Chapter XXVII

Bushranging in Queensland; Some Bushrangers from Over the Southern
Border; A Bogus Ben Hall; The Wild Scotchman; Queensland's Only
Bushranger; A Man of Many Aliases; He goes to Fight a Duel with Sir
Frederick Pottinger; He Escapes from the Steamer; Recaptured and
Tried.

There was still another of the Australian colonies which was affected by the evil influence of the bushranging mania inaugurated by Frank Gardiner. This colony was Queensland. In May, 1864, Harry, the mail-man, was travelling along the road between Bodumba and Leyburn, when he was stopped by an old man and a boy, one of whom asked him, civilly enough, which was the road to Warwick. Harry, very obligingly, pulled up to tell them where to turn off, when the old man drew a pistol and ordered him to dismount. Harry protested against this outrage, and said he was a Government employé, but this only produced a reiteration of the order with a threat to blow out his brains if he did not obey. He then dismounted, and was tied very tightly, the robbers paying no attention whatever to his complaints that the rope was cutting his wrists. The robbers went through the bags, which they left on the ground, and, when they had finished, the old man mounted Harry's horse, while the boy climbed on to the packhorse, and rode away. Harry, who was left lying on the ground, rolled himself over and over to where there were some jagged rocks by the side of the road. Selecting the one with the sharpest edge, he wriggled about until he got the rope across it, and then moved his body backwards and forwards until the strands of the rope which bound his hands together behind his back parted. Having freed his hands, he soon untied the rope round his legs and walked to Goondiwindi, where he reported the robbery to the police. The _Brisbane Courier_ in reporting this robbery said it was the first case of bushranging that had taken place in Queensland, and hoped that that colony was not about to have its peace disturbed as that of the southern colonies had recently been by bushrangers. The _Courier_, of course, did not consider the convicts who escaped into the bush when Moreton Bay was a penal settlement as bushrangers in the modern acceptation of the term. Some of the more notorious of these have already been dealt with in Chapter XV., but if we accept the new meaning of the term "bushranger," the _Courier_ was, no doubt, correct in its assertion that this was the first case that had occurred in the colony. Of course a rumour was raised that the perpetrator was Gilbert and some of his gang, but the description given of the robbers shows that this rumour was absurd.

About a month later a bushranger named Wright stuck up and robbed a number of people in the Rockhampton district. He was speedily followed by the police and some black trackers, and was shot, early in July, at Wipend, on the Mackenzie River, a few miles off of the Peak Downs Road. He was riding a racehorse which he had stolen from Mr. Cranston, a squatter of that district.

In September a man entered the bar of the Shearers' Arms Inn at Knebsworth, and cried out "Bail up! I'm Ben Hall!" The proprietor, Mr. Philip Hardy, took a revolver out of a drawer under the counter. The bushranger, seeing him do this, fired, and missed. Mr. Hardy returned the fire, and wounded the bushranger. The landlord ran round from behind the bar, collared his assailant, and after a struggle thrust him into a back room. Having locked the door and made his prisoner secure, as he thought, Mr. Hardy ran to the police station to report. He returned in a few minutes accompanied by a constable, but the bird had flown. The window of the room in which he had been shut was wide open, so that the bushranger had merely to step out and walk away. It is probable therefore that he was making his way to the bush at the back of the house almost as soon as the door was locked. He lost his horse, however, as the animal was hitched to the verandah post in front, and was taken away by the constable.

One or two other cases occurred, but they were all of a paltry character, until the Celtic blood of Alpin Macpherson, alias John Bruce, alias Mar, alias Kerr, alias Scotia or Scotchie, generally known as the Wild Scotchman, was stirred to emulate the heroic deeds of Hall, Gilbert and Co. Macpherson was born in Scotland and was taken to Queensland when very young by his father. The elder Macpherson worked for Mr. McConnell at Cressbrook and was generally respected by those who knew him. His son Alpin was sent to school in the town and was a favourite with his teachers on account of his diligence. When old enough he was apprenticed to Mr. Petrie, a stonemason in Brisbane, and was again well-liked by his master and the members of his family. Alpin was a diligent reader and a fluent speaker. He became a prominent member of the Debating Class in the Brisbane Mechanics' School of Arts. When Mr. Lilley, afterwards Attorney-General, was attacked at a political meeting at the Valley, with mud, over-ripe tomatoes, and other missiles, on account of his Militia Bill, which was strongly opposed, young Macpherson defended him bravely, receiving some bruises. Soon afterwards, without any apparent reason, he ran away from his apprenticeship and took to the roads. He began his bushranging career by sticking up Wills's Hotel on the Houghton River, after the manner popular with the Hall and Gilbert gang. From thence he went to New South Wales to "fight a duel with Sir Frederick Pottinger," the head of the police force in that colony. This determination he announced himself. The records of this portion of his career are somewhat obscure. It is known that he did exchange shots with Sir Frederick Pottinger and some troopers, and that he received a slight wound, but it is doubtful whether he ever joined Hall and Gilbert, and committed robberies in their company, as he said he did. However, he did not remain in New South Wales very long. He returned to Queensland and robbed the mails, stuck up travellers, stole racehorses, and otherwise endeavoured to work up to the standard ideal of the real Australian bushranger.

