interpret seemingly innocuous details as dangerous clues. Writing about bushrangers was therefore not entirely safe. One correspondent to the Empire revealed in April 1863 that he had received:
“An anonymous scrawl of a threatening nature."
The letter purported to come from members of the bushranging fraternity; the correspondent doubted its authenticity, believing instead that a local enemy had written it to frighten him. Nevertheless, his answer was unequivocal. He possessed”
“An excellent revolver at their service."
If confronted, he wrote, he would not hesitate to emulate magistrate Robert Lowe, who had recently shot a bushranger near Mudgee.
Lowe's encounter illustrated the dangers confronting ordinary settlers as well as police. After being bailed up near Barney's Reef in the Mudgee district, Lowe resisted. He fired a shotgun at one of the bushrangers, striking him in the throat; the wounded man rode a short distance before falling from his horse and dying. Lowe was widely praised for his actions and later received formal recognition for his bravery. Such incidents carried an obvious message: not every settler would submit. Bushrangers could never know whether the apparently helpless man before them possessed a firearm—or intended to use it.
Despite widespread criticism, a number of officers developed formidable reputations for pursuing the gangs. Among them were Charles Sanderson, William Hollister, Frederick Pottinger and James Condell. Their task was made considerably more difficult by the bush telegraph. Hall had spent years among stockmen, graziers, horsemen and station workers before becoming an outlaw; he knew the country and many of the people living within it. Police entering the same district were frequently strangers, and a uniform made matters worse—everyone could see the troopers coming, and a rider could leave a station and warn Hall before the patrol travelled another ten miles. Police therefore increasingly adopted disguise and secrecy.
Pottinger was an enthusiastic advocate; his men travelled in plain clothes, used ordinary saddles, avoided swords and other obvious police equipment, and camped away from roads and hotels. In appearance they attempted to become almost indistinguishable from the bushmen they were hunting. The logic was simple: to catch bushrangers, police had to move like bushrangers.
One Empire correspondent described a patrol setting out in April 1863:
"A portion of our patrol, consisting of Messrs. Swan, Hughes, Foley, and M'Gill, started early this morning well disguised and strongly armed, upon a secret expedition."
Their target included men for whom substantial Government rewards had been offered—though the precise terms of these rewards (including whether they were offered for apprehension and conviction, or "dead or alive") varied with each proclamation. The correspondent wished them luck and reflected upon the harsh conditions endured by mounted police:
"Eight or ten consecutive nights in the wilder and colder parts of the Weddin and Abercrombie Mountains, with nothing but a saddle for a pillow, and the stars and sky for a quilt or counterpane, is not so very pleasant after all."
It was a useful corrective to the common accusation that mounted police were too comfortable to pursue bushrangers. Some certainly failed through incompetence; others spent weeks sleeping on the ground.
Charles Sanderson later remembered those patrols without sentimentality.
"Bush life was a rough but a healthy one," he recalled; he had sometimes remained in the field for a month. Secrecy governed even their camps:
"We never lit a fire after dark." The men also slept apart "in case of surprises."
That detail reveals the seriousness with which experienced police regarded the possibility of attack. Hall and Gilbert were not merely fugitives; they were armed men who had already fired upon police. A campfire glowing in the darkness could become an aiming point; sleeping together meant one volley might strike several officers. The pursuit increasingly resembled irregular warfare.
There was another difficulty. Bushrangers did not necessarily look like criminals; many came directly from the stockman's world. Former Sergeant M. Hanley later remembered the appearance of the flash stockmen of the period:
"They wore their hair long, had the most expensive riding boots, while their vests were generally trimmed with blue velvet, with a red sash across the waist."
Jewellery was part of the display:
"Their fingers were covered with rings, and they sported as much jewellery as possible across their shirt and vest."
The comparison with the Mexican horseman was obvious to Hanley. These were men whose identity was expressed through horses, clothes and personal ornament. Gilbert embraced the style enthusiastically—he was remembered wearing bright sashes, jewellery and multiple watches obtained during robberies—while Hall was generally more restrained, but he too dressed carefully and valued good clothing, boots and horses. Their appearance therefore carried a deliberate message. They were not ragged fugitives; they dressed as successful horsemen, men with money, men with confidence, men who expected to be noticed. That display was another reason the bushrangers fascinated colonial society.
Behind the silk sash and polished riding boots, however, stood an uncomfortable reality. Every robbery generated another witness; every stolen horse left another trail; every newspaper report spread their descriptions farther; and every police patrol was learning a little more about how to hunt them. The contest was becoming progressively harder for Hall and his companions to control. Their appearance—the very thing that made them figures of fascination—also made them increasingly recognisable. The flash stockman's display was becoming a liability. And somewhere in the bush, men who had spent years learning to move like bushrangers were closing in.
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| "Roll up Roll up" |
The Chinese miners of the goldfields were particularly vulnerable to the lawlessness sweeping through the Western and Southern districts. The arrival of large numbers of Chinese miners in Victoria and later New South Wales had already generated bitter resentment among sections of the European mining population, as competition for claims, racial prejudice and cultural differences erupted periodically into intimidation and violence, culminating in disturbances such as the Lambing Flat riots. Colonial attempts to restrict Chinese immigration also produced unintended consequences, with Victoria and New South Wales imposing a £10 poll tax on arriving Chinese immigrants, which encouraged shipmasters to circumvent the charge by landing passengers elsewhere. The South Australian port of Robe became one such entry point, from which thousands undertook the extraordinary overland journey to the Victorian goldfields. On the diggings themselves, Chinese camps were frequently separated from the main European settlements, and this isolation left their inhabitants particularly exposed to armed robbers.
In April 1863, approximately fifty Chinese miners at Little Wombat were bailed up and robbed. The Empire reported on 7 April that "sticking-up continues to a very alarming extent, notwithstanding the steps taken by the Government to check it," adding that the telegram on Saturday had informed readers of that sticking-up at Little Wombat of about fifty Chinamen. Little was initially known of the robbery because, according to the correspondent:
The Chinese are averse to speak of the matter; but it is believed they were robbed to a very large extent.
More significantly, the newspaper drew attention to their vulnerability, noting that:
The Chinese are little prepared to act on the offensive against armed men, and it is a matter for the serious consideration of the Government as to whether steps should not be taken to procure them better protection.
Their camp was isolated, away from European dwellings and some miles from any town or police station, meaning resistance could therefore have resulted in a massacre. The following day the Goulburn Herald provided the first indication of who might have been responsible, stating upon good authority that three ruffians, of whom was supposed to be Ben Hall and Johnny Gilbert, stuck-up and robbed about fifty Chinamen and some Europeans.
This incident also exposes a largely forgotten side of the bushranging outbreak—the victims were not always wealthy bankers, mail contractors or prosperous squatters, but included isolated Chinese miners, labourers and ordinary travellers whose vulnerability made them attractive targets for armed men seeking ready money.
After a burst of robberies, Hall and his associates frequently disappeared, and the Weddin Mountains provided a natural refuge while friends, relatives and former associates throughout the district supplied other places of concealment. The O'Meally family had longstanding connections to the Weddin country, while Hall's brother William remained in the broader Pinnacle district. These periods of apparent inactivity allowed the gang to rest, replace horses, replenish supplies and wait for police patrols to move elsewhere. For the public, however, the silence was unnerving. One correspondent cautiously welcomed the effect of the increased police presence, noting that the Lambing Flat road was well patrolled and that the neighbourhood of Wheogo and Weddin Mountain was rendered safe to travellers and dangerous to bushrangers. On 2 May the Empire similarly announced that bushranging was quiet just now, but the newspaper attributed the lull to the spasmodic efforts made by the police to capture the members of the firm of Gardiner and Co. The irony was that Gardiner was no longer there, yet his name nevertheless remained attached to the gang.
There was another indication that Hall's position had changed fundamentally. Newer criminals still attempted to conceal their identities, but Hall, Gilbert, O'Meally and Lowry increasingly had little reason to bother. As one correspondent observed, the older members of this abominable corps had so many certain convictions hanging over them as to prompt them to dispense with all facial disguise, as being in their case perfectly useless. The observation is revealing—Hall was no longer the Sandy Creek grazier protesting that he had merely happened upon Gardiner's robbery, but his face was known, his associations were known, and the police wanted him. Survival now depended less upon anonymity than mobility, and the gang's great advantage lay in their horsemanship, their intimate knowledge of the country and their ability to obtain fresh mounts. A police horse might already have travelled twenty or thirty exhausting miles before a pursuit began, while Hall could abandon a tired animal, take another from a station and continue, with the chase effectively beginning again.
At times Hall withdrew from the Weddin altogether and returned to country he had known intimately as a stockman. The Bland plains, Humbug Creek and Lake Cowal provided another vast refuge, and Hall knew the tracks, waterholes, stations and scrub country, while many inhabitants knew him from before his bushranging career.
The district also possessed a powerful personal attraction, as Bridget was living in the broader region with James Taylor and Hall's young son Henry. Whether Hall actually saw his son during these visits cannot presently be established, but given his attachment to Henry and his familiarity with the district, it is certainly possible, though possibility should not be turned into fact. For James Taylor, however, Hall's presence in the district must have carried an uncomfortable significance, as the two men's lives remained intertwined.
In May 1863 that connection acquired another dimension when Sir Frederick Pottinger arrested James Taylor near the Fish River. Taylor had family connections in the district through his sister Mary Fogg and others, and Pottinger was increasingly suspicious of men associated with the networks surrounding Hall and Gardiner.
Taylor was brought before the Forbes Police Court on 5 May, and the Goulburn Herald reported that James Taylor, who had been captured by Sir F. Pottinger and the police at the Fish River, was again brought up on remand. Depositions taken at Cowra alleged several charges of cattle-stealing and highway-robbery, but the critical qualification followed immediately that the proofs were not forthcoming. Pottinger obtained another seven-day remand, and Taylor was subsequently released when sufficient evidence failed to materialise.
The episode is useful because it illustrates both sides of Pottinger's policing—his suspicions were not irrational, as he was operating in a district where cattle stealing, horse theft, harbouring and bushranging overlapped through complicated networks of friendship and kinship, but suspicion was not evidence, and the courts repeatedly reminded him of the distinction.
The enormous notoriety of Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally produced another problem for police, as people began blaming the bushrangers for crimes that had never occurred. Charles Sanderson later remembered that bushranging often led to bogus sticking-up cases, and the deception was simple—a servant entrusted with money could spend or steal it and then report that bushrangers had taken it, as there was nothing easier than for anyone entrusted with money or valuables to say that he had been stuck up and make away with the property himself. Sanderson claimed to have exposed two such cases by establishing that the supposed perpetrators were hundreds of miles away at the time, but he believed many others succeeded. Thus police confronted an extraordinary intelligence problem—Hall might commit a robbery and deny it, someone else might commit a robbery and blame Hall, a man might lose his employer's money and invent Hall altogether, and newspapers could transform any of those versions into colonial news.
The alleged robbery of John Keogh near Marengo illustrates the difficulty perfectly. Keogh claimed that three mounted and armed men stopped his covered cart near Warrego, and when he shouted for assistance, one supposedly dragged him from the vehicle while the others beat him unconscious with the butts of their pistols; when he recovered, £6 was missing. The report was sufficiently credible to send police into pursuit, but when the patrol returned, its leader Swan offered a startling conclusion that there had been "no-stick up" at all—according to Swan, Keogh had spent his money, become drunk, fallen from his cart, cut his forehead and subsequently invented the robbery. Yet even this explanation was not conclusive, as Keogh continued to swear that three armed horsemen had robbed him while witnesses had reportedly seen three suspicious riders in the district, and the correspondent was forced to admit that the affair still remained a mystery. It is an excellent example of why contemporary bushranging reports must be handled cautiously—a newspaper report is evidence that something was reported, but it is not necessarily evidence that it happened exactly as reported.
There was considerably less uncertainty about what happened to Sub-Inspector Shadforth on 9 May 1863. Shadforth, stationed at Bogolong, encountered three armed men after his horse carried him a short distance into the bush, and they were identified as Ben Hall, John O'Meally and a third man then unknown. Hall held a revolver to the inspector's head while another searched him, and they took his money, watch, rug, saddle, bridle and horse, then let him go.
The Sydney Morning Herald could not resist adding that Shadforth returned somewhat chagrined. The colonial press was even less merciful, with Bell's Life in Sydney mocking the inspector's misfortune and questioning why the gallant sub-inspector should have selected a bodyguard of Amazons to protect him in his pursuit of the enemy, although the women had in fact merely been travelling in a buggy. The newspaper then turned its attention to Shadforth's unfortunate mount, observing that it must have been a very knowing kind of horse, and concluded that verily the bush commanders were being toyed with like children by the joke-loving desperadoes. The ridicule became sufficiently embarrassing that the Lachlan Miner subsequently corrected the story, explaining that Shadforth had not been using the women as an escort but had merely encountered their party while exercising his horse, and that the gang had not molested the women, with Hall simply asking who they were. The correction restored some dignity to Shadforth, though it could not restore his horse.
The unidentified third man was later identified as John Jamieson, son of the late William Jamieson, and this connection is particularly interesting because the elder Jamieson had known Hall and had strongly criticised Pottinger's conduct during the destruction of Hall's Sandy Creek home. Young Jamieson also belonged to the same extended social world as John "Warrigal" Walsh and the families surrounding Wheogo and the Bland, and he would eventually be tried alongside Patrick Daley and sentenced to fifteen years' hard labour. Contemporary claims that Jamieson had inherited the enormous sum of £22,000 and consequently lost the entire fortune to the Crown should be treated cautiously, as he had siblings and any inheritance depended upon the actual terms of his father's estate rather than a simple assumption that the eldest son automatically received everything. The episode nevertheless demonstrates something fundamental about Hall's gang—it was not merely a collection of strangers brought together by crime, but again and again the same families, neighbours, former stockmen and childhood acquaintances reappear.
Pottinger's telegrams from May 1863 provide an extraordinary picture of the speed with which Hall's gang operated. On 16 May he reported another robbery at Barnes' store in Cootamundra by three men supposed to be O'Mealy, Gilbert and Hall, and Pottinger immediately recognised what this meant—the gang had doubled back, and their latest appearance showed the extraordinary rapidity of their movements. Police followed and tracked Hall, O'Meally and Gilbert to Strickland's stockyard, recovering Shadforth's horse together with two others, but the bushrangers responded by taking three fresh horses.
The pursuit continued until a station muster obliterated their tracks, yet in twenty-four hours the police had tracked the gang approximately sixty miles and recovered two relays of stolen horses, while Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally remained ahead. This was the practical genius of their system—they did not need a horse capable of outrunning the police indefinitely; they needed a succession of horses. More importantly, Pottinger's report finally cut through months of newspaper speculation when he wrote that the accounts in the papers were false and that Gardiner was not there and not been for months in the district. The active men, he believed, were Hall, O'Meally, Gilbert with perhaps Jamieson, and these, Pottinger stated, were responsible for the recent robberies around Young, Yass and Wagga Wagga. This represents an important transition—the police were no longer chasing Gardiner and Co; they were chasing Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally.
A later account recalled that Mr Barnes missed his aim when firing at Ben Hall and shot the horse which the outlaw was leading, while O'Meally was also present and narrowly escaped with his life. This was no romantic exchange between gallant highwaymen and compliant victims—Barnes was shooting to stop them, the bushrangers were armed, and had either side aimed a few inches differently, somebody could easily have died.
Meanwhile the newspapers continued reporting searches for Gardiner and Co, and the name had become almost impossible to kill. Even after Gardiner had departed New South Wales, correspondents continued placing him at robberies—witnesses recognised him, rumours tracked him, police chased reports of him, and newspapers printed them. In reality, the criminal landscape had changed; Gardiner's old associates had not disappeared when he left but had reorganised. Gilbert remained, O'Meally remained, Hall remained, and others moved in and out of their orbit. The very confusion demonstrates the extraordinary power Gardiner's reputation had acquired—his name had ceased to describe merely one man, and for frightened travellers and distant newspaper readers alike, Gardiner had become shorthand for the bushranging menace itself.
The telegraph magnified everything, as Sydney editors could receive reports from distant goldfields with a speed unimaginable only a decade earlier, while rural correspondents supplied robberies, pursuits, arrests, rumours and descriptions. Readers followed the story almost as an unfolding serial—Hall had robbed another store, Gilbert had been sighted, O'Meally had fired at somebody, Pottinger was in pursuit, Gardiner had supposedly returned, another police officer had been humiliated, another gang had vanished into the Weddin.
The competition for news inevitably produced mistakes; rumour became report, report became reprinted fact, and the same story could travel through newspapers across several colonies. The police themselves sometimes knew the published accounts were wrong, as Pottinger's telegram makes explicit when he declared the accounts in the papers false, yet the mythology was already becoming stronger than the facts. Frank Gardiner, hundreds of miles away, could continue robbing travellers in New South Wales without ever mounting a horse, and increasingly, standing beneath the enormous shadow left by The Darkie, was the man who had inherited the western roads.
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| The Shamrock & Thistle Inn Bowning was built in 1840. One of the many hotels the Gang frequented. Private Source. |
The account is notable for the confidence with which Gardiner was identified, despite growing evidence that he had already left New South Wales. It illustrates how unreliable identification could be during this period, particularly when Gardiner's reputation was so dominant that sightings of him continued to surface long after his departure.
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| Fred Lowry. Penzig. |
By May 1863, the legend of Frank Gardiner remained deeply embedded in the public imagination. Although he had long since departed New South Wales, his name continued to appear in reports of robberies committed by Ben Hall, John Gilbert, John O’Meally and their associates. Gardiner had become almost ubiquitous in the colonial press: wherever armed men appeared on fine horses, The Darkie was liable to be reported among them.
In reality, Gardiner was far removed from the turmoil attributed to him. By this time he was living with Catherine Brown in Queensland, leaving Hall, Gilbert and O’Meally to establish reputations of their own. Yet the persistence of supposed Gardiner sightings complicated police intelligence and frequently sent patrols in the wrong direction.
One such pursuit was led by Senior Sergeant Patrick Brennan of Yass. After reports that Gardiner, Lowry, Gilbert and O’Meally had been seen near Bowning, Brennan and his men spent a week following a trail through Wargiela, the Yass River, the Murrumbidgee and towards Tumut and Queanbeyan.
The Yass Courier reported:
Senior-sergeant Brennan, accompanied by constables Mara and Hale, returned to Yass after a week's search for Gardiner, Lowry, Gilbert, and O'Mealey...
