SYMHC Classics: Not Ned - Early Australian Bushrangers

While Ned Kelly may be the most famous bushranger, he's certainly not the only one. Join previous hosts Deblina and Sarah as they explore the lives of early bush rangers in this 2011 classic.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. As we promised last Saturday, today we
have another episode on bush Rangers from previous hosts Sarah
and debilin in Him and this first came out on
September and it covers the early years of bushrangers in Australia.
And as a note, similar lease last time this episode,
it's eight years old at this point and if we
were recording it today, we'd probably update some of the

(00:23):
language about things like incarceration and criminal justice. Otherwise, enjoy,
Welcome to stuff you missed in history class, the production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Debling a chalk Rewarding and I'm

(00:45):
Sarah Dowdy. And over the summer we did a podcast
on Ned Kelly and we talked about this mystery of
a skull that was turned in by It was turned
into Australian authorities by a farmer named Tom Baxer in
two thousand nine, and Boxer wouldn't say how he came
to have it, but he claimed that it was the
skull of Ned Kelly, a notorious bush ranger who was captured,

(01:06):
convicted and hanged back in the eighteen hundreds after getting
into a now famous shootout with the police, which we
covered in our episode Ned Kelly's Last Stand. We also
speculated it's a little shady to not mention how you
come across the head. I don't know that sounds it
was suspicious. Yeah, there's still more to know. They're especially

(01:27):
in light of recent news. But the skull had been
stolen from Melbourne jail in ninety eight, so there was
a chance that the one Backs returned in could have
been authentic. But experts at the Victorian Institute of Forensic
Medicine had trouble I deing it, and so by the
time of that last podcast we did, the story had
kind of gone cold. But then just the other day,

(01:48):
September one, another Ned Kelly story broke and we heard
from listeners all over the world about this. Immediately, we
had so many emails. Anyway, I feel like I arrived
at work and I my entire inbox was filled with
Ned Kelly related emails. It was really a he was
a shining moment for stuff you missed in history class. Listeners.
Clearly everyone was on alert for Ned Kelly news and

(02:11):
I was. I was touched that everybody thought of us too,
so that news wasn't about the skull, but the rest
of ned Kelly's remains had been identified. His body had
been moved from Melbourne Jail to Penridge Prison back in
nine and buried there in a mass grave with thirty
three other prisoners, So after the skull surface, the remains

(02:33):
had been exhumed in two thousand nine and the v
i f M was able to identify those remains thanks
largely to a DNA sample that was taken from a
Melbourne school teacher named Lee Oliver, who is the great
grandson of Kelly's sister. So a little modern science coming
into play here, yea. And how cool is that? I mean,

(02:54):
he must be like the most famous person in Australia
at the moment. Can you imagine being one of his students.
But any the remains, they're an almost complete skeleton with
a lot of wear and tear, as you might imagine
if you know anything about the Ned Kelly story, and
it's missing most of a skull. So there's definitely more
to come on the story, and we'll pick up with
that a little more later on. But of course hearing

(03:15):
about this exciting discovery reminded us how fascinated we are
by the stories of bush rangers, who are of course
Australian outlaws or bandits who robbed stage coaches, banks and
small settlements for about one hundred years, starting in the
late seventeen hundreds. And in our last podcast we talked
a little bit about bush rangers, and there were a
lot of them, thousands in fact, during the time that

(03:37):
we talked about they even outnumbered the number of Wild
West outlaws in America, just to give you kind of
an idea for comparison's sake, But we also mentioned that
there are two distinct sub periods of bush ranging, right,
Sarah YEA. So there's one from about seventeen eighty nine
to the eighteen fifties, and those bush rangers were mostly
escaped convicts, and that's the group that for the most

(04:00):
part we're going to be talking about today, that first
wave of bush rangers. But we've got to discuss the
convict situation a little bit too, because, in case some
of you don't know, there was a very strange prisoner
deal going on in Australia during the eighteen hundreds or
even the seventeen hundreds. So just some background information for

(04:20):
you here Australia was settled by Britain in the late
eighteenth century, and most of the first settlers who came
over in seventeen seven were convicted British felons, and some
of them had been stuck on prison ships for years
and years because after the American Revolution that had put
a stop to the practice of dumping criminals in the