He had been thus employed for some months when Mr. W. Nott, manager of the Manduran station, saw him in a paddock belonging to the station, and recognised him. Believing that he was there with the intention of stealing some of the horses, Mr. Nott hastily collected a party and started in pursuit. The party consisted of Messrs. Nott, Curry, Gadsden, and J. Walsh. They came in sight of their quarry about five miles away, as he was travelling along the Port Curtis Road. He was riding slowly when first seen, but, on observing the pursuers closing upon him, Macpherson let go his packhorse, wheeled off the road, and galloped down the side of a steep range. His pursuers followed. When he reached the level ground at the foot of the range, the Wild Scotchman pulled up, and began to unstrap the double-barrelled gun which he carried across the pommel of his saddle. Before he could succeed, however, Mr. Nott came close up and cried "Put up your hands or I'll fire." The rifle barrel was only a few feet away, and as the other men came up at once with arms ready for use the Wild Scotchman yielded. "All right," he said, "I give up." "I knew you were not policemen," he said later, "by the way you came down that ridge, but you wouldn't have caught me if my horse had not been done up." They took away his arms, and then returned to the station, two of the captors riding with the bushranger between them, while the other two rode close behind. In the pack on the horse which he abandoned was found a beautifully-fitted case of surgical instruments, with lint and other necessaries for treating wounds. He also carried a pocket compass, an American axe, and some other useful articles. The axe was required for cutting fences or for making temporary stockyards to catch horses in.

A warrant had been issued for his arrest for his attack on Sir Frederick Pottinger and the police in New South Wales, and the Wild Scotchman was therefore extradited to stand his trial in New South Wales on a charge of shooting with intent to do grievous bodily harm. His arrival in Sydney was coincident with the resignation of that officer as already related. Sir Frederick, however, was summoned to appear against him, and it was on his journey to Sydney for this purpose that the accident happened which put an end to Sir Frederick's life and the prosecution against the Wild Scotchman at the same time.

The Wild Scotchman was returned to Queensland in charge of the police. He was sent from Brisbane to Port Denison, and was there committed for trial and remanded to Rockhampton, the nearest assize town, for that purpose. He was shipped on board the steamer _Diamantina_ in charge of Constable Maher. He was accommodated with leg irons, his hands being so small that he could easily slip them through any ordinary handcuffs. In fact he boasted freely that the handcuffs to hold him "had not yet been made." When the steamer reached Mackay he was seated reading near the galley, but he had behaved so quietly all through the earlier part of the passage that the constable did not think it necessary to disturb him by taking him below. There was, of course, the usual bustle while the steamer was at the wharf, and Constable Maher appears to have lost sight of his prisoner, and did not miss him until the vessel had been an hour at sea. Then a search was instituted, but no Wild Scotchman could be found, and as the _Maryborough Chronicle_ remarked, "Constable Maher reached Rockhampton minus his prisoner."

How he got ashore and removed his leg-irons was a mystery which was not solved for some time. However, his escape did not profit him much. He went to a paddock on the Kolongo station with the intention of stealing a horse to enable him to stick up the mail coach, and "make a rise." But a party was organised by Mr. Hall, and he was recaptured without attaining his purpose. This time greater care was exercised by the police to whom he was handed over, and he reached Rockhampton, where he was tried on several charges of highway robbery and sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude.

There can be no doubt that young Macpherson, like many other high-spirited young men, was led away by the glamour which gathered round the bushrangers Hall, Gilbert, and their young associates; and which appears to have appealed so strongly to the youth of certain temperaments as to blind them to the enormity of the crimes committed by these bushrangers. The quiet bush life in Australia afforded them no escape valve by which their desire for excitement might be worked off. They did not pause to realise that their fight against society was hopeless from the beginning, and that in taking to the bush they were setting themselves, almost single handed, against the whole force of public opinion in the colony. Had they lived in Europe they might, perhaps, have enlisted in the army and thus been able to do something to satisfy their cravings for notoriety and adventure in a legitimate way. In Australia, however, there was no standing army, and even if there had been there was nothing for it to do in the colonies, and no chance of its ever being employed outside, where hard blows were to be struck and glory won. It may be true that even soldiers do not always find congenial work for them to do, and that many of them have lived very humdrum lives, but there is always the hope that they may be called on to defend their country, or to fight for its aggrandisement, and this hope is sufficient to induce them to enlist, when they are brought under the control of the disciplinarian and kept out of mischief until their boyish enthusiasm subsides and they are old enough to enter into the business of life. However, Queensland's "only bushranger," the Wild Scotchman, was captured after a brief but exciting career of about eighteen months, and the colony has not been troubled by bushrangers since.