The pursuit was arduous. The supposed bushrangers travelled cautiously, apparently avoiding stations and public houses, carrying provisions and camping in secluded places during daylight. Police occasionally found the remains of their camps and the tracks of four hobbled horses.
Brennan pushed his men relentlessly until exposure in the ranges left him almost blind:
Unfortunately, Mr Brennan had by this time become almost perfectly blind from exposure to the humid night atmosphere in the ranges but luckily met with Captain Battye with a party of police and two black trackers who were prepared to follow the scent.
The newspaper nevertheless praised Brennan and his men for their "perseverance and ingenuity."
But on this occasion the pursuit was badly misdirected. While police followed the supposed Gardiner party through the southern country, Ben Hall had doubled back and was again operating around Cootamundra.
The bushrangers were also confronting a less visible enemy: technology.
The expanding Post Office Money Order system increasingly allowed settlers, miners and businessmen to transfer money without carrying large quantities of cash or sending banknotes through vulnerable mail coaches. As one contemporary report observed:
The increased action of the Money Order Office in the interior is already telling against the trade of highwaymen. People travelling on the roads do not carry so much money with them in cash as they used to do.
It was a small but important change. The telegraph was accelerating the transmission of police intelligence, while money orders were gradually reducing one of the bushrangers' easiest sources of plunder. Technology was beginning to alter the contest between the road and the law.
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Senior Sergeant Patrick Brennan |
Saturday evening, two bushrangers went to a public-house a few miles from this town... Sergeant Brennan happened to be at the house. The bushrangers recognised him and attempted to get-away. Brennan fired on them and shot one dead. Subsequently, he captured the other and brought him to the lock-up today.
Brennan's success brought recognition and financial reward. The Government awarded him £20 from the Police Reward Fund, and his subsequent promotion demonstrated that aggressive and successful policing could materially advance an officer's career.
Senior Sergeant Brennan, of Yass, who has recently displayed great activity in apprehending a number of desperate characters, has been presented by the Government with the sum of £20 from the Police Reward Fund, in acknowledgement of his services.
He was later promoted to Sub-Inspector, the Government explicitly hoping that such recognition would encourage other officers to distinguish themselves in the suppression of crime.
Brennan already possessed a formidable local reputation. When a man named Coady boasted of having dealt violently with policemen and challenged Brennan to wrestle him for a pound, the sergeant accepted:
Mr Coady found that he had pitched on the wrong man, the sergeant doubling him up "like a cod in a pot" in the course of a couple of minutes.
It was little wonder Brennan acquired a reputation as a hard and uncompromising policeman.
Government rewards added another dimension to bushranger policing. For poorly paid constables and trackers, the capture of a wanted man could bring a sum representing months or even years of ordinary wages. Promotion could be equally attractive.
This did not mean that officers pursued Hall merely for money. Men such as Brennan, Pottinger, Sanderson and the Aboriginal trackers repeatedly exposed themselves to considerable danger. But reward money undeniably added a powerful incentive to an already intensely competitive pursuit.
Aboriginal trackers were indispensable to this system. Men such as Billy Dargin possessed bush skills upon which officers repeatedly depended, reading tracks across country where European troopers often saw nothing. Their contribution was not peripheral; in many pursuits it was the difference between maintaining a trail and losing it altogether.
The constant expectation of encountering Hall, Gilbert or O’Meally also produced mistakes—and occasionally outright absurdity.
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John Chamber's police employment and dismissal. |
Sir Frederick Pottinger immediately reacted. Sanderson, troopers and a tracker were dispatched, while warnings went out to surrounding police stations.
There was only one problem.
There had been no bushrangers.
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'Old Tom' Gin. A favourite of the 1860s. |
The Lachlan Miner dryly concluded that the affair arose from "a love of nobblers and the chase."
The story became still more embarrassing when it emerged that the fearsome adversary was not even a wild emu, but a local pet named Joe:
"Joe (the Emu) has had a great lark and tremendous battle, in which he has come off victorious."
According to the subsequent account, Joe approached the policemen out of curiosity. They fired repeatedly at him, missed, and eventually put a bullet into their own horse. The two troopers then transformed the encounter into an attack by a gang of bushrangers.
Both men were dismissed.
The episode was comic, but it exposed a serious problem. In a district saturated with rumours, rewards and fear, the mere suggestion that Hall or Gardiner had appeared could send mounted police riding dozens of miles in the wrong direction.
Nor were such lapses confined to inexperienced troopers.
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| Sanderson |
According to the Lachlan Miner, Sanderson arrived drunk, announced at different moments that he was Ben Hall and O’Meally, forced his way into the house, smashed crockery, searched bedrooms and dragged one occupant from bed by his hair.
The Bench treated the matter leniently:
The police had a very onerous duty to perform, and, in carrying out their instructions, did no doubt at times bring about some inconvenience. The defendant paid for the crockery.
The newspaper was less forgiving:
If the onerous duty of the police consists of following Sanderson's example, we think the sooner they are relieved of it the better.
For an officer who had genuinely distinguished himself against Gardiner's gang, it was an inglorious episode. Yet it also illustrates the pressure, exhaustion and alcohol that formed part of frontier policing. Months spent sleeping in the bush, riding exhausted horses and pursuing men who repeatedly disappeared through networks of harbourers and bush telegraphs inevitably took their toll.
By mid-1863, Frank Gardiner had become something larger than the man himself. He was now a spectre haunting the colonial imagination.
A humorous report from the Goulburn Herald captured the phenomenon perfectly. A police officer travelling through the bush heard his own revolver accidentally discharge beside his horse. Convinced that Gardiner and his gang were attacking, he fled into the scrub while the weapon continued firing:
"Mercy! mercy!" he ejaculated as pop went another barrel of his tormentor. "Would you shoot me down in cold blood?"
Only after the revolver had exhausted itself did the supposed attack end.
The newspaper concluded that thereafter:
In every bush, he fears a Gardiner.
The line neatly captured the atmosphere of 1863. Gardiner himself was hundreds of miles away, yet his reputation continued riding the roads of New South Wales. Police pursued him, witnesses identified him and newspapers reported him.
Meanwhile, the men actually responsible for much of the violence—Ben Hall, John Gilbert and John O’Meally—were steadily emerging from beneath his shadow.
Gardiner had left the Lachlan, but his legend had not.
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| NSW Police Gazette 17th June 1863. |
The police force, despite its growing numbers, remained at a persistent disadvantage against the bushrangers. Hall, Gilbert and O’Meally possessed an intimate knowledge of the country, exceptional bushcraft, superior horses and ready access to firearms. Even with the assistance of highly skilled Aboriginal trackers, police patrols were often reacting to movements that had occurred hours, sometimes days, earlier.
Compounding the problem was the local Cone of Silence. Many settlers refused to betray men they had known for years, whether from loyalty, fear, payment or simple distrust of authority. The murder of Mr Cirkel and the repeated failure to capture the principal offenders only intensified public criticism. Some townspeople openly ridiculed the police:
Townspeople are really so uncharitable as to call the police a lot of muffs and cowards, and that they ought to wear crinoline.
Under increasing political pressure, the Cowper Government strengthened the police presence throughout the western districts. The intention was unmistakable: the bushrangers were to be captured, and violent resistance would be met with equal force.
Yet the increased patrols did not immediately restore order. If anything, Hall and his companions became more audacious. Riding some of the finest horses in the district, they could strike quickly, taunt pursuing troopers and disappear before reinforcements arrived. Gilbert in particular appeared to relish ridiculing the police during these encounters.
Police frustrations were compounded in late May when proceedings against Henry Gibson collapsed for lack of sufficient evidence. Gibson, an associate of Hall who had previously lived at Sandy Creek, had been captured after being seen in company with suspected bushrangers. The Attorney-General nevertheless concluded that the evidence could not sustain prosecution and ordered his release.
Sir Frederick Pottinger was waiting.
Within hours Gibson was arrested again, this time on a charge of having:
Aided and assisted certain notorious bushrangers, to wit, Johnny Gilbert, Johnny O'Meally, and Ben Hall, contrary to the statute.
The Sydney Morning Herald of 2 June described the extraordinary sequence. Gibson had barely enjoyed “the sweets of liberty” before Pottinger placed him back under arrest. The Inspector personally prosecuted the matter, telling the Bench that he had repeatedly seen Gibson at Hall’s residence and possessed evidence connecting him with Gilbert, O’Meally and Hall.
The episode demonstrated both Pottinger’s persistence and one of the fundamental difficulties confronting the police: association and suspicion were not enough. However certain officers might have been of a man’s involvement, the courts still required evidence capable of supporting a specific charge.
At the same time, the notoriety of Hall and Gilbert attracted younger men eager for easy money and reputation. Some appeared briefly beside the established bushrangers before disappearing again into ordinary life, gaol or obscurity.
The core group, however, remained increasingly recognisable: Ben Hall, John Gilbert and John O’Meally, with Fred Lowry and other temporary associates moving around them.
By June 1863 the distinction between fugitive and marauding gang had largely disappeared. Hall and his companions were no longer merely robbing isolated travellers. They were beginning to attack settlements and stores in force.
On the night of 8 June 1863, violence erupted around the Main Creek at Lambing Flat. A gang of six or seven bushrangers descended upon several businesses, including O’Brien’s, McCarthy’s and M’Connell’s stores, before continuing to other establishments farther along the road.
Hall, Gilbert and O’Meally were reportedly recognised among them.
The attack on M’Connell’s store was particularly reckless. The occupants barred the building rather than admit the armed men. The bushrangers responded by firing repeatedly through the thin galvanised-iron walls.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported:
Last night there was a general attack made by bushrangers on several stores situated on the Main Creek. O'Brien's and McCarthy’s stores were stuck up. M'Connell's was also broken into, but before they succeeded in obtaining an entrance, the bushrangers actually fired sixteen bullets through the galvanised iron with which the store is built. A considerable sum of money and stores were taken. Heffernan’s public-house, distant about five miles, and Regan's, about twelve miles, were afterwards visited. The well-known trio, GILBERT, O'MEALLY, and HALL were recognised amongst the mob, which consisted of six or seven men.
Other observers counted still more shots:
Bushranging has again broken out in all its former audacity—in fact, eclipsing any previous performances. M'CONNELL'S store, which bore the brunt of the attack, is perfectly riddled. I counted twenty-one bullet holes through the bedroom.
The occupants were extraordinarily fortunate to survive.
A later account described the terrifying scene in greater detail. When M’Connell refused demands to open the store, the gang threatened to blow the building down and then fired approximately twenty-one shots through its walls. Several bullets passed through multiple sheets of zinc and entered adjoining rooms.
One passed within inches of a sleeping child.
M'Connell, in spite of their threats to blow the place down, positively refused to let them in, and thereupon they fired upon the premises no less than twenty-one shots... one of the bullets... passed through no less than four sheets of that material, and afterwards into adjoining premises over the head of a child, who miraculously escaped any injury.
Eventually the front door was forced.
Resistance had become pointless. With no police immediately available and bullets already tearing through the building, one of the M’Connells surrendered the contents of the cash box—about £15—after being confronted with the demand:
"Your money or your life."
The contemporary correspondent could scarcely believe nobody had been killed:
It is only surprising that some lives had not been sacrificed to the daring villainy of this gang... how they escaped injury is a miracle.
The attack marked a further escalation in Hall’s career. Earlier robberies had often relied upon intimidation and the presentation of firearms. At M’Connell’s, the gang fired repeatedly into an occupied building knowing that men, women and a child were inside.
Whatever remnants of the later gentleman bushranger
They were becoming increasingly willing to kill.
Firearms, Reliability, and Violence in the Career of Ben Hall (1861–1865)
Introduction
The popular image of Ben Hall as a “Gentleman Bushranger” has long obscured a harsher reality. Contemporary records — police reports, court testimony, and newspaper accounts — demonstrate that Hall and his associates repeatedly resorted to gunfire when challenged. Whether at homesteads, on coach roads, or during station confrontations, firearms were not theatrical accessories; they were instruments of intimidation and, at times, lethal intent.¹
Understanding the weapons used during Hall’s bushranging period (1861–1865) is essential to appreciating both the level of violence involved and the precariousness of armed encounters in colonial New South Wales. Firearms of the era were powerful but mechanically fragile. Misfires were frequent. Accuracy depended heavily on skill. Explosions and accidental discharges were real dangers. The result was a volatile environment in which survival often depended as much on chance as marksmanship.
An Academic Study of Weapons and Ballistics in the New South Wales Bushranging Era
The bushranging career of Ben Hall (active 1861–1865) unfolded during a transitional period in firearms technology. This study examines the principal weapons employed by Hall and his contemporaries — notably the Colt 1851 Navy revolver, English Tranter and Adams revolvers, and percussion carbines — with particular attention to mechanical reliability, ballistic performance, and their influence on patterns of violence in colonial New South Wales.
Contrary to later romantic representations of bushrangers as theatrical or restrained, documentary evidence demonstrates that these weapons were employed in earnest and often at close range. Yet the technical limitations of percussion firearms — including misfires, fouling, and mechanical fragility — introduced a stochastic element into armed encounters. The outcome of engagements frequently depended not only upon intent or skill, but upon the volatile interaction of black powder, percussion caps, weather, and maintenance.
A technical appendix below provides ballistic comparisons among representative weapons of the period.
Violence and the “Gentleman Bushranger”
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries fostered a mythologised image of Ben Hall as a restrained or chivalrous outlaw. However, the attack on the Frobes Gold Escort, Goimbla Station (November 1863), the raid on Canowindra (September 1863), and multiple armed bail-ups across the Lachlan, Bland and Goulburn districts reveal a pattern of deliberate armed intimidation supported by sustained gunfire.²
These incidents were not symbolic displays. They involved percussion revolvers and carbines capable of lethal force at close range.
Understanding the material culture of bushranging — specifically firearms technology — is therefore essential to evaluating both the scale and the nature of violence in Hall’s career.
II. Firearms in Colonial New South Wales
By the mid-1850s, the Australian goldfields had introduced significant numbers of American percussion revolvers into the colony.³ Among these, the most influential was the Colt Model 1851 Navy revolver.
1. The Colt 1851 Navy Revolver
The Colt Navy became the dominant sidearm in New South Wales during the 1860s.
Specifications:
Calibre: .36
Action: Single-action percussion
Capacity: Six-shot cylinder
Projectile: Lead round ball (~80–90 grains)
Powder charge: 20–30 grains black powder
Muzzle velocity: ~900–1,000 ft/s⁴
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whBz2kAa-EI&t=3s
This short video is a great illustration of how the bushrangers loaded their revolvers.
Courtesy of DrakeGmbH channel YouTube.
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Typical Colt Revolver Clylinder with Percussion cap Nipples. |
When properly maintained, the Colt Navy was accurate at short distances (10–30 yards) and capable of penetrating timber boards and flesh with lethal effect.⁵ However, reliability was contingent upon meticulous loading and maintenance.
III. Misfire Rates and Mechanical Vulnerability
Percussion firearms were inherently vulnerable to environmental and mechanical failure.
Common Causes of Misfire:
Improper cap seating
Moisture contamination of black powder
Insufficient powder charge
Overloading (risking cylinder rupture)
Carbon fouling after repeated discharge
Contemporary military records from the American Civil War (a comparable percussion environment) suggest misfire rates ranging between 5–15% in adverse conditions.⁶ Given similar climatic challenges in inland New South Wales, comparable unreliability is likely.
In several documented bushranging encounters, police carbines or revolvers reportedly “snapped” without firing — an audible hammer fall without discharge.⁷ Such events could alter tactical outcomes dramatically.
Thus, the absence of fatalities in some engagements does not necessarily reflect restraint; it may reflect mechanical failure.
IV. Carbines and Long Arms
Both bushrangers and police utilised percussion carbines and rifles.
Characteristics:
Paper cartridge loading
Percussion cap ignition
Longer barrel (improved velocity and accuracy)
Slower reload time
Police-issued carbines provided greater effective range (50–100 yards) compared to revolvers.⁸ However, in night engagements or close-quarter station attacks, revolvers were often tactically preferable.
V. English Revolvers: Tranter and Adams
By the early 1860s, English-manufactured revolvers gained prestige in colonial circles.
Tranter Revolvers
Often featured a double-trigger system
Robust solid-frame construction
Improved mechanical reliability
Adams Revolvers
Double-action capability
Faster firing without manual cocking
Favoured by British officers
These revolvers were more expensive imports and symbolised technical superiority.⁹ Their acquisition by bushrangers suggests a conscious pursuit of mechanical advantage.
VI. Tactical Realities of Armed Encounters
Bushranging engagements were typically:
Conducted at short range
Executed under low-light conditions
Obscured by black powder smoke
Dependent upon cover (trees, fences, verandahs)
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Reputed revolver of Ben Hall, five-shot, .31 calibre, 5" barrel 1849 Pocket Colt revolver. |
Despite this, lethality at close range was substantial. A .36 calibre lead ball travelling at 900 ft/s delivered sufficient energy to penetrate human tissue and light timber.¹⁰
Violence, therefore, was neither symbolic nor harmless. It was real, though mediated by unreliable technology.
VII. Violence Versus Myth
The persistence of the “Gentleman Bushranger” narrative for Ben Hall rests partly upon the relatively low fatality rate in some incidents. However:
Arson was employed (e.g., Goimbla Station)
Sustained volleys were fired into dwellings
Armed intimidation was systematic
The survival of victims often resulted from misfire, poor aim in darkness, or structural cover — not deliberate mercy.
The stochastic element introduced by percussion technology complicates simplistic moral interpretations.
VIII. Conclusion
Ben Hall operated within a firearms environment defined by:
Substantial lethality
Significant unreliability
High variability in outcomes
Violence during 1861–1865 cannot be understood apart from the technical constraints of percussion-era weapons. Firearms were central, not incidental, to bushranging operations.
The mythology of restraint dissolves under technical scrutiny. Furthermore in many cases the bushranger advantage was multiple cylinders full loaded and replaced without the need to reload individually. It became standard practise for Hall, Gilbert and O’Meally.
Technical Appendix: Ballistic Comparisons Overview
Observations:
Revolvers delivered moderate energy suitable for close combat.
Carbines produced significantly higher muzzle energy.
Percussion systems remained mechanically fragile across all platforms.
Reload speed for revolvers (~1–2 minutes full reload) was mitigated by spare cylinders or multiple weapons.
