BATHURST IN THE 1830's

by an anonymous widow
From the Bathurst Times, 8 February 1902

BUSHRANGING MEMORIES

My earliest recollection of bushrangers is at once heroic, tragic, and comic. A band of desperate escapees appeared in the district, and made a raid on the inhabitants of Perth, George's Plains, and Rockley. They commenced at the home of a settler, by the name of Johnstone, on the Vale road. Mrs. Johnstone was lying very ill at the time, and they were humane enough, desperadoes as they were, to leave the place quietly at the supplication of the husband. The gang contented itself by pressing Johnstone's man servant into their service. At George's Plains they encountered a gentleman, I think of the name of Payne, an army captain, recently settled on a property in that district. The captain was shooting ducks in the creek, and on being called on to stand and deliver, refused to give up his gun. The gang threatened to shoot him. The brave, but perhaps, not too tactful soldier, intimated, as he faced them that cowards of their stamp were not game to shoot a man who looked them in the face. At this they shot him where he stood, and galloped off leaving him dead. They next visited Brownlea, where Captain Brown and his wife, not long from India, had settled and made a home. With the Browns was a lady, a neighbour, who had come over hurriedly to warn them that bushrangers were in the district. Captain Brown, after hiding the ladies in the garden as best he could, met the gang as they invaded the house, but, being powerless to stop them, he let them have their sweet will. Their first business was to smash everything breakable, then they ransacked the debris of wardrobes and drawers and decked themselves and even their horses, in the wonderful treasurers of Indian needlework Mrs Brown had brought with her. Discovering a store of wheat, then at 8s a bushel, they threw it all into the yard and put their horses in amongst it to eat and trample at will. Their wanton destruction of property, instead of satisfying them, seemed to madden them, and notwithstanding the unwillingness of her host and hostess, the lady visitor determined to speak them fair; for according to her own account, she had wonderful powers in quietening savages. Just then her opportunity came when the Captain, in a bullying tone, demanded needle and thread to fix some Indian spoil upon his had. "Allow me", said the tactful lady, with a curtsey, as she drew out her pocket needle case; "Allow me to sew it for you, Sir". "I want none of your curtseys, and none of your 'sirs'" was the surly response, "but I'll take that handkerchief about your neck". Certainly, I am most happy to give it to you; and I hope you will not go near my place (naming it), for my husband is an invalid, and the shock of a visit from your band would kill him". The captain, not quite so surlily, assented to this, as well he might, considering that, as afterwards appeared, he had been there already. The bushrangers then took their departure, and shortly a bullock dray (drawn by one bullock) arrived to take the lady home, and reported the visit of the gang to her husband. She was greatly distressed; and especially bewailed the fact that there was no stimulant in the house to help the invalid over the shock. Captain Brown hastened to remedy this, for the visitors had not discovered his rum cask, but no vessel could be found to put the spirits in, so great had been the breakage. Eventually an unbroken saucepan was discovered, and the good lady in her curl papers and great leghorn hat, took her seat on the bag of straw prepared for her on the dray, with the precious saucepan in both hands, and a most anxious face bent over it, lest the jolting of her springless carriage should spill the reviving fluid. It is pleasant to relate that she found her husband not much the worse for his exciting experience. At King's Plains the gang encountered the police, killing one of the constables in the engagement. Eventually they were hunted down by a body of military and police; and ten of them were hanged in Bathurst, on a gallows erected where the School of Arts now stands - six on one day, and four the next. They were attended in their last hours by Rev. Mr. Kean (of Kelso) and Father Thierry, who came from Sydney for the purpose. One desperate fellow advised Chaplain Kean to stand well clear of him on the gallows, or he would take him with him; and addressing the crowd, gathered to witness the execution, said that his mother had warned him that he would die in his shoes, but she was wrong. At which he kicked his shoes off amidst the crowd. The bodies were buried in the old cemetery, at the corner of George and Lambert-streets, the other nine as they fell, this man's body with his shoes by his side. Years afterwards, when the laying out of the city necessitated the removal of the remains in the old cemetery, the grave-digger brought back the whole story by telling of the nine skeletons with shoes on their feet and one with the shoes placed one on either side of the body.

Another gang, several years later, scoured the Glanmire district to the terror of the inhabitants. One day news came to Mr. Ralston, of Yarrows, that the bushrangers were approaching. Other two families were gathered at Yarrows for mutual protection and company - the Leightons, of Glanmire, and Mr. Arthur Ranken, his wife and child. Mr. Ralston, whose cart, coming from Bathurst the day before, with supplies, had been rifled and the horse stolen, had his arrangements complete; and, in the news arriving, ordered the ladies to their hiding places under a bed, where stray shots might not reach them, and with the stirring cry to his tutor and guests, "To arms, Horniman, and gentlemen", rushed out.

It was a false alarm, however, and the gang crossed country to Evans' Plains on their way to Bathampton, the overseer of which property they had threatened to shoot. Mr. Park, of Bathampton, was from home, but his wife, a gallant little lady, the daughter of a high officer in the British army, hearing their approach, left the house by a pantry window, and made her way to the overseer's house to warn him of his danger, and stayed with his affrighted wife till morning. she carried with her from her own house a carving knife, which she declared she intended to use on her assailants, and finally on herself when all hope was gone. Fortunately she did not have to put her threat into execution, for the bushrangers, either changing their minds or getting alarmed, went on without attempting to visit the manager's house.