(04:43):
American colonies to work as indentured servants. So the first
bushrangers were convict bolters who were transported felons who escaped
prison or the settlements and turned to crime, turned to
bush rangering, and and like I said, that's the group
that we're going to mostly talk about today. Yes, But
then fast forward to eighteen fifty three when British Parliament

(05:06):
passes the Penal Servitude Act and this ends almost all
transportation sentences, and that really changes things. Many bush rangers
after that are native born or at least free settlers
who had broken the law. So very distinct difference in
these bush rangers that we're going to be talking about today. Consequently,
two distinct podcasts, Yes, which are very excited about because

(05:28):
we love this topic. We really hope that you guys
do too, because we're gonna be talking about it for
a couple episodes. Judging by the volume of emails, I'm
pretty sure most of these folks like bush rangers Australian history.
So fingers crossed, hope you all liked us. Yeah, I mean,
if you like the Ned Kelly story, then you should
like something about these two, because it wasn't just about Ned.

(05:48):
It started way before him. And the man who's actually
believed to be Australia's first bush Ranger was one of
those transported convicts that Sarah just talked about. His name
was John Caesar, but he was are known as Black Caesar,
and he was of African descent and was probably born
in either the West Indies or in Madagascar. It's kind
of uncertain. Yeah, we're going to pick up with him

(06:09):
about seventeen eighty six when he was living as a
servant in England and in March of that year he
was charged with stealing twelve pounds from a dwelling house
and was sentenced to transportation for seven years. So he
arrived in Australia in January of seventeen eighty eight and
he set about working as a laborer in the colony.

(06:30):
Because It wasn't just like you were transported to Australia
and then you could remake your life. It was hard
work waiting on the other side exactly. And from what
we know of Black Caesar, he was no criminal mastermind.
He was actually thought of I think is kind of
a hard worker. But he was definitely someone that you
wouldn't want to mess with. He was very tall, some
sources say maybe as much as seven feet where although

(06:52):
that maybe an exaggeration, We're not sure, but he was
very muscular and he was known to be a fierce fighter.
He was also known, and this interesting, for his big appetite.
All sources seemed to mention that what gets him in
trouble here because in the colony there was often a
shortage of food and all of the convicts were on
really strict rations, and it was said that Caesar could

(07:13):
often polish off two days worth of rations in one day.
And yeah, like I said, this gets him into trouble eventually. Yeah,
I mean, it could be part of the reason that
led him into what comes later. Some sources suggest that
at least because I mean, we joke about a little bit.
It's a funny thing to bring up about somebody in Huy.
Historical sources, Yeah, that he was a hungry guy, but

(07:35):
with as we said, the shortage of food, it could
have been a serious situation. Actually, there's another later bush
ranger called Matt Gambit. He came around in around eighteen
twenty two, and we're not going to talk about him
in depth, but he was known as the cannibal bush
ranger because when he went off with his gang and
there weren't enough settlers to steal from and they ran

(07:55):
out of food, he would actually eat his gang members.
Oh God, and yet he continued to be able to
recruit them. No, I don't think he was after that.
I think he kind of ate up his entire gang,
put an end to his bush rangering. Getting back to

(08:19):
Black Caesar, that was just sort of an aside um.
But he got caught stealing again in seventeen eighty nine,
which earned him a life sentence, this time of transportation.
But of course he didn't just sit around and accept
that fate. In seventeen ninety he escaped to the countryside
outside of Sydney with a stolen musket and this was
just the first in a series of escapes that Caesar
would pull off over the next few years, from about

(08:42):
seventeen ninety to seventeen ninety six. While he was on
the lamb, he would survive by stealing from the settlement
and from government garden still had food on his mind, definitely,
But it was after his final escape in seventeen ninety
five that his bush ranging activities really commenced. At that
point he led a gang of absconders and aagabonds in
the Port Jackson area and they'd raid settlers and rob

(09:03):
lone travelers. Yeah, and it's funny, we've talked about criminals
like this before. Everything seems to be blamed on but
it was said that Caesar was blamed for pretty much
every crime that was committed around that time. The seven
foot top, potentially striking man just seemed to be a
person who captured the public's imagination even then. Yeah, So,

(09:24):
as you want to imagine, the governor wanted him caught,
and so he offered five gallons of rum for his capture,
and Caesar was shot dead consequently by a man named
John Wimbo at Liberty Planes in seventeen nine six. Just
a little side note on rum too. It must have
been a pretty big motivator at the time for act
much like food these criminals. Yeah, twenty gallons of rum