Hall’s career unfolded in a world where every pull of the trigger carried not only intent but risk — a world shaped as much by black powder and percussion caps as by myth and memory. The weapons highlighted ultimately ended Hall’s life on the 5th May 1865.
My Footnotes
Empire (Sydney), 1863–1865 reports on Lachlan district bushranging.
Sydney Morning Herald, reports on Goimbla attack (1863).
Colonial import records, New South Wales, mid-1850s gold rush period.
Flayderman, N., Flayderman’s Guide to Antique American Firearms (9th ed.).
Skennerton, I., Colonial Firearms of Australia.
Wiley, B., The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union.
NSW Police Court records, 1862–1865 (Escort trials and related cases).
NSW Government Gazette, Police equipment returns (1860s).
Maze, R., Adams & Tranter Revolvers of the British Empire.
While Ben Hall was rising to notoriety across the Lachlan, trouble continued to follow the Hall family at Murrurundi. His elder brother Edward Hall was again before the courts, this time charged with compounding a felony.
Author’s Note: Compounding a felony was the offence of accepting money, reward, or some other consideration in return for agreeing not to prosecute, disclose, or give evidence concerning a felony committed by another person.
Meanwhile, following the violent attack on M'Connell's store, Ben Hall and his companions openly boasted that they no longer feared the police:
They did not fear the police, who they said were afraid of them, and declared that they would never be taken alive; in their own words, that, as they knew they would have to swing when taken, they would sell their lives as dearly as possible.¹⁰⁶
Such statements reveal the increasingly fatalistic character of the gang by mid-1863. Hall and his companions understood that conviction for their escalating offences could end at the gallows, and they were now openly declaring their intention to resist capture.
Hall still had family scattered throughout the districts in which he operated. His brothers William, Thomas and Robert were all potential points of contact, although there is no firm evidence that Robert directly participated in Ben's bushranging activities. Family connections could provide information, food, horses or temporary shelter, but they could equally become liabilities under police scrutiny.
Robert had recently completed six months in Maitland Gaol after being convicted of:
Illegally using 2 bullocks the property of Alexander Brodie J.P. and Fred White J.P.
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| Robert Hall Maitland Gaol Entrance Book December 1862 |
Whatever assistance Ben received from his brothers, there is no need to assume that all approved of his increasingly violent career. Familial loyalty could coexist with disapproval, fear and attempts to persuade him to surrender. What can be established is that Hall retained an extensive network of relatives, former stockmen and acquaintances throughout the country in which he operated.
The violent raid on M'Connell's premises intensified public anger. An Empire correspondent, writing on 9 June 1863, was incredulous at the ease with which Hall's gang moved from one business to another while the police appeared incapable of mounting an effective pursuit:
Bushranging has again appeared in all its pristine vigour and reckless audacity. Unmolested, proceeding down the Main Creek to Heffernan's public house, where they had drinks, taking with them a revolver, a silver watch, and seven bottles of brandy. They then visited Regan's Hotel, near White's station singing as they approached the house, the very appropriate song of O'er the hills and far away.
The correspondent was even more scathing about the police response:
The camp being less than one mile from the scene of this outrage, a body of police arrived about midnight, being nearly an hour and a half after the robbers had decamped... looked for footprints, asked a lot of stupid questions... but never attempted to move one step in pursuit of the ruffians.
The writer's fury reflected a growing public perception that the newly reorganised police force was failing badly in the western districts. Promises that the bushrangers were being "hemmed in" rang increasingly hollow while Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally continued to rob stores within sight of police establishments.
The correspondent warned that another killing like that of Mr Cirkel might provoke vigilante retaliation:
The pent-up indignation of an outraged population will rush forth in such a stream as will carry before it the feeble barrier now existing between constituted authority and Judge Lynch.
Whether exaggerated or not, such language demonstrates how deeply bushranging had become entangled with the political debate surrounding policing in New South Wales.
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| Charles Cowper |
Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally appeared largely indifferent to the turmoil in Sydney. Contemporary reports still sometimes described Gilbert as the leader, although Hall was increasingly emerging as the stabilising figure around whom the gang operated. They continued to raid stores, stations and travellers, then disappear into friendly districts where information, food and fresh horses could be obtained.
One newspaper summarised the situation bleakly:
For many months past, they have almost enjoyed a monopoly of the terror and panic created by the bushrangers... There is hardly a store which has not been plundered... The police are as powerless, the bushrangers as bold and daring as ever.
The criticism extended beyond individual officers to the entire system. Rural communities were questioning whether the new police structure was capable of protecting them at all.
Yet the bushranging crisis did not suspend colonial social life. Horse racing remained one of the great entertainments of the bush, and race meetings drew enormous crowds from stations, mining camps and settlements.
Meetings often extended over several days. Significant purses were offered, side bets flourished, and the racing was followed by drinking, dining and dancing. For isolated settlers, it was one of the few major social occasions of the year.
The meetings also attracted bushrangers.
Hall and Gilbert were both passionate horsemen, and the racecourse provided opportunities to inspect bloodstock, gather intelligence, gamble and mingle among crowds where sympathetic acquaintances could provide concealment.
Gilbert was reportedly particularly inventive in disguise:
Gilbert, it is well known, attended the last Young races mounted on horseback, disguised in a lady's riding habit, hat and feather. His smooth, good-looking face much assists him in this respect.
The police naturally attended as well. Officers sometimes acted as race officials, while others watched for wanted men among the crowds.
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| Pottinger |
Sir Frederick Pottinger, as usual, created much amusement by appearing on the racecourse with blankets strapped on before him on the saddle; a quart pot, a pair of hobbles, and a pair of handcuffs being artistically arranged around other parts of his saddle. His man Friday, in the shape of a black tracker, followed him.
The ridicule followed Pottinger relentlessly, particularly after Gardiner's escape at Wheogo in August 1862. Yet there was irony in mocking the equipment strapped to his saddle: blankets, hobbles and quart pots were precisely what officers required when spending days or weeks in the bush.
The fundamental disadvantage facing the police was not always cowardice or incompetence. Many newly recruited troopers were immigrants from Britain or Ireland with almost no experience of Australian bushcraft. Others came from America or Canada. They entered a landscape that men such as Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally had known since childhood.
For an inexperienced mounted policeman, the Australian bush could be lethal.
On 25 February 1863, Trooper Jeremiah O'Horregan drowned while attempting to cross the flooded Lachlan River after returning from duty near the Weddin Mountains:
It appears the horse was carried down a short distance by the current, when O'Horregan, who had very little experience in swimming a horse, checked his charger with the rein, instead of allowing it to make for the opposite bank according to its own instincts. The result was the horse rolled over, and the rider was pitched into the river.
Unable to swim, O'Horregan drowned despite the efforts of two Aboriginal men on the riverbank who attempted to rescue him.
The hazards were not restricted to police. Immigrants travelling alone between goldfields could become lost almost within sight of civilisation. One unfortunate traveller was later found dead between the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee, beside a note containing the stark words:
Died want of water.
The gulf between imported troopers and native-born bushmen was repeatedly noted:
The troopers are, for the most part, unacquainted with the country... unless men were trained to bush riding they would never be good at it, for it was a very different thing from riding in the streets of Sydney.¹⁰⁹
Hall and Gilbert had effectively been born in the saddle. Against them, a new recruit could possess courage and discipline yet still be hopelessly outmatched in bushcraft.
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Robert's 'Currowang Station' stables. c. 1863. Courtesy Young Witness. |
The circumstances proved particularly embarrassing for the police because Sub-Inspector Wolfe was reportedly inside Roberts' house when the horses disappeared:
These lawless desperadoes are carrying on their depredations with such barefaced impudence... They forced an entrance into the stables and rode off with the race-horses, Mickey Hunter and Chinaman.
The correspondent could not resist adding:
Mr Sub Inspector Wolfe was at the time enjoying his pipe and glass in Mr Robert's hospitable parlour, but, on the appalling discovery, he gallantly rushed out, and with the presence of mind equal only to the rashness of his valour—locked the stable door! Verily all our police Wolves are innocent Lambs!¹¹⁰
The ridicule was savage, but the theft again demonstrated one of the gang's greatest advantages: access to elite horseflesh. A fast horse could mean the difference between capture and freedom.
Only days later came a far darker episode.
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| John Gilbert |
A contemporary account described M'Bride making his stand behind a tree:
He fired five shots at the two ruffians... having but one more shot left, he made for a tree and stood his ground nobly.Gilbert and Lowry separated, firing from different angles. M'Bride was eventually struck in the thigh and mortally wounded. Even after being hit, he reportedly continued moving around the tree, leaving blood upon the ground before firing his final shot through Lowry's hat.
According to the hostile newspaper account:
Gilbert then dismounted, rifled the dying man's pockets, and, taking his revolver, the two rode off, laughing.¹¹¹
M'Bride endured a painful journey towards Lambing Flat Hospital but died from his wounds.
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NSW Police Gazette. 1863. |
I'm sorry for this. I've never wanted to kill a man, especially a brave bloke like this feller.
Whether sincere or self-serving, the remark did nothing to alter the outcome. A man was dead.
O'Meally had been wrongly implicated in M'Bride's shooting. A week later, on 28 June, he was instead with Hall when the pair held up Gordon's coach at Croaker's Inn. They then stopped a storekeeper's assistant near Main Creek:
A storekeeper's assistant was stopped while crossing the Main Creek... by two armed men, well mounted. He was ordered to get off his horse and deliver up his cash.¹¹²
On 29 June, the NSW Police Gazette recorded another robbery involving a man whose description corresponded closely with Hall. He was reportedly riding the stolen racehorse Mickey Hunter and robbed an employee of Young storekeeper Miles Murphy of approximately 11½ pennyweights of gold, a £1 note and 27 shillings in silver.
The police possessed one technological advantage the bushrangers could not match: the electric telegraph.
A robbery could now be reported across great distances in minutes rather than days. Hall and his companions evidently understood the danger.
By June 1863, they began physically attacking the network.
The Sydney Mail reported:
Another precaution taken by the desperadoes on Sunday morning was that of cutting the telegraph wires... and carrying away some portion of it... there is no doubt that if the present state of things exists much longer telegraphic communication will be entirely stopped.
The bushrangers were no longer merely avoiding the police. They were actively disrupting the infrastructure by which the police communicated.
Yet Hall possessed an information network of his own: the bush telegraph.
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| Bushranger Protests |
One Lambing Flat storekeeper who had purchased gold at Wombat was fortunate enough to join a police patrol for protection.
Near Stoney Creek one of the troopers suddenly exclaimed:
"By Jove, there they are."
On a nearby timbered rise sat four bushrangers—Gilbert, O'Meally, Lowry and Hall—apparently watching the storekeeper they had intended to rob.
The police charged.
For roughly a mile and a half the troopers managed to hold their ground, firing occasional shots as the chase swept across the countryside. Then the quality of the bushrangers' horses asserted itself.
The police mounts began to tire.
The gang disappeared ahead.
An eyewitness recalled:
The pace of the bushrangers' horses was tremendous, particularly Gilbert's Jacky Morgan, which went like the wind.
Again the essential advantage of Hall's gang was revealed. Intelligence told them where the money was. Bushcraft told them where to wait. And when the police arrived, superior horses carried them beyond reach.
For the moment, the law could communicate faster than ever before.
Ben Hall could still ride faster than the men sent to catch him.
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| 'The Darkey' |
By mid-1863, despite Frank Gardiner’s long absence from New South Wales, his name still dominated the newspapers. The colonial press was reluctant to surrender the legend of The Darkie, and treated his disappearance almost as though the head of a notorious commercial enterprise had suddenly retired.
The Illawarra Mercury, borrowing from Bell’s Life in Sydney, satirised the changing leadership of the bushranging fraternity as a corporate restructuring. Gardiner had supposedly retired from the firm of “Gardiner, Gilbert and Co.”, leaving John Gilbert and John O’Meally to continue the business.
It appears that the famous bushranger, Gardiner, has somehow backed out of his bushranging business, and retired from public life, leaving his associate Gilbert at the head of the concern...
The mock notice continued by announcing that the partnership had been dissolved and that the business would henceforth operate as “Gilbert and Company”, with the new proprietors promising to continue attending diligently to the mails, treating female travellers with courtesy and exchanging racehorses on liberal terms.¹¹⁴
Behind the humour lay an important change. Gardiner was gone, yet bushranging had not diminished. Gilbert, long regarded as his lieutenant, was now being presented as his successor. Before long, however, another name would increasingly eclipse even Gilbert’s: Ben Hall.
The gang itself was also changing.
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Fred Lowry dead. The photo was taken at Goulburn Hospital. 1863. |
Lowry would never again ride with Hall, Gilbert or O’Meally. On 29 August 1863, only weeks after the Mudgee robbery, he was cornered at Vardy’s Inn on Cook’s Vale Creek and mortally wounded by Senior Sergeant Stevenson. As he lay dying, Lowry was reputed to have said:
“Tell ’em I died game.”¹¹⁵
The M’Bride affair also appears to have contributed to a temporary division within Hall’s circle. Rumours circulated of disagreements between Hall and Gilbert over methods and leadership. Whatever the precise cause, Gilbert and O’Meally moved south towards Junee while Hall remained apart.
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| John Hammond |
Gilbert and O’Mealley stuck up a store and public-house at Junee on Wednesday last. They got away with their plunder. The police are now in pursuit.
John Hammond later described the incident in a letter written from Junee. His brother Albert had entered the store while the bushrangers were inside and was himself bailed up, but managed to slip away unnoticed and run for assistance.
“It is but two hours ago that the public-house store at Junee was stuck up by Gilbert and O’Meally, who robbed the place of goods and money to the amount of £50 or more... Albert just went to the store while they were there, and got bailed up too. He, however, went outside and gave the robbers the slip...”
Hammond armed himself and gathered two other men, but by the time they reached the store the bushrangers had gone.
“These are the men who are supposed to have shot a digger a few days since at Lambing Flat. They are well mounted and do not seem to stick at anything. I hope they will be taken, as no one is safe in this neighbourhood.”
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| Mrs Hammond. c. 1860. |
Gilbert and O’Meally soon shifted east towards Carcoar. There they renewed contact with John Vane, a young stockman already on the run and known to O’Meally from earlier days around the Weddin Mountains. Vane’s intimate knowledge of the surrounding countryside made him a valuable ally.
During this separation, Vane later recalled that Ben Hall had established himself around Mimmegong, a large sheep station outside Young. Vane described accompanying Hall from there to collect clothing that had been left with a woman to be washed:
“Ben Hall asked me to accompany him to a place some miles distant, where he had left some shirts there to be washed; we rode there together and returned early afternoon.”
The seemingly mundane detail is revealing. Even while hunted by police, Hall still moved through a network of acquaintances who could provide food, washing, shelter, and information.
Susan Prior and Hall’s infant daughter Mary were also back in the Lambing Flat district during this period. After the destruction of Sandy Creek in March 1863, Susan, her mother Mary and her younger sister Charlotte had returned towards Young. Susan would later move to Boorowa.
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| Pentrow |
“A person not fit to be at large, and it was necessary he should be secluded from society for some considerable time.”¹¹⁶
The consequences for Charlotte were tragic. She died by suicide the following year, aged only fourteen.
Mary Prior’s presence at Sandy Creek also corrects another error in the historical record. After Hall’s house was burned, Pottinger reported that Hall’s mother had been among the occupants:
“The house was at the time occupied by Henry Gibson... Mrs McGuire, and Susan Pryor, and Hall’s mother...”¹¹⁷
The evidence instead indicates that the older woman was almost certainly Susan’s mother, Mary Prior, who had been living there to assist her daughter after Mary's birth in January.
By this stage Hall could move remarkably freely around the sprawling Burrangong goldfield. Lambing Flat still contained several thousand people scattered over many miles of diggings, stores, shanties and camps. A contemporary description estimated the population at between four and five thousand, spread across settlements including Wombat, Little Wombat, Stoney Creek, Spring Creek, Victoria Gully, Petticoat Flat, Chance Gully and the Twelve-mile Rush.¹¹⁸
Such a dispersed population provided ideal cover. Hall was notorious by name but still not universally recognised by sight. Dressed as a stockman or miner, he could disappear into the movement of men, horses and supplies that constantly crossed the district.
For the miners, however, Hall and his companions were becoming intolerable.
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Lambing Flat Goldfield. For an enhanced view, open in a new tab. Courtesy of the Young Historical Society.
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Increasingly, miners asked the obvious question: where were the police?
After repeated robberies, shootings and the death of M’Bride, frustration boiled over. A public meeting was called at Burrangong for 4 July 1863 to demand stronger protection from the Cowper Government.
One correspondent wrote bitterly:
The present position of this gold-field demands the instant attention of every inhabitant... To meet this emergency, and exterminate these murderous Ishmaelites, we doubt not that good men and true will be found in our midst...
The language was extreme, but it reflected the mood. By the winter of 1863, Hall, Gilbert and O’Meally were no longer merely colourful figures in newspaper columns. To many people living and working across the western and southern goldfields, they represented a direct threat to life, property and livelihood.
And increasingly, the public was losing patience not only with the bushrangers, but with the police and government that seemed unable to stop them.
(See the link attached below.)The miners' agitation revealed something more serious than simple dissatisfaction with the police. By July 1863, a section of the Burrangong population was beginning to lose faith in the NSW Government's ability to protect them. Beneath the language of petitions and public meetings lay a more ominous warning: if the authorities could not suppress Hall and the other bushrangers, the miners might do it themselves.
The possibility of Lynch law was no longer merely rhetorical. Men who had worked for weeks to accumulate a few ounces of gold were expected to travel roads where armed bushrangers could relieve them of their earnings in minutes. Resistance might mean death.
As one speaker warned:
No person could leave his tent to go to a rush without being almost certain to be stuck-up and if he showed fight would perhaps be murdered. This feverish state of existence cannot be tolerated much longer.
The message to the Cowper Government was unmistakable. Unless the police produced results, the inhabitants might organise their own protection.
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Captain Zouch. c. 1860 |
Captain Zouch returned this afternoon, after being several days in the bush. He brought with him two men, who, in company with Ben Hall, had stuck up and robbed some teams on the Lachlan Road on Saturday last, 4th July 1863.¹¹⁹
One of those drawn into Hall's orbit was Chambers, whose recent history carried extraordinary irony. Only weeks earlier he had been a police constable. Chambers and fellow trooper Neilson had been dismissed following the infamous episode in which, after drinking, they claimed to have fought a party of bushrangers when in reality they had encountered Joe, a pet emu, and accidentally shot their own horse.
