The hidden history of Australia’s other bushrangers by Meg Foster, UNSW Press 2024

Travelling up the New England Highway at the start of the university term I would pass the giant granite tors of the Moonbis, a range of hills glowering over the Tamworth plain, gateway to the New England Plateau. One of these natural monuments has been designated “Thunderbolt’s Rock” and adopted as a local landmark by the village of Uralla. The memory of Thunderbolt thus serves Uralla the way that the Kelly gang lives on in Glenrowan, although Captain Thunderbolt, an alias for Frederick Gardner, could boast none of their theatrics, nor their suitably fiery downfall. Thunderbolt’s last stand was a squib to a career that included his spectacular escape from Cockatoo Island aided (or not) by the gallant Mary Ann Bugg, one of Meg Foster’s subjects in her portraits of the other side of bushranging. My other youthful encounter was through Robbery Under Arms, Rolfe Boldrewood’s roistering tale of cattle rustling. The fictional protagonist Captain Starlight was modelled possibly on Harry Redford, not to be confused with Frank Pearson, a historical bushranger who went under the same name. There is a bridle path called Starlight’s track into the Nattai valley which would have provided a fine hideout for him, his confederates and their pilfered stock even if the association lacks credence. This boy’s own account has been spoofed delightfully by Randolph Stow in Midnite – the Story of a Wild Colonial Boy staring Captain Midnite and his ambiguous and ruthless siamese companion Khat, that high school students are encouraged to study for its historical and literary insights.

Meg Foster would have none of this. Bushranging was a trope to cement in the mind of Australians the ideal of manhood and defiance of authority: a blueprint for a white male version of history. They find their ends in prison gallows yards or unlamented in lonely graves, these men and boys who had taken to robbing settler huts and highways for a living. To expose the myth-making, Foster has provided four portraits of the hidden history: non-white, non-male and non-European miscreants, who had through a variety of circumstances taken to the roads as fugitives from the law.

We are introduced to Black Douglas, scourge of life on the Victorian goldfields; Sam Poo, a threat to law-abiding society in the Liverpool Plains; Mary Ann Bugg, masterful survivor and loyal concubine to Frederick Gardiner, the “gentleman bushranger”; and the Governor brothers, whose bloody deeds in turn of the century Mudgee have been celebrated in book (Thomas Keneally)  and film (Fred Schepisi). Foster takes pains with the stories behind these figures, choosing to frame them as overlooked or underwritten, or dismissed because they did not fit the still-prevailing racist and masculinist image of bushranging.

In Foster’s account, this image is too narrowly populated by fortune seekers or anti-establishment fugitives of various stripes within the European male genre. The haunted eyes in Nolan’s graphic strip are both anti-hero and anti-establishment, contrasting colonialism’s blue serge-denominated order with a sun-bleached empty landscape; while Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang reduces Irish revolt to a rough and ready soap opera: in both cases the flavour is male and white. Females and non-Europeans have no place in this story. Her subjects emerge from the shadows of history, and from court files, with whatever further documentation is available to rebalance the popular imaginary.

Foster has made a useful contribution to documenting life beyond the law in 19th-century Australian colonies. However, I am not sure that she has made her case: should we now champion these subjects rather than Captain Thunderbolt or members of the Kelly Gang? Should we concede that not being white and male did not bar anyone from breaking the law? Or should we note the miserable ends that those who were caught came to; and the clever ways others like Mary Bugg could game British Justice and the sexual mores of the time, to live out respectable lives? I do not see the fates of Douglas (never convicted of a capital crime, fading from view as a petty criminal), Poo (poorly defended in court, hanged for a murder he probably did not commit), or the Governors (hunted down but defiant, and hanged for a crime of passion that had little to do with robbery) as connected one to the other, nor as illustrating a suppression thesis. Each had a popular reception at the time; in no case was the justice handed down free from scrutiny; neither can it be said that justice was denied, despite popular sentiment favouring violent retribution.

The book is introduced with a page of encomiums from well-known authors and historians. I would not wish to gainsay them. However, I found its argument unconvincing, and too close to its origins as a research thesis; neither coherent nor refreshing. I am inclined to blame these shortcomings, not on Foster’s talents as a writer or historian, but on her argumentative framework. The bushranger topos will survive this assault, and anti-antiheroes such as those described by Foster emerge as interesting historical figures, each offering insights into mid- to late-century colonial society.

Review appearing in the Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol 109 part 2, Dec 2023