(09:46):
was offered as a reward for the capture of another
bush ranger named Matthew Brady in the eighteen ten So yeah,
we're gonna talk maybe in the next episode about the
legal options of capturing these bush rangers. But I like
that rum was a prime motivator in the early years
at least, so our next bush ranger pushes us into

(10:09):
the nineteenth century. His name is buld Jack Donna who
and sometimes he's known as the Wild Colonial Boy. More
on that later, but he was born in Dublin, John
Donna who probably around eighteen oh six, but by April
three he had already run afoul of the law in
his home country for something described as intent to commit

(10:33):
a felony, and for that he was sentenced to transportation
for life, which of course meant going to Australia. And
as we mentioned in Black Caesar section there, it didn't
mean just a free ticket to Australia. It meant a
lot of hard work. And Donna, who was first assigned
to work for a man named John Pagan and then
work on a road gang, and then finally for a

(10:55):
guy named Major West who was a surgeon. Consequently, he
started running into some fellow convicts. Yeah, so they started
hanging out together and they began robbing wagons traveling west
of Sydney. And when he and two of his buddies,
men named Smith and Kilroy or maybe Gilroy, got caught
finally in eight they were found guilty of two counts

(11:18):
of robbery each and sentenced to die two times each,
two death sentences just to be sure. So Kilroy and
Smith met their ends at the noose. But Donna, who
somehow escaped between the courthouse and the jail and he
didn't sulk off into hiding. After that though, he rounded
up a gang of English and Irish convicts and just
expanded his range. So he kind of doubled his efforts

(11:39):
there across the countryside. So Donna, who is a real
ballad type of guy, a robin Hood type bush ranger
who people like to romanticize. Later, he would distribute stolen
items to the poor. He would let some people go,
and to go along with this, he had an appropriately
robin Hood like Rakish style also made him sort of popular,

(12:02):
made settlers like him. He'd wear a black hat. He'd
wear this fine blue coat lined in silk and lace
up boots. So he really must have cut quite a
figure out among all of these rough and tumble looking men. Yeah.
I don't know, though, he sounds more button cute than
rakish to me. Posters announcing the twenty pound reward on
his head described him as twenty two years old, five

(12:25):
ft four, with freckles, flaxen hair, blue eyes, and a
scar under the left nostril. Yeah, he sounds like you
might mistake him for a teenager, but well, you know,
he's coming at a disadvantage right after Black Caesar. Probably
that's true, And he does have the scar, which is
kind of scary. He does have the scar. Finally, though,

(12:46):
on September first, eight thirty, a group of soldiers employees
found the gang hiding in scrub near Campbellstown and Donna,
who was said to have urged them on with some
real fighting words, but he was soon struck down by
a guy named Trooper Muggleston. We'll just let that let

(13:07):
that name slide up. He lived on though, even even
after death quite obviously. Yeah, so first, unlike many of
our later Bush Rangers, who's surviving images are usually heavily
bearded post mortem photographs. Donna, who had a rather elegant
death drawing done by Sir Thomas Mitchell, who added some
Byron lines at the end to complete the effect. They

(13:29):
were no matter I have bared my brow fair and
death's face before and now. He also has something maybe
a little more appropriate than romantic poetry, though. He was
likely the inspiration for a very famous outlaw anthem, The
Wild Colonial Boy, which was popular in Australia until it
was banned finally as being seditious, and it stayed popular

(13:52):
after that. That probably only helped its reputation. The song
is about a fictitious bush ranger who goes by different
games in different versions of the song, it is, after
all a ballad. Sometimes it's Jim Douelan, sometimes Jack Dubbins,
sometimes John Dowling, but it always sticks to those j
D initials, just like Jack Donahue. So the next bush

(14:15):
ranger on our list wasn't a convict, but he was
born abroad in Scotland. His name was originally Francis or
Frank Christie, and he moved to Sydney with his parents
in eighteen thirty four when he was about four years old.
He started his life of crime fairly young and got
caught stealing horses in eighteen fifty when he was around
twenty years old. He was sentenced to five years of

(14:35):
hard labor for this, but he escaped to New South
Wales after only serving about six months, and he went
right back to stealing horses. So in eighteen fifty four
he was caught again and convicted again under this name
Francis Clark this time, and this time he was sentenced
to seven years, but he was given a ticket of leaves,
so basically released in eighteen fifty nine. He didn't play