Now Chambers had fallen in with the very man he had once imagined the emu to be. Convicted of highway robbery, he received three years' hard labour.
By mid-July, however, the pressure on Hall was increasing. On 15 July Sir Frederick Pottinger arrived at Young, once again combining bushranger hunting with his enthusiasm for the local races:
Sir F. Pottinger arrived here this evening from the Lachlan. It is reported that two Chinese were stuck-up near Back Creek, but there are no other particulars about the robbery.¹²⁰
Pottinger's arrival was unwelcome news for Hall. With police patrols thickening around Young and Burrangong, Hall withdrew towards the more remote country around Mimmegong Station, approximately nine miles west of Young.
Pottinger, meanwhile, reported to Inspector-General McLerie on the miners' agitation:
Arrived here last night at half-past six... A meeting was held yesterday at the Twelve Mile Rush—about 120 present—at which it was resolved to draw up a petition for signature by the miners, to be forwarded to the Government, relative to the prevalence of crime in the district.¹²¹
Pottinger's estimate of the attendance was conveniently modest. With the Government already under sustained criticism over bushranging, neither the local police nor their commanders had much interest in portraying the Burrangong population as being on the verge of taking matters into its own hands.
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Mimmegong Station Homestead. c. 1889. Courtesy NLA. |
Yet contemporary reporting strips much of the later romance from Hall's existence. Whatever excitement bushranging offered, by the winter of 1863 it also meant hunger, cold, suspicion and constant movement. The Sydney Mail captured the reality particularly well:
To be hunted about—never able to stay long in the same place—to be always in fear of treachery—to know none of the enjoyments of civilised life, none of the comforts of home—to be alarmed at the sound of every unexpected tread—to have no livelihood except what comes from fresh robbery, and to be always in danger of a struggle which may end in murder—this can hardly be a very jolly life.¹²²
Winter made matters worse:
Winter is now fairly upon us, and during the last week we have had the first instalment of snow, accompanied by a bitingly cold wind...¹²³
A shepherd's hut, abandoned dwelling or friendly station was therefore more than a convenience. It could mean the difference between a tolerable night and hours exposed to freezing rain and wind.
Hall's financial circumstances also appear to have tightened. On 13 July, at Possum Flat near Young, two travellers encountered a lone bushranger believed to be Hall:
MESSRS. Throsby and Murphy were stuck-up this afternoon, on Possum Flat, near this township, by a man supposed to be Ben Hall. Fortunately, they had no money with them. The bushranger only exchanged his saddle for Mr Murphy's, and complained of the hard times, stating that he was very hard up, from the fact that no one now-a-days carried any money with them.¹²⁴
The remark is revealing. The increasing use of bank drafts and the Post Office Money Order system was beginning to deprive highwaymen of one of their easiest sources of income: travellers carrying cash.
Hall still had expenses. Food, information, shelter and assistance from harbourers did not necessarily come freely. A bushranger without ready money became increasingly dependent upon fresh robberies.
Meanwhile, reports concerning Gardiner were finally beginning to acknowledge reality. For months virtually every major robbery had been attributed to The Darkie, but some correspondents were now openly questioning the fiction:
“It has been the rule for many months to head paragraphs in the various country newspapers with "Gardiner and his gang"... I think, if the fact is ever proved as to the whereabouts of Gardiner, it will be found that for at least the last nine months Gardiner has never been in New South Wales.”¹²⁶
Another report simply observed:
“It is said that Frank Gardiner is in California. As we hear nothing of his exploits now I suppose he has left the colony, but I don't believe anyone knows where he is.”¹²⁷
Gardiner's fame had become so ubiquitous that his name could even provide a drunken man with a moment of notoriety. At West Maitland, an Aboriginal man arrested for drunkenness initially gave his name to police as Frank Gardiner, before admitting in court that he was actually Frank Edwards.¹²⁸
While Gardiner had disappeared, the machinery that had helped sustain his gang remained firmly in place. Parliament heard descriptions of the sophisticated bush telegraph operating throughout the disturbed districts. Messages did not always require letters or even words. A boy sent along a particular road, riding a particular horse, could itself constitute a signal:
“Thus, by various signs and tokens, the people who were entitled to be unsuspected are really the most effective abettors of robbery and pillage.”¹²⁹
This was what made the police task so difficult. Hall knew the country; many of the troopers did not. Hall could obtain fresh horses; police mounts became exhausted. Most importantly, Hall could sometimes know where the police were before the police knew where he was.
Suspicion consequently spread beyond poor settlers and obvious harbourers. Some commentators believed respectable landholders, journalists and even politicians were knowingly or reluctantly assisting what one newspaper called "Thiefdom."
“The Thiefdom has its correspondents, its journals, and its representatives... There is good reason to believe that persons of property are in league with the thieves, so far as to permit the use of the various retreats found on their land, and even to supply the robbers with necessaries.”¹³⁰
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Joseph Jehoshaphat Harpur. (1810-1878) |
Yet while politicians argued in Sydney, Hall was experiencing a far more immediate problem around Mimmegong.
On 20 July a police patrol surprised Hall and two companions near the station. The pursuit came late in the day, and darkness again worked in the bushrangers' favour. One rider's horse was exhausted, forcing him to abandon it and disappear into the scrub:
One of the robbers, whose horse was knocked up, threw himself out of the saddle and escaped into the scrub; his two companions were equally fortunate, although fired at several times; but the increasing darkness of the evening favoured them and baffled the troopers.
The abandoned horse was soon identified. It was Mickey Hunter, the valuable racehorse stolen from Mr Roberts at Currawong.
Its condition told its own story:
“Mickey Hunter, Mr Robert's racer, some time since stolen from his stable at Currawong. The poor animal is in a most deplorable condition, nothing but skin and bones, with scarcely a leg fit to stand on. He has been restored to his owner.”¹³¹
The once valuable racer had effectively been ridden into the ground.
Another account placed the encounter about nine miles from Young near Mimmegong and suggested Hall had been caught completely by surprise.
“The police recovered horses, saddle, bridle and poncho while the bushranger escaped among the rocks.”¹³²
Then, on the same evening, Hall reportedly encountered a lone trooper.
The constable ordered him to "stand in the Queen's name." When Hall continued edging away, the trooper challenged him to make good his reputed contempt for the police and face him single-handedly. Hall declined the invitation and bolted.
The trooper fired.
Once again darkness saved Hall, but another horse, together with Hall's hat and poncho, fell into police hands:
“The darkness favoured escape; but so confident was the constable that he must have wounded Hall, that a party went out next morning to search the bush, but without success.”¹³³
Within a matter of days Hall had twice escaped capture and twice lost a horse and equipment.
For once, the police appeared to be gaining ground.
Heavy patrols, arrests of associates, bad weather, exhausted horses and diminishing quantities of cash on travellers were beginning to constrain Hall's operations. Reports from Young noted an unusual development:
There is nothing new in robberies this week since that of Murphy's.
Even Colonial Secretary Cowper conceded in Parliament that the problem had contracted to a small hard core: (At the time of the report Lowry was dead.)
The only three or four bushrangers at present giving all the trouble about Young are John O'Mealy, John Gilbert, Ben Hall, and perhaps Lowry.
Frustration nevertheless produced increasingly severe proposals. One correspondent to the Sydney Morning Herald suggested resurrecting the methods of Frederick Walker's Native Police, arguing that Aboriginal troopers capable of tracking Hall relentlessly through the bush could succeed where conventional police had failed:
“What can your police, that has to learn the country first, do against native lads, able to ride from their cradle, and now mounted on good racehorses?... when it comes to the close, there's little about taking alive, I dare say; they'll be taken dead.”¹³⁴
It was a chilling proposal: defeat the bushrangers by employing men who could match their horsemanship, bushcraft and endurance, with little expectation that the final encounter would end in arrest.
The Government did not adopt the suggestion.
Instead, police numbers and patrols continued to squeeze Hall's operating ground. By the end of July, the combination of bad weather and relentless police activity had produced an unusual calm. One correspondent could not resist turning the tables on the authorities:
“Last evening three bushrangers espied a large body of troopers and immediately gave chase. The darkness of the evening favoured the escape of the troopers and baffled the bushrangers. The appetites of Captain M'Lerie and Sir F. Pottinger continue in undiminished vigour.¹³⁵
By 3 August the change was undeniable:
“I cannot, as usual, commence with the details of a murder or robbery, for strange to say, no robbery of any note had been committed here for more than a fortnight... Having been rather hard worked lately, the scoundrels are now taking "a spell", dissipating the fruits of their labour, and enjoying themselves until the Inspector-General returns to Sydney.”¹³⁶
The weather provided another explanation:
“During the past fortnight, we have had heavy rains and gales of wind—Business dull.”¹³⁷
For the first time in months, Hall appeared to have been pushed onto the defensive.
But the respite was deceptive. Gilbert and O'Meally were on their way back, and with them came John Vane and Micky Burke.
The next incarnation of Hall's gang was about to take shape.
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| "Have you seen the Traps?" A typical Watch Box. Courtesy NLA. |
Ben Hall had meanwhile retired to the back country around Mimmegong Station, about nine miles west of Young. The country surrounding Mimmegong consisted largely of open grazing land broken by low hills, granite outcrops and stretches of thick scrub. Numerous creeks and waterholes crossed the district, while the large pastoral runs maintained remote shepherds' huts, sometimes referred to as watch boxes, far from the head station.
For a bushranger wishing to disappear, these isolated huts offered an ideal refuge. They generally contained enough basic provisions to sustain a shepherd for some time and could provide Hall with food and shelter during the bitter winter months, when both were sometimes difficult to obtain. One account described the conditions under which shepherds lived:
The country at that time was mostly open country, with very few fences. Sheep farmers had to employ shepherds. The pay was usually 10/ per week and rations, which consisted of 8lb. meat, 8lb. flour, 2lb. sugar and 6lb. tea.
These remote huts and outstations also provided convenient rendezvous points. In due course Hall would be rejoined by Gilbert and O'Meally, who were still attracting considerable attention around the Carcoar and Bathurst districts.
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Henry Hickles, NSW Police Gazette. 7 September 1863. |
The attempt itself quickly unravelled. Gilbert and O'Meally entered the bank and presented a cheque to the teller, but when they produced their revolvers the alarm was raised. The manager ran for the police while the teller, Mr Parker, dropped behind the counter, seized a revolver and fired two shots. The bushrangers abandoned the attempt and escaped on horseback.
Yesterday two men rode up to the Commercial Bank in Carcoar, and went inside. They presented a cheque to the teller, and while he was looking at it they suddenly presented a revolver and ordered him to remain quiet. The manager, who had been out, was coming into the bank at the time, and seeing what was going on, turned and ran for the police. The teller, Mr Parker, by a sudden movement, dropped behind the counter where a revolver was concealed, and, to give the alarm, fired two shots. The bushrangers, being thus frustrated, rushed to their horses, and, though followed soon after by the police, escaped.
Their failure at Carcoar did not end the day's activities. Later that day they rode to nearby Caloola and robbed Mr Hosie's store, taking money, goods and horses:
The two men are supposed to be the same who stuck-up Mr Hosie's store at Caloola, whence they took to the value of £300 in money, and goods consisting of silk dresses, boots, shoes, and two horses on which to carry their booty. Throughout these two proceedings, the bushrangers were quite self-possessed and rode away leisurely. Policemen are dispatched hence in pursuit.¹³⁹
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| Burke & Vane |
Their association soon became much more active.
On the night of Sunday, 2nd August 1863, Vane and Burke went to Coombing Park, the property of the prominent Icely family near Carcoar. There they stole two exceptional horses: the racehorse Comus II and a fine grey belonging to visiting police officer Inspector James Henry Davidson.
During the theft, an elderly stable hand known as 'German Charley' surprised the men. Burke fired at him, the ball striking the unfortunate man in the mouth. The Bathurst Times of 6th August 1863 reported:
Information has reached us of a most daring robbery and cold-blooded attempt at murder, committed on Sunday night last, at Coombing, near Carcoar, the residence of T. R. Icely, Esq., J.P. It appears that, during the night, a noise was heard in the stables by an old man, who at once proceeded to ascertain the cause. Arrived at the stable door, in which Mr Icely's horse, a very valuable animal, and a charger, (also a splendid horse) belonging to Inspector Davidson, who had left it there in place of a fresh horse, whilst in pursuit of the villains who attempted to rob the Carcoar Bank, the old man saw two men busily engaged in saddling the horses above mentioned. He hailed the men and asked them what they were doing there when one of the scoundrels deliberately fired a pistol at him. The ball took effect in the old man's mouth and laid him prostrate. The robbers quickly concluded their preparations and rode away on the stolen horses. We learn that a number of settlers and townsmen of Carcoar have been sworn in as special constables, and are now scouring the country in pursuit of the robbers. The above facts have come to us indirectly, but we have no reason to doubt their authenticity. With reference to the wounded man, we have the satisfaction to add, that the bullet had been extracted from the wound and that he is progressing favourably, though his advanced age renders his ultimate recovery extremely uncertain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSMfWDsVX7E
A short video of Teasdale Park, filmed by Craig Bratby, author of
John Vane, Biography of a Bushranger.
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| Constable Sutton |
A later account recorded the mounts used by the bushrangers:
O'Meally rode Comus, John Vane Davidson's grey, and Gilbert a racehorse called Matheroo, stolen some ten days since from Grant—three first-rate horses, and Edric says all in splendid condition. Comus seemed to have been taken great care of and he said looked as well as he ever saw him but became unmanageable, and almost brought his rider to grief. The attack doubtless was daring, but I don't think the bushrangers showed much pluck. They each had a double-barrelled gun and a brace of revolvers, but they seem only to have used their guns—the only shot fired from a pistol was the one that wounded Sutton.
The encounter also exposed tensions within the gang. Gilbert and O'Meally were both strong personalities and apparently quarrelled over their conduct during the fight:
Gilbert told us later that O'Meally had called him a coward for running away up the ridge, and he replied that if he had not done so he would not of got the 'Bobbies' revolver.
Vane continued:
At this O'Meally growled and said to Gilbert, "if I hadn't followed you the 'trap' would of shot you in the back, and that is the way you will be shot yet..."
Vane later recalled:
More than once Burke and I had to act as peacemakers for the two often used to have little growls, and we had to step in when they were getting too hot on the job.
He also remarked:
Gilbert was certainly fond of 'turning tail' and we all occasionally had a peg at him for dodging in that fashion.
Whether these quarrels were as serious as Vane later portrayed them is hard to determine, but they show the gang was hardly the disciplined organisation later legend sometimes suggests. Personal rivalries and arguments existed alongside their criminal partnership.
By the second week of August, the pressure around Carcoar had intensified considerably. Police patrols, special constables, and Aboriginal trackers searched the district, while local settlers had begun assisting the authorities.
One unnamed citizen, sworn in as a special constable, described the situation in a letter dated 9th August and subsequently published in the Sydney Mail on 15th August 1863:
State of the Interior. — The following is an extract from a letter, dated Carcoar, the 9th instant, referring to the lawless state of the country in that neighbourhood . — "We are all here upon our mettle, and in a state of considerable excitement. The attempt to rescue the prisoners from Morisset and the three troopers shows that there are men not many miles from us prepared to do almost anything. Pottinger and Morrisset are here and six troopers, and a black tracker, and we are just starting out again This part of the country really is in a fearful state, and will, I am sure, get worse and worse. I am satisfied from what I have seen during the past week, when in company with the police, that it will be impossible to put bushranging down unless the harbours are punished with the greatest severity. I believe there is scarcely a house between Mount MacQuarie and the Abercrombie that will not afford any criminal shelter when required, and I am satisfied that there are hundreds of lads in that neighbourhood under twenty that would give one of their eyes to have the same notoriety as Gilbert or Gardiner. They never work, never have worked, and they are, without exception, the flashest lot I ever saw. Something must be done by the Government or things will become worse and worse, and what will be the end of it no one can tell. You may depend upon it if the Government do not take the most stringent measures to punish severely all harbourers, bushranging and its accompanying evils not only never will be suppressed, but will daily, monthly, and yearly get worse and worse, until consequences will follow which I believe it would be difficult to over-rate."
The presence of Aboriginal trackers particularly troubled Gilbert. Ordinary police could be outridden or misdirected; a skilled tracker could follow the faintest trail through country in which a European trooper might see nothing.
As Carcoar became increasingly dangerous, Gilbert, O'Meally, Vane and Burke discussed abandoning the district and returning to the country they knew around Young and the Weddin Mountains. O'Meally was particularly keen to rejoin Ben Hall, who had been lying low around Mimmegong.
Vane later recalled O'Meally saying:
Well re-joined O'Meally, what do you say to a quick run-up to the Lachlan? Ben is keeping his end up over there, although the police and papers say he's over here with us. I only wish he was. My oath! wouldn't he make things lively if he was here now?
Gilbert was less concerned about the ordinary police than their trackers:
I'm not afraid of the police, said Gilbert, it’s those bloody black hell-hounds of trackers that we have to fear-they pick up tracks and follow them so devilish quick, but I think with Jack that we ought to make a move soon and give this quarter a rest.
Burke was reportedly reluctant to leave his home country, but eventually agreed. The four turned westward towards Young.
By 13th August, Gilbert, O'Meally, Vane and Burke were reported in the neighbourhood of Marengo. From there they moved towards Young and Mimmegong, where they reunited with Ben Hall.
The reunion was significant. For the first time, the familiar five-man combination of Ben Hall, John Gilbert, John O'Meally, John Vane and Micky Burke had come together. It would become one of the most formidable bushranging combinations of the period.
Their reunion did not remain secret for long.
On 16th August, Sir Frederick Pottinger and his party picked up the tracks of five horses south of the Weddin Mountains. The pursuit continued through difficult country and overnight rain. The following day the police came close enough to identify the riders as Hall, Gilbert, O'Meally, Vane and Burke. Once again, however, the outlaws' superior horses and bushcraft enabled them to escape.
The episode showed how quickly the gang's composition had changed. Only weeks earlier Hall had been operating largely alone around Young while Gilbert and O'Meally ranged through Carcoar. Now the two branches had reunited, bringing Vane and Burke with them.
Contemporary reports, however, frequently lagged behind events. On 20th August 1863, intelligence was still circulating that Gilbert, O'Meally and Vane had been seen around Cowra, apparently making their way towards the Weddin Mountains:
A report was freely circulated through the town yesterday, that Gilbert, O'Meally, and Vane had been seen in the neighbourhood of Cowra, apparently wending their way to the "Weddin Mountains"; the neighbourhood which they have lately been infesting having become too hot to hold them. It is to be hoped that Sir Frederick will shortly be on their heels and secure the villains.¹⁴⁴
By the time readers encountered the report, events had already overtaken it. Gilbert and O'Meally were no longer merely wending their way towards Hall. They had rejoined him, and Pottinger had already been on their heels.
The next phase of Hall & Co. had begun.
It was noted in the Sydney Mail
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| Inspector James Henry Davidson. |
A report reached here yesterday that this gentleman, while fixing his gun, accidentally shot his toe off. This accident is very much to be regretted, as Mr Davidson's services can be ill spared at the present time, for since Gilbert and his gang made their appearance about here he has exerted himself to the most in trying to find out their haunts. Davidson was not at Coombing when his horse was stolen but had left him there to rest for a few days.¹⁴⁵
The Carcoar district was now swarming with troopers following the violent affray with the coach. With police pressure mounting, Gilbert, O'Meally and their two new companions, John Vane and Micky Burke, had every reason to leave the district and make their way back towards the Lachlan, where they intended to rejoin Ben Hall. The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser reported on Thursday, 20 August 1863:
A report was freely circulated through the town yesterday that Gilbert, O'Meally, and Vane had been seen in the neighbourhood of Cowra, apparently wending their way to the Weddin Mountains, the neighbourhood which they have lately been infesting having become too hot to hold them. It is to be hoped that Sir Frederick will shortly be on their heels and secure the villains.
Superintendent Morrisset, after unsuccessfully searching the bush for the gang, returned to Bathurst to rest his horses and men. Following a brief respite, he set out again, this time accompanied by Sir Frederick Pottinger. Together they attempted to pick up the gang's trail.
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Superintendent Morrisset c. 1860. |
The following is an extract from a letter, dated Carcoar, the 9th instant, referring to the lawless state of the country in that neighbourhood;—"We are all here upon our mettle, and in a state of considerable excitement. The attempt to rescue the prisoners from Morrissett and the three troopers shews that there are men not many miles from us prepared to do almost anything. Pottinger and Morrissett are here and six troopers, and a black tracker, and we are just starting out again. This part of the country really is in a frightful state, and will, I am sure, get worse and worse. I am satisfied, from what I have seen during the past week, when in company with the police, that it will be impossible to put bushranging down unless the harbourers are punished with the greatest severity..."
While the police searched the Carcoar country, Ben Hall remained around Mimmegong, west of Young. Gilbert and O'Meally, with Vane and Burke in tow, crossed back towards the Lachlan and temporarily disappeared from view. Vane later recalled that they simply:
"kept quiet for a time."
Winter had now set in. Rain, snow and bitterly cold nights made life in the bush increasingly miserable for both fugitives and police. The bushrangers sought whatever shelter they could find—shepherds' huts, isolated camps and the homes of trusted harbourers offered warmth, food and concealment.
Vane later wrote:
Winter had set in, and as rain and snow were frequent, we made a good camp and kept quiet for a time.
Eventually the four reached Mimmegong, where they joined Ben Hall. It was at this point, according to Vane, that the five-man combination usually associated with the most celebrated period of Hall's gang came together. Vane recalled:
Our appearance there [Carcoar] had the effect of drawing the police to that centre; and while they were hunting for us in the Carcoar and Abercrombie districts, we crossed the Lachlan and kept quiet for a time, certain of our friends paying us occasional visits, and keeping us posted on all the movements of the police. Having learnt that most of the Young police had been brought over, we made a start for the back country, moving very cautiously and keeping to the wildest and more sparsely populated places. In due course and without mishap we reached a place called Mimmegong sheep station, beyond Young, and it was while at this place that we met Ben Hall, who from that out became our leader. The five of us camped together on Mimmegong Creek, where we formed two camps—one for the day, and one for the night.
This passage is important in Vane's account. Whatever uncertainty existed in contemporary newspapers over whether the gang should be described as Gardiner's, Gilbert's or Hall's, Vane himself was unequivocal: after the four men reached Mimmegong, Ben Hall became their leader.
Author's Note: John Vane's memoirs were recorded approximately forty years after his brief but eventful association with Ben Hall, from August to November 1863. Vane rarely supplied precise dates, and some episodes in his narrative appear out of chronological sequence when compared with contemporary police telegrams and newspaper reports. Nevertheless, his recollections remain invaluable. Where possible, I have reconstructed the chronology using contemporary sources while retaining Vane's account as a rare eyewitness description of the internal workings and daily life of the gang.
Life in the bush was far removed from the romantic image later attached to the gang. Their survival depended upon concealment, deception and endurance. Vane described how they deliberately laid false trails to confuse the police:
Our custom was to make tea before nightfall, then travel on for an hour or two, leaving easily discerned tracks, and afterwards double back and camp a little off the course we had followed. Our object in doing this was, of course, to mislead the police. If we found they were on our tracks we would let them pass on, and at once change our course. It goes without saying, that we made no fire when camping, and in winter, it was all we could do to keep our blood in circulation. Sleeping under a simple breakwind (a few boughs leaned against a fence or a sapling), with feet frozen, and limbs stiff with cold.
The police endured much the same weather. Contemporary reports remarked upon the miserable conditions:
The weather for some time past has been very changeable, and while I am writing it is very boisterous, the wind blowing hard and likely for rain.¹⁴⁶
As Gilbert, O'Meally, Vane and Burke returned to Young, criticism of the New South Wales Police continued unabated. A Tasmanian newspaper joined the chorus, ridiculing senior officers and particularly Inspector Black, who had replaced the popular Captain Battye at Young. The Cornwall Chronicle of 5 August 1863 mocked:
The Police after the Bushrangers—a long way after them. Captain M'Lerie has not yet been captured. Sir Frederick Pottinger is still at large. Black has been presented with a magnificent "white feather" by the Insurgent Chief.
 |
| Captain Battye |
It was then said that Mr Black was too heavy—that he killed all the horses he rode. But there was no reason why he should be employed in that particular service; or if there was, there was nothing to prevent the Government from getting an elephant for him if necessary. (Laughter).
The Empire continued the joke on 25 August, suggesting that the elephant then on display at the Pitt Street menagerie might solve two problems at once: it was large enough to carry Inspector Black and sufficiently placid to restrain the supposedly over-eager Sir Frederick Pottinger.
While Hall remained around Mimmegong and his companions returned, a remarkable letter appeared in the Brisbane Courier. Signed "One Who Knows", it attempted to explain Hall's descent into bushranging and presented him largely as the victim of police persecution.
The account is historically important not because everything in it is reliable, but because it contains many of the elements that later became embedded in the popular Ben Hall legend.
Some details can be supported: Hall was born near Maitland; he became a respected grazier in the Wheogo district; he participated in the Eugowra Escort Robbery; Charters subsequently concealed Hall's involvement; Hall suffered repeated arrests; and his standing in the community deteriorated.
Other assertions are demonstrably doubtful or false. Hall's father was not the prosperous free immigrant described by the writer; Ben did not receive the "good education" claimed; James Taylor was not responsible for initiating Hall's police troubles; Sandy Creek was not simply ruined because Hall's imprisonment caused his livestock to die; and Inspector Norton's evidence did not establish that he had never previously seen Hall. The latter point seems to confuse Norton's uncertainty about identifying Patrick Daley with his positive identification of Hall.
The letter therefore deserves to be read as contemporary advocacy rather than neutral biography. It demonstrates that the sympathetic interpretation of Hall—the respectable settler supposedly driven into crime by police persecution—was already being constructed while Hall was still alive.
The letter was headed:
HOW BUSHRANGERS ARE MADE
Benjamin Hall is now about twenty-eight years of age born near Maitland, and his father, who was a free immigrant, cultivated his own farm on the banks of the Hunter, and gave his son a good education. About eight years ago the young man went to the Lachlan district to take up a station and settled at Wheogo, where he won the friendship and good opinion of all the settlers in the neighbourhood. He was honest and obliging, of good appearance and address, and was what he professed to be-a gentleman. About four years ago Hall married and fortunately in an evil hour; and after the birth of his first child, his wife eloped with another man. This person, afraid of Hall, went to a certain officer, and told him that Hall was connected to the gang of Gardiner; and shortly afterwards at the Lachlan races, Hall was given in charge of the police, and taken to the watch-house. In a question put to him by Hall as to the reason of his arrest, the officer in question replied, riding a good horse, and none but bushrangers ride good horses now-a-days." The man was then heavily ironed, his hands were fastened behind his back, and he was pushed into a damp, dark cell whence he was not let out for three weeks, but where, he was taken, once every seven days, to the court to be remanded again and again, in order to allow the police to find out whether there was any charge against him or not.
During the many weeks of his incarceration Hall's horse was ridden as a hackney by the officer referred to, who appeared to have taken a fancy to the animal, and at the of three weeks two witnesses were brought in to swear that Hall was like a man who was with Gardiner, and he was on this testimony committed for trial. Although several Squatters and Settlers in the neighbourhood offered bail to a large amount, none was accepted, and the man was then sent back to one of the filthiest watch-houses in New South Wales, into the company of men whose society he loathed, to await his trial.
That came about in time, and, there not being the shadow of evidence against him he was discharged. In the meantime, many of his horses and cattle had been stolen, his farm had suffered from his unjust incarceration and he had expended over £500 in-law expense, in procuring witnesses, and in satisfying the harpies that preyed on him when he was down.
When he was discharged he taxed the police officer with riding his horse while he was imprisoned, and that threatened to lock him up again if he did not immediately be off. Hall went back to his farm and was just getting his disordered affairs to put right and had collected his remaining cattle and horses when the escort robbery took place. Advantage the opportunity was taken, and poor Hall was again remanded on suspicion, and kept in the lockup for a considerable time heavily ironed, although the two approvers, Charters and Richards, declared he had nothing to do with the affair, either directly otherwise.
There being no charge against Hall, he was dismissed by the magistrates at the request Mr Inspector Sanderson. His ill-usage was at an end even then. After being out of the lock-up only for a few days he was a third time chained to the lock-up on the same charge. By this time intimate friends began to regard him with suspicion. They could not fancy such injustice could be perpetrated without a shadow of a cause, and be he lay a long time in the watch-house before anyone would come forward to bail him out. At last, one ventured to do so, and then a second. But the latter received a large pecuniary consideration for this action for this act of friendship. By this time, the man of gentlemanly appearance and fine healthy countenance looked years older, was care-worn and haggard, also ruined in pocket and in spirits. It may suit some views of the New South Wales police to magnify the villainy of particular bushrangers, but they have not been able to find a single case against the fortunate Hall. It was said that he fired at Inspector Norton, but the inspector says he never saw the man before, and therefore could not know him then. The power of arresting on suspicion is not safe in the hands of such an officer as we have referred to, and whose picture will be recognised no doubt; and the right of remanding prisoners from week to week and from month to month, without any specific charge being preferred against them, should not be deputed to such magistrates as those who administer justice in the Lachlan district. Any man is liable to suspicion, but all are not on that account deserving of punishment.
One of the members of the present New South Wales Assembly was three times apprehended on separate charges of highway robbery. He is about the last man who would commit such a crime; but, notwithstanding, he was arrested once near Berrima, a second time between Kiandra and Cooma, and again near Goulburn, on suspicion of having stuck up a man and woman, who were driving a horse and cart. Of many more of the notorious bushrangers that live in the Lachlan, district tales might be told similar to what has been said of Hall.
They have been hunted out of respectable society by impudent officers in the pay of the state, who consider a piece of gold lace of more value than a man's reputation or his life; and having he been hunted out, they herd together for mutual protection and make war upon society for revenge.
Brisbane. ONE WHO KNOWS.
By August 1863, bushranging had become a major political issue. Parliament debated whether extraordinary powers were required in the districts where Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally operated. Proposals were raised for special legislation that would effectively place parts of the Lachlan and Weddin country under exceptional policing arrangements.
Such measures alarmed more liberal members, who feared that entire communities would be treated as criminals because of the activities of a relatively small number of bushrangers and their supporters. Mr Deas Thomson argued that vague reports concerning Hall and others were insufficient grounds for subjecting peaceful inhabitants of the Weddin Mountains to extraordinary laws.
The Sydney Morning Herald entered the debate on 1 August 1863, arguing that the severity of the bushranging crisis could no longer be denied. Mail contractors feared for their lives, commerce was being disrupted, and ordinary policing had repeatedly failed to suppress the gangs.
One proposal was particularly significant: recruit local bushmen into the police. The argument was straightforward. Imported constables, however brave, could not easily compete with men who had ridden and worked the country since childhood. A locally born bushman knew the tracks, ranges, waterholes, stations and families. Twenty such men, the paper suggested, might prove more effective than five times as many policemen unfamiliar with the country.
Amid this debate came an extraordinary report concerning a Catholic priest who encountered Gilbert and his companions near Yass. Rather than avoiding the bushrangers, the priest approached them and attempted to persuade them to abandon their criminal lives.
The Yass Courier reported on 5 August 1863 that the bushrangers listened respectfully and indicated that they might surrender if the Government guaranteed that they would not be executed:
They dreaded being hung, although the life they were now compelled to lead was a most unhappy one.
Whether the proposal ever had a realistic prospect of acceptance is doubtful. By this stage the men faced serious charges, including armed robberies and shootings, and no government could easily have guaranteed the outcome of future criminal proceedings. Nevertheless, the report provides a revealing glimpse of the psychological reality behind the bravado: life in the bush meant cold, hunger, constant movement and the knowledge that capture might ultimately lead to the gallows.
Meanwhile, Hall's personal circle was again coming under pressure. On 5 August the Yass Courier reported that Mary Prior, Charlotte Prior and Ellen Morris had been escorted from Lambing Flat to gaol, each sentenced to six months' imprisonment for vagrancy:
Prisoners' Escort.—The following prisoners were escorted to gaol on Monday last from Lambing Flat; Mary Prior, Charlotte Prior, and Ellen Morris, severally under six months' imprisonment for vagrancy.
Mary and Charlotte Prior were no strangers to Hall. They had previously lived at Sandy Creek with Susan Prior and had been caught up in the destruction of Hall's former home only months earlier. Once again, the widening struggle between the police and the bushrangers was reaching beyond the men carrying revolvers and into the families and associates surrounding them.
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| NSW Police Gazette August 1863. |
When the above article appeared, another source of confusion emerged from Murrurundi. Ben Hall's brother, Robert Hall, had returned to the district and was arrested on a horse-stealing charge. Initial newspaper reports mistakenly announced that Ben Hall himself had been captured. The Singleton Times reported on 11 August 1863:
We are indebted to Mr R. S. Holmes, who was a passenger by the mail from Armidale yesterday, for the following particulars:-It appears that Ben Hall and two mates were in Murrurundi on Monday afternoon, incog, as they thought when the police got on their track. Before they were able to complete their capture of all three, however, one of the men mounted his horse and made off, but, after a chase of half a mile, he was taken. They were all safely lodged in the lockup before five o'clock when the mail left. Mr Holmes having been a witness of the whole affair, almost from the commencement. The capturers were, we understand, two troopers and three constables, all of whom were mounted. Although there is no doubt in the minds of the police, it is just possible that there may be a mistake in the identity of Ben Hall; but, even so, the satisfactory fact still remains that there are three ruffians the fewer at large.
 |
Robert Hall. c. 1875. |
The bushranger whose capture at Murrurundi was recently reported has turned out to be a brother of the notorious Ben Hall.
The erroneous reports soon prompted an indignant letter to the Maitland Mercury. Its tone suggests that the writer may have been closely acquainted with the Hall family or with events at Murrurundi.
DISCOVERY OF A MARE'S NEST AT MURRURUNDI
(Letter to the Editor of the Maitland Mercury.)
Sir- A paragraph is going the round of the papers stating "that the notorious Ben Hall" and some of his bushranging companions have been captured at Murrurundi when they were on a visit incog. This information seems to have been communicated to the Singleton Times by a daydreamer of the name of Holmes, who stated that "he witnessed the capture of Ben, the successful chase of a trooper after another of the banditti, and their safe incarceration." Now, although I do not know this Mr. Holmes, I would advise him to be more particular the next time he carries any information to a public journal, for in the above statement there is not one word of truth, as neither Ben Hall nor any of his associates have been seen, chased, or caught in Murrurundi consequently are not in our lock-up. We have had several cases of mail robbery in this district since the present "Dick Turpin" mania commenced, and although our policemen may be smart fellows for all I know, they have as yet failed to put salt on any bushranger’s tail. I may at the same time mention that rumour with her hundred tongues has it that there is a mystery connected with the recent Murrurundi branch mail robberies which call for a thorough investigation."
NO HUMBUG. Murrurundi, 18th August, 1863.¹⁴⁸
Murrurundi, however, was a red herring. Ben Hall remained elsewhere, while Gilbert, O'Meally, Vane and Burke were completing their operations in the Carcoar district and beginning their return towards the Lachlan. A correspondent writing from Marengo, published in the Empire on 22 August, accurately reflected this movement:
In my communication of the 28th ult. I stated that I was nearly certain the temporary lull in bushranging in this neighbourhood was only occasioned by the rascals being engaged in recruiting their stud in the Bathurst district, and, when once that was effected, they would again visit us; also warning the owners of all celebrated horses in those parts to keep a sharp eye on the same. About seven days after, that statement appeared, the public heard of the sticking-up of stables and the stealing of horses by the bushrangers, among others the taking with violence and bloodshed of a racer, called Comus, the property of a Bathurst J P, and also another fine animal belonging to Sub-inspector Davidson. By the by, Mr Cowper read in the House the other day a letter from Superintendent Morrisett to the effect that that gentleman was fully convinced that he, in the late conflict between himself and Gilbert, Meally, and, Vane, had seriously if not mortally wounded Gilbert's horse, viz, the above stolen racer; but, unfortunately, such could not have been the case as that scoundrel, mounted on the identical horse, stuck up in conjunction with Meally and Vane (only, three hours after the fight with the police, one public-house and two stores, at Teesdale, which place is eighteen miles distant from the scene of Superintendent Morrisett's encounter; consequently, neither the bushrangers' horses nor themselves could have been wounded on the first occasion-worse luck; also, no later than yesterday, a band consisting, of four finely mounted robbers, headed by Gilbert, riding the racer Comus, was seen in this neighbourhood.