(14:56):
by the rules after that though, he broke parole and
went south where he opened a butchery as Frank Gardner,
which is how most people know him today, and Landing Flat,
and he was probably trading and stolen meat there, so
not even that was on the up and up sounds
so gross to me. I'm sure it's like legitimate, but
stolen meat for sale, you know, buy it here at

(15:17):
my store. I don't know. Anyway, a warrant was issued
for Gardener's arrest, and rather than face yet another trial
and possibly more jail time, Frank took to the Bush
and there he teamed up with a couple other outlaws
when named Ben Hall, we're going to talk about him
in the next episode, and another guy named John Gilbert,

(15:38):
and he became known and feared for his highway robberies
in particular along the trade routes of New South Wales,
and the police couldn't catch his gang because they just
moved so quickly and they used a kind of bush
telegraph system to help them get along. Frank was actually

(16:02):
called King of the Road around this time for his
highway robber reputation. But on June fifteenth, eighteen sixty two,
Frank's gang pulled off their biggest robbery yet, and it's
actually what's said to be the biggest bush ranger robbery ever.
And this crime was when they bailed up or held up,
that's what that that's what bailed up means. They held
up the Lachland gold Escort and made off with fourteen

(16:24):
thousand pounds worth of gold in cash, which is worth
about one and a quarter million U S. Dollars today.
And after this, Frank took off with his mistress Kate
and they opened a little store in Shanty in Queensland
and as Mr and Mrs Christie, so he had kind
of a business streak to him and they lived there
until the New South Wales police finally tracked him down

(16:45):
in February eighteen sixty four. So Frank was sentenced to
thirty two years hard labor, which was considered a pretty
harsh sentence at this time. Fortunately, though, he had a
good attorney, William Daley, who petitioned the governor to use
his prerogative of mercy, and the governor really did release
Frank in eighteen seventy four under the condition that he

(17:06):
leave the country. There was some controversy over this decision,
but ultimately Frank Gardner left Australia in July eighteen seventy four,
and by the beginning of eighteen seventy five he was
in San Francisco. I mean, just the perfect place for
for this guy. He opened a saloon there, it was
called the Twilight Saloon on the waterfront, and by all accounts,

(17:28):
he avoided trouble for the rest of his life. He
really did have a business streak, like you mentioned, even
though he was pretty open about his past. He'd like
to tell tales about his time as an outlaw, which
I would imagine that would make you a successful saloon owner.
People loved here stories. I feel like that's almost a
requirement to have a good storytelling streak, if not at
least good stories to tell. But Frank was also just

(17:51):
a really rare case among bush Rangers and that he
lived to a ripe old age, and he's since been
called the father of bush ranging. So Frank seems like
the perfect guy to leave off on, at least for
this first part of our bush Rangers series. And I
feel like he's kind of a good transition between those
convict vultures we talked about and then the later Bushrangers

(18:11):
generation second generation. Yeah, so while we're going to leave
that generation behind, we do have one more piece of
information about that mystery ned Kelly head. And this came
out just the other day, September seven, and again it's
from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. So well, they
did identify the body. They also recently said that that

(18:34):
mystery head might be that of a notorious serial killer
named Frederick Deeming. So Deeming was born in England. He
was a thief, a serial big amis, and he set
out on this wandering sort of life and he was
also a murderer. He was supposed to have buried his
first wife and four children beneath the floor of their

(18:57):
rented home and then murdered a second wife Melbourne. So
what a weird connection here, a very strange twist to
the story. And I think it's interesting that it's the
head of another criminal, but someone who has just a
very different connotation to them than Ned Kelly. You know,
you say Ned Kelly and he's kind of a folk
hero and this guy was definitely the opposite. And I

(19:18):
encourage you guys to look up this story and read
a little bit more about Frederick Deeming because he had
a very controversial trial and and like you mentioned, it
was partly because there was nothing redeeming about him. He
was not a folk hero. He was a serial killer.
The public did not like him. And I think it's
an interesting story for people outside of Australia too, because
he was kind of all over the place. He lived

(19:40):
in England before and I think that's where he murdered
his original family. He has some South America, all kinds
of places, um, but I mean, of all of all
the people's heads, it could be a random serial killer
go figure. Thank you so much for joining us today

(20:01):
for this Saturday classic. If you have heard any kind
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(20:24):
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