The reports confirm that the gang was moving westward again. Hall himself had remained around Mimmegong, while Gilbert and O'Meally returned with their two newly recruited companions, John Vane and Michael Burke.
For several days the reunited group remained comparatively quiet. The lull was tactical rather than permanent. Police patrols were concentrated throughout the district, while the bushrangers rested, replenished supplies and watched the movements of the authorities.
Vane later described one of the gang's methods of replenishing its stores. On one occasion O'Meally, Gilbert and Burke rode into a township with two spare horses while Hall and Vane remained behind with the other mounts:
O'Meally, Gilbert and Burke, taking two spare horses with them as 'packs' started for the township to get a new fitout. Hall staying behind with me to look after the horses. The three excursionists returned about 4 o'clock next morning fully equipped with an abundance of blankets, clothing, gunpowder and caps and a new revolver they had taken from one of the stores in the township. They had made a successful raid without molestation, as the police were still in the bush trying to pick up our tracks. Gilbert handed me the new revolver, and also seven £1 notes, which he said was my share of the previous night’s spoils.
Vane was not entirely convinced that the division had been equitable:
So they must have taken at least £35 in addition to the stores, although I didn't ask for the particulars.
His observation offers an unusual glimpse into the internal economics of the gang. The proceeds of robberies were divided among the participants, but there was no reason to assume that each member possessed complete knowledge of what had been taken. Among men living by robbery, trust had obvious limits.
Meanwhile, police pressure continued to increase. Patrols repeatedly entered Marengo and the surrounding country, often accompanied by Aboriginal trackers whose skills made them particularly dangerous to the bushrangers. One correspondent captured the increasingly bitter atmosphere between the two sides:
Two hours ago Mr Inspector Singleton with some troopers and a black tracker arrived in Marengo; he only waited long enough to get reinforced by part of the patrol here, and they, rode away into the bush. The public may daily and hourly, expect to hear of an affray, and, if the bushranging dogs will only stand their ground, and not bolt, as usual, I'm confident that the said affray will be a Sanguineous one; for as far as my experience is concerned, I know that the feeling of the police against the robbers is getting one of intense hatred; consequently, it partakes of all the bitter animosity of a private personal quarrel. In the meantime, all storekeepers in this district, whose premises are in the least degree in an isolated position, are advised to be on the qui viue and at once make arrangements in case of an attack for opening a quiet yet speedy communication with the police camp for, taking the number and ferocity of the desperadoes into consideration, all resistance on the part of small and badly armed parties of civilians is worse than useless.¹⁵⁰
Another patrol soon encountered tracks believed to belong to Gilbert and O'Meally:
Yesterday a party of troopers come across some suspicious-looking tracks near Mr Steel Caldwell's station; they put the black tracker on them and followed the same for about three miles when they sighted about 400 yards off, two horsemen supposed to be Gilbert and O'Meally. A sharp chase ensued, but the bushrangers cunningly led their pursuers through a very boggy country consequently the troopers got repeatedly stuck, thereby losing much ground; the continuation of these tactics ultimately got the robbers clear off, the tracks being lost near the Weddin Mountain.
By 19 August, another patrol under Inspector Singleton passed through Marengo. Significantly, the men had abandoned conspicuous police dress and adopted the appearance of ordinary bushmen:
This morning a party of six troopers and a black tracker, headed by Inspector Singleton, again passed through here. They were the best-equipped party I have seen, all the men being dressed and armed more like bushrangers than troopers they had a pack-horse, carrying tent, provisions &c &c. This is the way that bushrangers ought to be hunted.¹⁵¹
The change reflected lessons already advocated by Pottinger. Uniformed patrols travelling along recognised roads could be seen or reported long before they approached the bushrangers' camps. Plain clothes, concealed movements and prolonged patrols offered a better chance of surprise.
Even then, the work was exhausting. Another party returned to Marengo wet and tired but soon set out again:
Last night Sub-inspector Roberts, a black tracker and a party of five troopers, looking wet and weary, yet still determined, arrived in Marengo and remained the night, but again struck out into the bush early this morning. The party also seems admirably equipped for the style of work it has to do. Good luck.¹⁵²
Weather compounded the difficulties faced by both sides. The Yass Courier reported on 8 August that snow had fallen across parts of the district, including Wheogo and the ranges towards the Abercrombie:
Although only a few flakes of snow fell in Yass on Tuesday last, we learn that in some parts of the district the fall was considerable. It is singular that at Binalong and in its neighbourhood, where the atmosphere is, generally speaking, some degrees warmer than at Yass, snow fell pretty copiously on the day we refer to. At Bowning, also there was snow; but the heaviest storms were on the other side of the Murrumbidgee. The drift there was considerable. Wheogo, also, was visited with a sharp shower of flakes, and the mountains in the direction of the Abercrombie are said to wear their winter robes of white. We have heard of the blossoming of the wattle much nearer to Yass than Gundagai.
These conditions provide useful context for Vane's later description of life on the run. He recalled that the gang deliberately laid false trails before doubling back to concealed camps:
Our custom was to make tea before nightfall, then travel on for an hour or two, leaving easily discerned tracks, and afterwards double back and camp a little of the course we had followed. Our object in doing this was, of course, to mislead the police. If we found they were on our tracks we would let them pass on, and at once change our course. It goes without saying, that we made no fire when camping, and in winter, it was all we could do to keep our blood in circulation. Sleeping under a simple break wind (a few boughs’ leaned against a fence or a sapling), with feet frozen, and limbs stiff with cold.
The increasingly intense police campaign soon brought Pottinger directly onto the gang's trail. A telegram dated 19 August 1863, later tabled in Parliament, described a pursuit between the Weddin Mountains and the Levels:
Inspector Pottinger returned here at six o'clock last night and reports that having left Cowra at noon on Friday, he proceeded towards the Wedden, and on Sunday, between that mountain and the Levels, he got upon the tracks of five horses, which he followed till dark. His party, consisting of three mounted men and two trackers, remained at this spot under an incessant rain all night, holding their horses by the bridles, and on daylight, next morning again took up the tracks with difficulty, and after following them about five miles, saw, about a quarter of a mile in advance, the horses and riders. The bushrangers, seeing the police, at the same time mounted and galloped off, followed by Pottinger and his party, who did not succeed in getting nearer than three hundred yards, in consequence of his horses having been all night exposed to the pelting rain without food, and the superior horses ridden by the gang, Gilbert riding Icely's grey horse, and O'Maley the racehorse stolen from Mr West, the other three men were Mick Burke, Ben Hall, and John Vane. Every available man and horse is now absent from the town formed, in parties, and watching localities in the bush likely to be visited by the gang, but the continued rains have rendered the bush almost impracticable for riding. Their movements are consequently much impeded, and accidents occurring, one of the trackers having come in yesterday with a broken collar bone. No depredation is reported to have been committed by the gang since their return to this district.
This telegram is especially important because it contemporaneously identifies all five men together: Hall, Gilbert, O'Meally, Vane and Burke. It also confirms the tactical advantage repeatedly enjoyed by the gang. Their fresh and superior horses enabled them to escape even when the police succeeded in locating them.
A subsequent report in the Burrangong Star of 21 August similarly described Pottinger's pursuit and the gang's reliance upon stolen horses:
We are informed that Sir Frederick Pottinger and his troopers, lately pursued seven of the bushrangers, amongst whom we have heard mentioned, as forming part of the gang, the names of Gilbert, O'Meally, Hall, Burke, and Vane, from Carcoar to Cowra, and from that town to Cootamundra. They were tracked by the black trackers to their camping place, and sighted by the police; but escaped through the fleetness of their horses, those of the police having been knocked up with hard and constant work for the last three weeks.
The same report recorded another raid on James Roberts' stables at Currawang:
Bushrangers Stealing more Horses from Currawang. -Last Tuesday night a party of bushrangers, seven in number we are told, amongst whom were Gilbert and O'Meally, paid a visit to Mr Roberts' stables at Currawang near Murrumburrah, and forcibly took away four excellent hackneys, one of which had only been a short time before been brought out of the bush. The bushrangers compelled the ostler to remain up with only his shirt on for upwards of an hour, telling him they had seen Pottinger and his bloody traps that morning, in all likelihood mistaking Sub-inspector Roberts, who, our Marengo correspondent says, sighted Gilbert, for the gallant baronet.
The claim that seven men were involved should be treated cautiously, as contemporary reports frequently differed over the gang's numbers and identities. What is clear is that the core group was using stolen horses systematically, both to replace tired mounts and to maintain its decisive advantage over pursuing police.
The brief lull ended on 24 August 1863. Hall's gang positioned itself on the road used by storekeepers travelling between Young and the Ten and Twelve Mile Rushes. Their probable object was the money carried by traders intending to purchase gold from miners:
It is generally thought that the bushrangers supposed the storekeepers went to the Rush on Mondays to purchase gold, and they stuck them up on their way; thinking, they would get the money they would have with them for the purchase of gold.
As the gang waited, other travellers were detained and held out of sight to prevent the alarm being raised. The Burrangong Star reported the affair on 29 August:
Between ten and eleven o'clock on Monday morning, Messrs. T. Watson, John Murphy, T. Coupland, and B. Emanuel, of Burrangong, wore stuck-up by five bushrangers...
By Vane's later account, the number detained eventually reached sixty or seventy people. Hall warned the captives against attempting to raise an alarm:
When the gold buyers hove in sight Ben Hall warned the crowd that he would shoot any one of them that gave warning or raised an alarm.
The Golden Age later added that the bushrangers departed joking about their disappointing takings:
That they were sorry that there was no more cash among the crowd, and that they would be happy to meet them some other day when their pockets were better lined, rode off, taking also their ponchos.
The robbery immediately brought Pottinger onto their trail. Assisted by an Aboriginal tracker, the police followed the gang towards Mimmegong and discovered one of its camps:
Sir Frederick Pottinger and his troopers lost no time in giving chase, and having pursued the bushrangers to Mimmegong, tracked them, with the assistance of a black tracker, to a cave there; On approaching this place they saw, at a short distance, the parties they were in pursuit of, who, upon observing the police coming, immediately mounted fresh horses that stood ready saddled and bridled, and galloped off; leaving behind five horses which were taken possession of by the police. The troopers then pursued the bushrangers for about eight miles, and fired several shots at them; but they ultimately escaped, through the fleetness and freshness of their horses. One of the horses recovered, belongs, we understand, to Mr Icely, and another to Mr Roberts, and are a portion of those lately stolen from these gentlemen.¹⁵³
The Golden Age provided further detail:
It appears that he followed on the tracks of the outlaws from near Duffer Gully, through White's station, over the Lachlan road, by Mr Beckham's across Meroo Creek, and three miles beyond Mimgong, he described horses at the bottom of a rocky elevation...
This report identifies the five as Gilbert, O'Meally, Hall, Vane and Burke and describes Pottinger personally pursuing Burke until Hall apparently moved to his assistance.
Vane's recollection of the encounter differs in several details but confirms the sudden arrival of Pottinger and the ensuing exchange of gunfire:
I was in the act of putting a bridle on him when I heard a voice calling on me to "Stand!" The voice was that of Sir Frederick Pottinger...
Vane later maintained that the police failed to secure all the loose horses:
They could not catch the loose horses, and that night we returned and shifted them, and then rode in towards the township of Lambing Flat.
The discrepancy between Vane's memoir and contemporary reports is worth retaining rather than attempting to force the two into complete agreement. Contemporary accounts clearly indicate that several horses and items of equipment were recovered, whereas Vane's later recollection appears to minimise the extent of the gang's losses.
Police pressure was now formidable. The Yass Courier reported that several separate mounted parties, each accompanied by a tracker, were operating throughout the district:
It is the general impression here that the bushrangers days are numbered-at least, if they are not, they ought to be, for there are now scouring the bush of this district no less than five parties of troopers.¹⁵⁵
The passage is significant because it demonstrates the extent to which police tactics had evolved. Officers had abandoned much of their conspicuous military appearance, dressing instead as squatters, stockmen or bushmen and carrying tents and supplies suitable for prolonged patrols.
Yet the gang remained capable of striking at the police themselves. One report described an attack upon Detective Inspector Orridge's camp after most of his men had been drawn away:
One of our correspondents writes: — On Sunday night Detective Inspector Orridge’s party of troopers left their bush camp in the neighbourhood of Wombat with only one man and a black tracker to guard it.¹⁵⁴
The correspondent was so impressed by Gilbert's audacity that he facetiously suggested his talents would be better employed in the American Civil War under Confederate cavalry commander J. E. B. Stuart.
After several days together on the Black Range, the five temporarily separated. Vane recalled:
We stayed together for several days on the Black Range, and then parted, Gilbert, Burke and Hall started for Borrowra, on the Yass side, and O'Meally and I remaining at Peter O'Meally's place (O'Meally's uncle) at Black Range, the arrangement being that we were all to meet again at Demondrille Station, near Murrumburrah.
The movement towards Boorowa is of particular interest because Susan Prior had by then relocated to that district. Whether Hall's journey was partly connected with Susan cannot presently be established from contemporary evidence, but the geographical coincidence is worth noting cautiously rather than presenting it as fact.
Susan later formed a relationship with Alfred Stonham and in 1864 gave birth to a son, Alfred. Stonham was still legally married to Mahala Dengate at the time. This circumstance has led to speculation that the younger Alfred may have been another child of Ben Hall. At present, however, that proposition remains conjectural. The registered father was Alfred Stonham, and without stronger documentary or genetic evidence the possibility of Hall's paternity should be presented as an unresolved question rather than a probable conclusion.
This period in August 1863 is important because it marks the point at which the five-man gang can be clearly documented operating together. Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally were no longer merely accompanied by occasional associates. For a brief period, Vane and Burke had become integrated members of what was rapidly developing into the most formidable bushranging combination then operating in New South Wales.
These ruffians have not been seen again about this district since they were hunted by superintendents Pottinger and Morrissett and the troopers, although they have been robbing every person they could meet. Sir F. Pottinger and several of his men sighted Gilbert, Vane, and others. Gilbert was mounted on Mr Icley's grey; Sir F. and his men immediately gave chase, and after running them some miles Vane's horse fell with him when Gilbert instantly pulled up, and the young Vane jumped up behind. The gallant grey bore both Gilbert and Vane along at a rattling pace, but as they found the police were gaining on them they jumped from their horse’s backs, and rushed on foot into a thick and extensive scrub, and made their escape, the police making prizes of their horses, saddles.¹⁵⁶John Vane recounts his version of the encounter:
We were disturbed by the sound of horses galloping, and Gilbert jumped up to look, calling out immediately that the police were coming across the Flat, headed by two black trackers. There was quite a crowd of them, but I didn't stop to count them, we at once rushed to our horses, but when I placed my foot in the stirrup, forgetting that I had not girthed up properly, the saddle slipped, by this time the police were quite near, one of the police whom I recognised as Sir Frederick Pottinger, rode quite close up to me. He was wearing a poncho and I could hear him swearing because he could not get at his revolvers.He then tried to get his poncho off by throwing it back over his head, meanwhile, I had run to a large tree where our rifles and carbines were stacked. Seizing one of these, I called out to Sir Frederick "Go back, or I'll shoot you" at the same time Gilbert galloped back and told me to jump up behind him, which I did and we then galloped off at top speed, whilst the bullets from the police fire whistled around us very uncomfortably, Gilbert was troubled a little about the speed at which we were going, for the horse was a rattler from the stables of Mr T. R. Icley, as we reached the top of the hill, I said to Gilbert, make for the scrub.
After this event and narrow escape, it was discovered by the gang that they had been betrayed by none other than, no doubt, young Jameison then in police custody. However, Vane only refers to the snitch as J, who had been the one to leave a trail that led the police to their haunt, as Vane explains:
When we made our bolt from the camp, Jameison accompanied us, riding with his hat in his mouth and his revolver held out in his right hand. When we afterwards came to think of his actions we could see plainly enough that his object was to show the police which man they were not to fire at, we doubled behind the police, and then I told him to get down off his horse and put his revolver on the ground. He obeyed at once without a demur, I then picked up his revolver and mounted the police horse which he had been riding. He at once speared into a clump of thorn bushes and said "They won't find me here; you come back for me when they are gone"- still wanting us to believe that he was on our side, instead of the spy he was, Gilbert wanted me to shoot him there and then but Ben Hall said no as the police would hear the shot," we saw the police coming back, Jameison being with them on foot.
Some time ago, two drays laden with produce from Tumut, were stuck-up near Young, by a young man named Jamieson, whose father, was a settler on the Levels, Jamieson was subsequently concerned in another highway robbery, and at the request of his family and some of their friends he surrendered to the police, such being considered advisable, as the youth was rapidly fulling into ways that would in all probability lead him to a disgraceful death. Jamieson was committed to take his trial on both cases of robbery, but from some cause, he was permitted to become a police runner, the Inspector-General possibly considering that his services would be more valuable in that line than in geological pursuits. Jamieson was only a short time in the service of the Queen before he made his escape, and we have now to record two fresh robberies against him, one at Messrs. Webb and Crego's store, Burrowa, and the other at Mr McGregor's, on the Levels. His career has been brief, for, as we have mentioned, he was reapprended a few days ago at the Weddin Mountain.
The re-taking of Jamieson; however, I was right in stating that Sir Frederick Pottinger escorted on the 9th instant the bushranger Jamieson through Marengo; but the officer who re-arrested the supposed robber was Sub-inspector Roberts.
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| Daniel Morgan |
Aged 33, 5 feet 10 or 11 inches high, black hair worn down to his shoulders, black moustache, and black beard, with brown tinge on points about his mouth, long nose very sharp straight down his face, sallow complexion with brown spots like freckles, loose-jointed seems to have weak knees; speaks very slow and quietly, inter-lards his conversation with the words "of course"; insolent and overbearing in his manners.
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| Deck of Prison Hulk Success |
Mr. Bayliss, Police Magistrate ot Wagga."Wagga, has been shot by Morgan and mate; the wound is, not considered fatal.
A messenger came galloping into town with the information that the rangers had paid another visit to Junee, going this time to Mr Hammond's station. About three p.m., while the family were at dinner, three men rode up to the door dismounting they enquired of the servant girl for the "Superintendent,'' and without hardly waiting for a reply, pressed past her into the dining room, where were seated Mr Hammond, his brother, Mr Gwynne, Mrs Hammond and children. They introduced themselves in their usually courteous manner by the muzzles of three-pointed revolvers. One of them the inmates recognized as Gilbert, and from the description of the others, it is to be supposed that Vane was of the party, and even perhaps that lately mythical, personage Gardiner. Gilbert remained in the room holding the inmates in agreeable conversation while the two others went and searched the place, the result of the foray being watch, some jewellery and all the powder there was in the house, and two horses, the qualities of which, they tried. They informed the family that three horses they had, had been taken by the police; they had ridden Jacky Morgan to death; they particularly wanted the animal that had been ridden into Wagga Wagga by Mr Hammond's brother, on the occasion of the sticking-up at Harris's, as they had perused the columns of the papers, and learnt what a capital steed it was. One of the two horses they took was this very steed. They stated that the primary object of their visit was to punish the "Superintendent" for riding into Wagga Wagga with the information, on the previous occasion, and asked which of them it was, but Mr Hammond denied his being there; they declaimed on said Superintendent's ingratitude, in so doing, when, they had not, taken anything from him, and promised him fifty lashes for the first offence, one hundred if he repeated it, and a bullet for the third time. After joking with the family for a short time longer, they rode off with their booty, saying the horses they were mounted on would do well enough to travel with during the night. The scoundrels, it appears, had well-chosen their time of visit, for there were none of the station men about the place during the present, busy time. Mrs Hammond was of course very much alarmed at the sudden inroad, but they told her to calm her fears, as none need be entertained. Immediately on their, departure, our informant mounted and rode off full speed into Wagga Wagga to give information to the police; but us our police party, is at present out in the Galore scrub, sergeant Carroll had neither men nor horses at command, and all he could do was to telegraph to Lambing Flat and Gundagai.¹⁵⁷
Another report of the hold-up at the Hammond's residence appeared in the 'Sydney Morning Herald, a week after the event on 1st September 1863, and refers to horse thefts from Mr Robert's 'Currawong Station' and fleeing Superintendent Morrissett at Carcoar:
Yesterday (Thursday), the 27th, about four o clock pm, a horseman, bloody with spurring, fiery red with haste, thundered across the bridge and galloped along the street in the direction of the police quarters. the appearance of 'The Firman' did not more surely convoy to the ancient Arab the token of the advancing foe, than did the appearance of this heated rider indicate to the inhabitants of our peaceful village that some other act of violence had been perpetrated. The people drew rapidly together, and we ascertained from the messenger that about two o'clock, whilst the family were at dinner, three mounted bushrangers rode up to Mr. Hammond's, at Junee and dismounting walked into the dining room. Two of the robbers were recognised as Gilbert and Vane, and the third, strange as it may seem, is said positively to be Gardiner, -and I believe it, notwithstanding the reports of his having left the country. The rascals made particular inquiries for the person who had ridden in to give information to the police of their former robbery of Junee store and public house, stating they knew he had gone from Mr Hammond's. They assured the family that if they found him they would punish him severely by the infliction of fifty lashes with a stock whip, which they had brought with them for the purpose! As the person they sought for was not present the scoundrels were foiled but they stated the existence of a recent law passed among them, by which anyone giving information to the police is to be punished by fifty lashes for the FIRST OFFENCE! one hundred for the SECOND!! and by Death for the Third!!! Gilbert, who leisurely leant against the sideboard whilst the family dined, was the mouthpiece for this new class of lawgivers, the other two men being engaged ransacking the rooms.They took outfits of wearing apparel, a watch, some jewellery, and all the gun powder they could find but got no cash. They then stated that their principal object in coming to Mr. Hammond's was to procure horses, as they believed he had good ones, and, particularly they wanted that horse which had on the occasion of the former robbery carried his rider into Wagga Wagga in an hour. (The distance is twenty-four miles) They said they had read the account in the newspapers and "were pleased with it!" Also, that "they had seen the horses in the paddock, and believed this horse was amongst them." Gilbert asked for a late paper and entered into a loose and careless conversation on the subject of bushranging in general. He referred to the late discovery of their gang by the police at the Weddin Mountains and said that Mr Morrissett had reported he had wounded his (Gilbert's) horse when the attempt was made to rescue the prisoners at Carcoar, but that was untrue, for the horse had carried two of themselves away from the police when discovered near the Weddin Mountains (Vide account in your paper) He also remarked that "Mr. Roberts, of Currawong, was a first-rate old fellow, as he furnished both the police and the bushrangers with horses!" This was a facetious allusion to the circumstance of the horses ordered by Mr M'Lerie, from Mr. Roberts, for the public service being stolen by the bushrangers. The robbers stated they had latterly lost five, of their best horses by the police. Gilbert remained on Mr Hammond's premises whilst the other two brought up the horses from the paddock when having procured the fine animal they "particularly" wanted and having given another ''a trial gallop" against one of their own in the paddock, "just to try its foot" they decamped going in the direction of the Junee store and inn, which it will be they robbed in June last. As the messenger, I have referred to as bringing the report of the robbery at Mr. Hammond's, left directly the robbers did, he could tell us nothing but a gentleman has come in this morning from Junee and reported that the inn and stores were robbed by the rascals, the latter to a most serious extent.¹⁵⁸
On Friday morning we received a fresh piece of information which shows that this gentry have no intention of doing things by halves. On leaving Hammond's place it appears Gilbert's party wended their way to the scene of their former exploit (Harris and Williams' public store). This time they entirely ransacked Williams' store, loading their horses with the booty, and absolutely despoiling him of the coat on his back. They served Harris' place somewhat in the same fashion, taking one of his best, horses and thus ends our one day’s record, which will do doubt occupy its appropriate niche, in the archives of crime A.D.1863, to be hereafter compiled.¹⁵⁹
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Hammond's Home 'Wyoming' near Old Junee c. 1870's. Courtesy Junee Historical Society. |
He was in the house with his parents when they heard someone walking up the hall. The door was pushed open and they found firearms covering them. Hall was seeking the man who had gone to Wagga to inform the police but Albert had ruffled his hair and turned up his collar and the bushranger did not recognise him. Mr Hammond tried to put it over Hall by telling him that Albert was his brother and that he had gone to 'Mimosa Station' on business.The maid offered the bushrangers a meal which Hall and his men accepted, telling the Hammond's to remain seated in the lounge. Albert unwisely crossed the room and was testing a muzzle-loading gun with a ramrod to see if it was loaded but Hall took it from him and asked: "What do you think you're doing?" Young Hammond tried to joke it off by saying "I thought I might have been able to hold you, people, up." Afterwards, while Hall's men were testing the station's horses to see which ones they would take, Hall approached Albert and said: "Young fellow, you thought I did not know you were the one who told the police, you are a very foolish fellow, if O'Meally had come with us today he would have shot you down like a dog.
An interesting circumstance occurred during the Old Junee hold-up which appeared in the Goulburn Herald’, Wednesday 23rd September 1863, a few weeks after the event which stated that during the robbery and before departing, the three bushrangers would have a mind to spend the evening enjoying with the Hammond's the already prepared dinner. The article also demonstrates how the bushrangers were very conscious of their dress and appearance:It is often said that bushrangers are regardless of personal appearance, and care for nothing but fingering the cash of their unfortunate victims, but the following incident shows that some of them do not think "small beer of themselves." A short time ago the station of Mr Hammond at Junee, was stuck-up by three desperadoes. At the time of their arrival, the family were at dinner, and accordingly one of the gang kept guard over the inmates of the house whilst his mates proceeded to ransack it, during which proceeding, they rigged themselves out in Mr Hammond's clothes, and having washed themselves and oiled their hair proceeded to the dining-room and relieved their mate from a guard while he proceeded to do ditto. This accomplished, the whole three sat down to dinner and refreshed themselves to their heart's content, after which they decamped with everything they could lay hands on. After this, who will say that bushrangers have no regard to etiquette, it being quite clear that they did not like to present themselves at the dinner table until they had dressed; and therefore preferred adopting the course they did, to sitting down without having previously invited themselves in such a manner that the ladies could find no fault with them.It was well known that the bushrangers Gilbert and Ben Hall took great care in their appearance and often adorned themselves with colourful sashes and hat ribbons and stylish apparel, boots and all, and were often referred to as 'Flash'. Whereat one future robbery Ben Hall was referred to as downright fat. (This article will appear later.) At the time of the event, Morgan, as previously mentioned, was reported for the shooting of a Magistrate, Mr Bayliss:Later in the evening another telegram, from Wagga Wagga, reported that Mr Bayliss, police magistrate, had been shot by the bushrangers Morgan and Mate, while he, with the police, was watching the camp of the bushrangers, which they had discovered in the scrub. The bullet went into Mr Bayliss' right breast and came out at the left, but the wound was not considered to be fatal.
Mr COWPER believed the information was strictly correct. He was sorry to say these depredations were still going on. This afternoon he had received another telegram from the same quarter stating that another establishment had been stuck up and three pack-horses and some goods stolen by these scoundrels. He had ordered superintendent Chatfield to take all the men he could spare from Campbelltown, Inspector Wiltshire to take all the men he could spare from Parramatta, and proceed at once to the scene of these outrages, and sub-inspector White would go also. The Inspector-General had telegraphed to say that he had ordered superintendent M’Lerie to proceed to the place and that he himself intended to go there. He (Mr. Cowper) had not been aware that Gilbert, O'Meally, and their gang were in this district, but it now appeared that they were. He had this morning communicated with Captain M’Lerie, intimating that nothing as regarded police or any assistance beyond, should be wanting to put a stop to the outrages. The Government, by rewards and every means in their power, were inciting the police to do all they could, and induce others to aid them in capturing these scoundrels. There was another telegram received from the sub-inspector at Yass, stating that he had succeeded in capturing some of these scoundrels.¹⁶⁰As Mr Cowper reiterated the government and police's efforts to apprehend the bushrangers, moves were afoot in the Legislature to unseat the Government by renowned lawyer Mr Martin over not only bushranging but public expenditure:
On Thursday afternoon Mr Martin has given notice of another vote of censure embracing not less than twenty-six resolutions, which he proposes to submit seriatim, and having reference to the unauthorised expenditure of public money. So I suppose that we shall have a second edition of the late jawing match which so disgraced our Assembly the other week or two.¹⁶¹
The extreme lengths to which the exploits upon the road have gone has at length attracted the serious attention of the authorities at Sydney. The result is that bushranging is recognised as an established institution—in the department of but, unfortunately, not under the control of the Postmaster-General. As the new bureau is extensive in its transactions, a number of printed forms have been prepared in order to economise the time of the inferior officials. The following are two of the forms just printed for the use of the Sydney Post-office.No. General Post-Office, Sydney, 1S6. I beg to inform you that the mail dispatched on the form to ....... was robbed on the ....... by bushrangers, and registered letter to your address stolen therefrom. I have the honour to be your obedient servant, W. H. Christie, Postmaster-General, General Post-Office, Sydney, 1S6. I beg to inform you that a cheque drawn by ....... in favour of ....... on ....... which was in the mail from ....... that was robbed by bushrangers on ....... has been recovered, and now lies at this office for delivery to the party who can claim it as property. I am your obedient servant, Postmaster-General. In due course, Mr. Martin would have his pound of flesh.¹⁶³
O'Meally and I remaining at James O'Meally's place at Black Range, the arrangement being that we will all to meet again at Demondrille Station, near Murrumburrah. O'Meally and I stayed at his relatives place a couple of days and then started for the meeting place.
Our next place of call was at a bark hut near Wombat, the occupant of which were an old man and woman, a girl and boy—their children—and an earner whose name I afterwards learned was Slater. The visit was a friendly one, and the brandy was brought into requisition—so much so that O'Meally got pretty nearly drunk, and I warned him not to drink any more.Subsequently, the news of the attack on Demondrille soon reached the newly established police outpost at Murrumburrah where senior constable Houghey prepared to take the field in pursuit of the bushrangers accompanied by three constables Pentland, Churchman and Keane as well as a blacktracker (unknown) and Mr Edmunds, the manager of Demondrille. At the time of the first report, it was thought that all the assailants were present at Tootles; 'Goulburn Herald', 5th September 1863:
It appears that Senior-constable Houghey, acting on information received, left Murrumburrah at a very early hour last Sunday morning, accompanied by three or four troopers, a gentleman who volunteered, and a black tracker, and went to a shanty situated about four miles from Demondrille on Sherlock Creek. As the police approached nearer they could discern that the horses belonged to the bushrangers, and while consulting as to what plan to adopt, the dogs about the house began barking and howling. Not an instant was to be lost, so the party surrounded the shanty before daybreak, and it was known that O'Meally and one of his mates were inside the hut. The bushrangers soon discovered how they were situated, and discharged a number of shots at the police, wounding two or three of the horses; they then endeavoured to escape unobserved through the back of the but, but Senior-constable Houghey caught sight of them, and hastily dismounting he rushed to the paddock where they were, and while in the act of getting over the fence he was fired at and seriously wounded. The bullet entered at the knee, and descended to near the ankle. Houghey fell and fainted; but how his companions afterwards acted we have not yet been informed. The bushrangers got off on foot. It becoming known in Murrumburrah that O'Meally and his mates were in the neighbourhood, one man succeeding in getting on his horse, escaped. The place being near a free selector's ground, the large amount of fallen timber and it being dark enabled the men to escape. The police brought in two men who were found in the hut besides several horses; the property taken from the station (Mr Edmonds') was also found.With O'Meally and Vane having escaped, the two men arrested were the harbourers Walter Tootles and George Slater, quite possibly mistaken at first for Gilbert and Burke. However, John Vane, in his narrative of the affray, said that only himself and O'Meally were present. Vane description of the gunfight was reminiscent of the final scene of the film 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' except that, unlike in the film, the pair escaped alive under a fusillade of bullets:
We were startled by a sudden rush, followed by the command, which we knew came from the police, to come out, a threat being made that if we did not they would set fire to the hut. To throw ashes on the fire and put the candle out was the work of a moment and then the place was in total darkness. The old man and woman went into the backroom, the girl crawled under a bunk in one corner and the boy and Slater sought cover in some other place. The police called on us to come out, and as we made no sign they poured a regular storm of bullets into the slab walls, fortunately, without doing any damage, O'Meally and I took a revolver in each hand and suddenly throwing open the door we sent out a blaze of fire, discharging our revolvers simultaneously, and rushed out while the smoke-filled the doorway. I heard one of the policemen call out "I'm shot, but look after their horses.
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| John Barnes |
Mr Barnes, storekeeper, (whose son keeps a store at Cootamundry, and had been previously stuck-up) resolved to visit his son, and its occasion called for it, to assist in encountering the bushrangers should they again visit the store at Cootamundry. Mr Barnes was accompanied by some person whose name we have not heard, and on their reaching Wallendbeen, they fell in with the fugitives from the shanty, both of them on foot, one, leading a horse. They ordered Mr Barnes and his companion to stop; the latter set spurs to his horse and made off, Mr Barnes it is supposed was armed, and endeavoured to overcome the desperadoes. Be that as it may, shortly afterwards the body of the unfortunate gentleman was found on the road, with, it is said, no fewer than eighteen bullet-wounds-that causing death entering the centre of the forehead. The bushrangers secured Mr Barnes' horse, and deliberately searched the paddock at Wallendbeen for fresh horse', and failing to find any that suited their requirements they made off.
O'Meally, I never thought you would be guilty of such a cowardly thing. O'Meally hung down his head and said, I am sorry now myself for it, but he would not stop when I called on him to do so.
Ben Hall did not say much in my hearing, but I could see he was greatly put out, and I saw him afterwards talking very seriously with O'Meally.
Shortly after this occurrence, our party divided for a time.
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Image of the Weddin Mountains, NSW Google Earth. |
Hall, Gilbert and Burke wanted to make back for the Bathurst district but O'Meally and I were not agreeable, so they left us at Memagong and we did not know where they were for several weeks, but we kept the game going on our side all the same.
The Coroner of Young held an inquest on the body of Mr. Barnes, the storekeeper who was shot by O'Meally for refusing to submit to be robbed. The unfortunate man had three bullets in his body. The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against O'Meally.Note: Mr Barnes was initially buried in Yass then in 1887 his remains were removed to Cootumundra and re interred.
To the Editor of the Herald.SIR, —So many chimeras have been published on the subject of capturing the bushrangers, now infesting the Weddin Mountains and their vicinity, I, with all the diffidence of a civilian (though an old bushman) would suggest to the "powers that be" the feasibility of my plan.
In my younger days in the colony, I did a "leetle" amateur work in taking bushrangers, and a good deal in the capture of wild cattle. I am confident the same course might be equally successful with those wild and impracticable bipeds—namely, by tracking, and thus hunting them off their run. The manner I propose this should be done is simple. Let Captain Battye or Sir F. Pottinger be placed in charge of four troopers, lightly equipped and well mounted, procure two of the native police from Queensland; the six men should be selected as to weight, horsemanship, and proficiency with the rifle. Then take Charters, from Longbottom, or wherever he is indolently enjoying himself; mount and arm him equally well. He is a good horseman, and knows not only the country but the haunts of the desperadoes. Let this party get on the tracks, and keep to them. The bushrangers will be wearied out and forced to leave their favourite locality. Once expelled they will prove but easy victims to the numerous troopers patrolling the disturbed district.
It may be said the bushrangers can get fresh horses; well let this small force do as the old mounted police frequently did—press horses when in pursuit. If old sergeant Wilcox is alive he would verify and approve of this plan, and I believe few men have captured more bushrangers than that old soldier.
HINC, ILLINC, UBIQUE.Bathurst, 4th September.¹⁶⁴
Authors Note: Hinc, Illinc, Ubique is Latin for here, there and everywhere.
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Superintendent Orridge. Penzig. |
On Sunday night Detective Inspector Orridge's party of troopers left their bush camp in the neighbourhood of Wombat with only one man and a black tracker to guard it, and went on foot and surrounded a suspected settler's hut. It is probable they were decoyed away by some false information, or else the bush telegraph must have been put in immediate operation, for before the troopers returned Gilbert's gang made a descent upon it, riddled the tent with balls, and ended with galloping off with the trooper's horses. Talk about the ubiquity of Gardiner, why this Gilbert beats him hollow: for he seems to be here there and everywhere: in the morning leading, the onslaught upon Haughey's party, and in the evening attacking the police camp; really this fellow's talents are prostituted in Australia, he ought to, go to America and join some marauding cavalry regiment. General Stuart would take him and ask no questions. For as, a guerrilla officer, he would be invaluable. However, the Haughey incident was between O'Meally and Vane.
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| NSW Police Gazette, Ben Hall with young Jameison. |
Ben Hall, John Gilbert and Michael Burke, having separated from John O'Meally and John Vane, left the Burrangong district and moved towards Carcoar, where Gilbert and O'Meally had previously operated with some success.
Carcoar was also familiar country to the young Burke, who knew the district well. Before reaching it, however, the bushrangers appeared at Burrowa, about twenty-five miles from Lambing Flat, where Webb and Crego's store was robbed during the first days of September 1863. An early report described four armed men entering the premises and systematically searching the building:
The store of Messrs. Webb and Crego was entered last night by four armed men, who presented pistols at Mr Webb's head and ordered him to stand still. They then marched him into a room where Mrs Webb was; afterwards brought the servant downstairs, and placed her in the same apartment. The robbers then ransacked five trunks of clothing, the whole of the store, cupboards, work-boxes, furniture, to discover if anything of value was planted. They were on the premises for half an hour and succeeded in carrying off £50 in cash, and about £220 worth of goods. During the time they were engaged in pillaging the store one man came in and was immediately shut up in the room with the other parties. Having thoroughly searched the premises, the robbers quietly rode away, but previous to doing so they removed the prisoners upstairs and told them not to move for ten minutes under penalty of death. Mr Webb, however, came down almost immediately on their leaving, and at once informed the police. The robbers had just crossed the street to their horses, but the police failed in their efforts to overtake them. A double-barrelled gun and two waistcoats were picked up this morning (3rd instant) on the road taken by the robbers. There were five or six police in Burrowa at the time the store was stuck-up.¹⁶⁵
Several days later a fuller account appeared. It emphasised both the methodical nature of the robbery and the frustrations confronting the police:
The desperadoes were evidently determined to carry out their plans of plunder (or murder if necessary to accomplish their object) at all hazard, for they entered the premises well armed, each man presenting a revolver at the first person he happened to meet. One of them stood sentry while the others either helped themselves to what they required or searched for goods that could be best packed, and of the most value. The night being dark at the time, it was considered useless to follow them; but as soon as the moon rose, every man, of the force under Mr Black, took to the bush and scoured the country for twenty miles round, but unfortunately without any other success, than finding a gun and a waistcoat, which the robbers had dropped, and of tracking seven horses to a point, where they appear to have separated and taken different roads. It is so customary nowadays to hear of all sorts of slurs being cast upon the police force, that, no doubt, many of your readers, who seem to delight in all that, may tend to lessen our confidence in them, as well to mark the appreciation of Gilbert's lawless band, will feel greatly disappointed at hearing, that in this case at least, they did all that men could do under such unexpected and trying circumstances, and I firmly believe that, if the officer in charge had a sufficient force to follow the robbers up at once, without leaving the town unprotected, the property might have been recovered. Surely, after such a bold and successful attack as this, the government will see the necessity of increasing the force in this town, and of establishing some stations in the neighbourhood. Upon enquiry I find the particulars of the robbery to be, that about half-past six o'clock as Mr and Mrs Webb were at tea, three men coolly walked into the shop, thence into the parlour, where they ordered the inmates to deliver up their money and valuables. They took £30 in gold from Mrs. Webb and 3s. 6d. in silver from her pocket, and from Mr. Webb his gold guard and £50 in notes and gold.
A man, named Maher, came into the shop at this time, when the robber, supposed to be Jamieson, went out and marched him into the parlour. They then sent Mr and Mrs Webb and servant upstairs forbidding them making any alarm under pain of immediate death and commenced selecting from the store whatever they took fancy to, and called Mr Webb down once to show them where the Crimean shirts were, sending him back with strict injunctions to remain quiet for ten minutes, while they packed their swags. After some time, Mr. Webb, hearing a friend's voice below, came down and gave the alarm. Two troopers, who had just come in from the Flat, happened to be in a public house opposite, they rushed out and fired. The robbers being at that time on their way to the church, where it appears, by the remains of horse feed, they had been feeding their horses before the attack. It is said by a female who was present when the party entered the premises, that Jamison was one of them. She recognised him immediately, having lived on his fathers station. The others were supposed to be Gilbert, O'Meally, and Ben Hall. Further comment upon this daring feat is needless. I subjoin a list of the goods, stolen: --4 dozen cloth waistcoats; 2 dozen Crimean shirts; 1 dozen silk handkerchiefs; 8 dozen pairs of trousers; 1 dozen coats; 2 double-barrel guns; 1 revolver; 6 pair Napoleon boots; 2 boxes jewellery, in all £250. Cases of sticking-up and store-robbery are rife as ever.¹⁶⁶
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The identifications in this account must be treated cautiously. O'Meally and Vane were operating separately at this point, and the evidence indicates that Burke was one of the men involved. Contemporary witnesses, confronted by armed men in poor light and already familiar with the notorious names of Hall, Gilbert and O'Meally, frequently made uncertain or incorrect identifications.
The same party was soon reported attacking teams on the Lachlan Road:
News arrived in town on Tuesday that three drays, conveying property belonging to Messrs. Moses and Son to Forbes, had been stuck up by three bushrangers, near the saw mills on the Lachlan road. From one dray they took a case of gin and half a chest of tea, from another three cases of merchandise.¹⁶⁷
Mr Webb subsequently complained publicly about the police response. Sub-Inspector John Black, who was then responsible for policing at Burrowa, answered those accusations in a memorandum forwarded to police headquarters. His report provides a useful counterpoint to Webb's criticism and demonstrates that there was some substance to concerns about individual officers, although not necessarily the wholesale incompetence suggested in the press.
Black wrote that the robbery was reported to him at 7.20 p.m. on 1 September. He found two visiting policemen intoxicated and another sergeant absent:
Sir- I have the honour to report for your information that, at 7 20 pm. on the 1st instant, Mr Webb, of the firm of Webb and Crego, at Burrowa, came to my quarters at the Commercial Hotel and reported that his store had been stuck-up by Gilbert, O'Meally, and two others. I at once procured my revolver, and proceeded to the lock-up to muster the men, and at the same time requested Mr Webb to call upon sergeant Richards and direct him to come to me at once. There is no barracks at Burrowa, and the men, being scattered in different parts of the town, sometime elapsed before they were got together. Two men belonging to the Marengo station, named Swan and T. Foley, who had arrived at Burrowa that afternoon on escort, I found to be drunk and unfit for duty. Foley stated that he fired five shots at some men on horseback who he ran after. The five men belonging to the station were perfectly correct with the exception of the sergeant, who could not be found, although sent for several times. I afterwards ascertained he had been at Mr Webb's store in a state of intoxication. In consequence of the darkness of the night at the time of the robbery, I thought it useless to attempt to follow the robbers, as it was impossible to discover which way they had taken but sent the men to protect the stores and lock-up (which is very insecure), fearing an attempt might be made to rescue two prisoners, who were confined for highway robbery underarms.
At three o'clock the following morning Black began searching suspected harbourers' premises. The gang had apparently been at the home of a relative of O'Meally only hours before the robbery:
At 3 o'clock in the morning, I proceeded with two men to watch and search the house of a person named Downey, a relative of O'Meally's, and suspected of harbouring bushrangers, but did not find them, although I have since ascertained they had been there two hours before the store was stuck-up (this house is situated about seven miles from Burrowa). Senior constable Cornett and one man was also sent to watch the house of another suspected harbourer named Lynch, but did not find them.
The subsequent investigation resulted in disciplinary proceedings against Sergeant Richards and Senior-Constable Swan, while Foley was acquitted:
Inspector-General and Captain Zouch, arrived at Burrowa on the 3rd and after making enquiries, I was directed by them to suspend sergeant Richards, and have senior constable Swan and constable T. Foley to be brought in from Marengo, when the whole three were brought before the magistrates and charged with being drunk and unfit for duty when called upon; Richards and Swan pleaded guilty; Foley not guilty; the evidence was given against them by myself and Mr Webb.
The bench fined Richards twenty shillings, and Swan, from the good character he received from Captain Zouch, was only fined one shilling. Foley was discharged. I may state, that though Mr Webb had told Mr Hayes, one of the presiding magistrates, on the day after the robbery, and also stated in his published letter that the police were drunk when in the witness box he declined (although pressed hard upon the point by me) to swear that the men were either drunk or unfit for duty.
Black concluded by noting that Webb subsequently expressed regret for his criticism and even paid Richards's fine:
I was informed by senior-constable Cornett, that he expressed his sorrow to him for having said anything against the police, as he believed they had done all they could in the matter, he also paid the fine for Richards in the court, and in the presence of the magistrates. The stores of Messrs. Webb and Crego are situated at one end of the town and close to the bush. Constable Stewart reported that he passed it only a few minutes prior to the time the robbery was reported to have taken place, and saw nothing suspicious in the neighbourhood.
I have the honour to be, sir, your most obedient servant,
JOHN BLACK, Sub-inspector.
E. Fossbury, Esq. Secretary of Police, Sydney.
The Webb and Crego robbery also provided the gang with a fresh supply of clothing. Hall was subsequently reported wearing conspicuous red silk sashes, part of the fashionable dress of many miners and stockmen on the goldfields. Such flamboyant attire was by no means confined to bushrangers:
The diggers did not consider they were well-dressed without the red silk sash, with tassels shaped like bells hanging down below the pockets. There was usually a fiddler kept in every booth having a boarded floor at races, and they would dance nearly all day, then have a go at two-up and the thimble-and-pea game. All they knew about the races was what someone told them a week later.¹⁶⁸
Amid continuing criticism of the police, Inspector-General McLerie undertook a series of transfers and special assignments. One of the officers affected was Sub-Inspector Patrick Brennan of Yass, whose aggressive pursuit of bushrangers had earned him a formidable reputation.
Brennan's effectiveness was demonstrated by a succession of arrests:
Sub-inspector Brennan has apprehended a bushranger named Druitt, one of the three armed men who stuck up and robbed Mrs Best's sheep station, on the 21st instant. Druitt put a revolver to the head of a man named Froy on the night of the robbery and threatened to blow his brains out. Information has been received of the capture at Yass, by sub-inspector Brennan, of a well-known thief named McGuinness. The proceeds of several robberies were found in his possession.¹⁶⁹
Sub-Inspector Patrick Brennan
Brennan's temporary transfer from Yass to Young caused considerable local protest. Residents argued that an officer who had acquired detailed knowledge of a district and its criminal population should not lightly be transferred elsewhere:
Sub-inspector Brennan of Yass, having been ordered to proceed to Young, the townspeople of the former place held a public meeting on Thursday last and agreed to memorialize the colonial secretary to keep him where he is. Mr Brennan having made himself thoroughly acquainted with the Yass district, and with the bad characters who reside in it, his removal to a part of the country where he is a stranger would be very injudicious; and the intention to do this is in direct contradiction to the rule by which Mr Cowper professed to be guided when he was defending the police administration. It is to be sincerely hoped that we may hear no more of these mischievous removals from districts well known to the officers to localities with which they are unacquainted, and where, however brave and energetic, they must for some time at least be comparatively useless.¹⁷⁰
Both Brennan and Senior-Sergeant Stephenson were subsequently promoted in recognition of their actions against bushrangers:
We understand (says the Empire) that the government, having taken into consideration the conduct of acting Sub-inspector Brennan in the apprehension of bushrangers of late, and that of Senior-sergeant Stephenson in the affray with, and capture of Lowry and his gang last Saturday, have promoted both officers named to the rank of sub-inspector, as a mark of appreciation of the zeal and bravery displayed by Messrs. Brennan and Stephenson on the occasion above alluded to. These marks of approval in addition to the large rewards that will be paid by permission of the government, to the officers and will doubtless, have the effect of stimulating each member of the police force to use the utmost exertions to distinguish themselves in the detection and suppression of crime.¹⁷¹
The people of Yass were eventually reassured that Brennan's removal was temporary:
The following answer has been returned to the petition sent to Sydney from Yass, praying that Mr Sub-inspector Brennan might not be removed from that district: -" Sydney, 5th September. The colonial secretary to H. O'Brien, Esq., Yass: -You need not be apprehensive that Sub-inspector Brennan will be shifted. He is only employed for a time on special duty.¹⁷²
The heavy concentration of police around Burrangong did not end bushranging. O'Meally and Vane, operating separately from Hall, Gilbert and Burke for part of this period, continued a series of smaller robberies around Young and the Weddin approaches.
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| William Yuill |
Yesterday our principal shoemaker, Mr Yuill, was stuck up between here and the Twelve Mile Rush by John O'Maley and mates. He had on the pommel of his saddle four pairs of colonial boots, which took the outlaws fancy, and were appropriated accordingly. Mr Yuill has known O'Maley for a number of years, therefore he pleaded hard for one particular pair of highly finished napoleons to be returned; whereupon O'Maley jumped off his horse, pulled off his boots, tried on the good-looking napoleons, and found them each a capital fit, that he said with an oath he could not think of returning them; but, for the sake of old times, he would not search him, consequently Mr Yuill was allowed to ride on. This is, I believe, the first instance on record of any traveller leaving Johnny O’Meally’s presence with sound pockets.¹⁷³
The gang also continued using carriers' camps as convenient sources of food and fodder:
The small amount of fear they seem to have of being taken, we may state that some few days ago Mr Miles Murphy of Binalong, dispatched a load of cut hay to the Flat, and on the driver of the team camping for the night within a couple of miles of the 'Currawang Station,' he was visited by Gilbert and four of his mates; they remained all night, feeding their horses with the cut hay; and in the early dawn took their leave quite leisurely. One of the horses thus fed was a superior animal belonging to Mr Howard of Binalong; and was stolen from Mr Murphy, Jun., at Lambing Flat, eight or ten days ago.¹⁷⁴
One difficulty in reconstructing these events is how often crimes were attributed to Hall simply because O'Meally or Gilbert was known to have been present. John Vane's later recollections are important here. He maintained that some robberies traditionally attributed to Hall were actually committed by himself and O'Meally.
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Mr Eastlake c.1922 Penzig |
Mr Eastlake cannot identify either of the men, but he supposes them to have been O'Meally and Hall. (Vane not Hall)
The contemporary account describes a remarkably violent confrontation:
Last Thursday evening, 10th September 1863 shortly after sundown, Mr Eastlake's store, of the Twelve Mile Rush, was entered by two men, one of whom asked to see some trousers, which were shown him, when he said he required some of another quality, and upon Mr Eastlake turning round, while behind the counter, to hand them to him, a revolver was pointed at him by the supposed customer. Mr Eastlake immediately put up the trousers before his face, at the same time calling out loudly to his man, to come to his assistance, whereupon the robber fired at him; the slugs from the pistol striking the shelves, breaking a bottle of oil, and marking sundry articles. How Mr Eastlake escaped is a mystery, for the shot seemed to have taken effect all round where he stood. Immediately upon hearing the call for assistance, the man in the inner room rushed out, when the other robber jumped on the counter and fired at him, the ball missing and lodging in the door-post at the height of his head Another man in the store now came out of the inner room, but in the scuffle, the lamp had gone out, and though he had a revolver, he could not see plainly enough to fire. One of the men who had come out of the inner room had retreated, and giving the alarm by calling out, 'Roll up;' and the bushrangers, finding probably that the affair was becoming critical for them, retreated towards the door, firing a parting shot, and, jumping on their horses, decamped, not having succeeded in taking a single article. The whole affair only occupied a minute or two, and it is entirely due to Mr Eastlake's call for assistance, his dodging the men behind the counter, and standing his ground, that he was not plundered. He risked his life, however, for the determination of the two men was plain enough to murder any who made the least sign of resistance.¹⁷⁵
Vane's later account places himself with O'Meally during this period and describes their subsequent departure from the district:
Once more the girls came to visit us, and as we learned from them that the police were looking for us along the Lambing Flat road we decided to remain at the camp until they returned to the Twelve Mile, as soon as they returned we left the camp taking a fond farewell of the girls who had proved such good friends to us and took the road the police had just left, four or five days after leaving the camp near the Twelve mile, we made a start back for the Carcoar district, first loading up two pack horses with the store goods, chiefly drapery, intended as presents for certain lady friends which we had accumulated. Necessarily, we did not travel very fast, leaving Spring Creek early in the morning we made for the mountain called Black Hill and there stayed for a day and a night, receiving shelter in the sawyer’s hut. We here made enquiries concerning Ben Hall, Gilbert and Burke.¹⁷⁶
This version fits the broader chronology better than contemporary assumptions that Hall was present at every Burrangong outrage.
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Frederick Ward aka Captain Thunderbolt |
On the master roll being called at Cockatoo Island on Sunday evening, two of the prisoners, named Britton and Ward, were found missing. On search being made, the leg irons of the former were discovered on the northern end of the island, and subsequently, Britton's clothes were found; but no traces of Ward could be seen. Ward was a Windsor resident, and was under sentence for cattle-stealing.¹⁷⁹
Elsewhere, Daniel Morgan was already operating in the Riverina. What had begun as a concentrated outbreak in the western goldfields was becoming part of a broader crisis of mounted robbery across New South Wales.
Police patrols sometimes succeeded in sighting the gang and recovering stolen horses but repeatedly failed to secure the men themselves. One report summarised the familiar pattern:
Several policemen returned to Young on Tuesday 4th September 1863. With the search of the bushrangers reported they succeeded in sighting, but not in catching the men who stuck up the storekeepers. They succeeded in also capturing five horses taken by the bushrangers, brought them into the camp.¹⁷⁸
For Hall, the road ahead was narrowing. Each robbery added to the evidence against him; every encounter with police increased the likelihood of a fatal confrontation; and the violence of some of his companions was steadily eroding any lingering distinction between the supposed "gentleman bushranger" and the reality of armed criminality.
Yet Hall remained extraordinarily difficult to capture. His knowledge of the country, access to excellent horses, extensive network of acquaintances and harbourers, and the gang's ability to divide, reunite and change direction rapidly repeatedly defeated the mounted police.
By the spring of 1863 the conflict had also become political. Parliament repeatedly debated the colonial government's inability to secure the roads, protect country settlements, and suppress bushranging, and the press attacked it relentlessly. Hall and his companions were therefore doing more than robbing stores and travellers. Their continued freedom exposed weaknesses in the newly reorganised police system and helped turn bushranging into a public test of the Cowper Government's authority.
The most notorious phase of Ben Hall's career was only beginning.
The map above is courtesy of Des Shields, Ben Hall, Bushranger.
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