The Bushrangers - Part 14 - How Judge Therry was Stuck Up

Judge Therry in his "Reminiscences" gives the following interesting chapter on Bushranging in the early days:–

For several years after my arrival in the colony the performance of circuit duty was a service of no small danger. It was positively perilous to venture a few miles from Sydney, in consequence of the daring of the bushrangers. It fell to my lot to have once passed through the exciting ordeal of an interview with them on the Bathurst Mountain in 1834.

At a lonely spot, on my way to the Bathurst circuit, about 10 o'clock in the morning I was hailed by two men, partially hidden behind a tree, their guns pointed at and covering the heads of myself and servant, with the cry of "Stop, or I'll send the contents of this through you!" We were at once reduced to a state of terrified submission, and did as we were bid. A few yards further on, and upon the opposite side of the road was posted a third bushranger, with instructions (as I afterwards learned) to fire upon us if we had hesitated in yielding instant obedience. On alighting from the carriage I put my hands instinctively into my pockets, the hope suggesting itself at the instant that by giving my purse I might perhaps save my life. The captain of the gang, however, a convict for life, named Russell, suspecting that I had put my hands into my pockets to search there for pistols, desired me at once to take them out, or he would shoot me on the spot. No fugleman ever performed a motion more quickly than I disengaged my hands, as directed, from my pockets, which were then rifled by Russell. This varlet, who led the gang (they were a party of three bushrangers, each armed with a double-barrelled gun and a brace of pistols in their belts) consoled me by telling me that I need not be apprehensive for my life, and that as to the little they took I would not miss it.

In the midst of this very alarming adventure a somewhat ludicrous incident occurred. "The captain", as the others called Russell, having taken my money, my watch and chain, espied a watch and chain on my servant. He then asked me if the man, whom he ordered to stand at the horses' heads while he was engaged in robbing me, was a free man or a prisoner—that is, an emigrant or a convict. With perhaps imprudent truth, I replied he was a free man. "Then," said the ruffian to him, "give me that watch." If I had said that he was a convict that "fellow-feeling that makes us wondrous kind" would have induced him to spare the poor fellow's watch; but, finding he was not of the convict clique, he was obliged to surrender it. With great coolness and audacity the bushranger then asked my servant if the watch was one of horizontal or lever movement? My servant, probably not knowing the difference, guessed at which it was, and said "Horizontal, sir." The bushranger thereupon deliberately opened the watch and examined the works, and said "What a d—— fool you take me for; why, this is a lever, man!" Putting his hand to his hat with a low bow, as if some favour were conferred upon him, my servant replied, "Excuse my ignorance, sir, I know no better." This explanation was deemed sufficiently apologetic, and we were ordered to stand aside.

Another traveller came in view, who shared a similar fate. The treatment of this traveller showed of what little avail it is to carry arms as a means of defence. On such occasions the bushranger covers your head from the roadside with his piece, before you have time to use firearms, though you may carry them. Mr. Beaumont, of Richmond, was the gentleman who succeeded me as the next bird to be plucked and preyed upon. After taking the money and watches worn by himself and his wife—a lady just arrived from England—a brace of pocket-pistols Mr. Beaumont had in his side-pocket, and a gun strapped to the dashboard of his phaeton, they, too, were told to stand aside. A third traveller came the same way, carrying a gun strapped like Mr. Beaumont. Russell quietly unstrapped both guns and told him and Mr. Beaumont they were "a pair of fools for carrying guns in places where they ought to know they could not use them." On examination of the guns finding the last traveller's gun unfit for his purpose, Russell dashed it against the trunk of a tree with such violence as to separate the stock from the barrel, and he then flung the fragments on the roadside. He kept, however, Mr. Beaumont's—a handsome fowling-piece—which that gentleman did not carry for attack or defence. He was taking it to his station to amuse himself with shooting up the country.*

[* Perhaps the judge did not know that black-birds were good game, and plentiful, in the interior at that time.]

To other articles of plunder was added a box of percussion-caps, which the rascals found in Mr. Beaumont's pocket. We had still a further ordeal to pass through, which is termed "bailing-up." This sort of ordeal consisted in our being grouped together on the roadside, whilst one of the three bushrangers was placed as a sentinel over us, with instructions from the captain to shoot the first man who stirred without permission.

Having been thus detained for about half-an-hour, and robbed of everything it was worth a bushranger's while to take, the welcome command was given to us to "move on". These fellows were afterwards apprehended for another and still more serious robbery. They were transported to Norfolk Island, where I understood Russell became leader of the choir in the little church on the island. His fine voice, no doubt, captivated the chaplain and constituted a "case of special circumstances", and exempted him from hard labor.

Afterwards I ascertained that the three bushrangers had slept in the outbarn of the mountain hotel where I had stopped on the previous night. The bushrangers were up and stirring before me in the morning. I ascertained, moreover, that the landlord was quite aware of their being in this barn, but gave me no warning to beware or swerve from the road I had to travel over. I could not reasonably find fault with him, for these bushrangers on visiting the mountain hostelry gave the proprietor plainly to understand that, if he gave the slightest hint of their having been there, they would visit him at night, set his house on fire, and destroy him, his house, and its inmates, and they were scoundrels who (if the occasion required it) would have executed their threat. These mountain inns were usually about twenty miles apart, without a single habitation of any kind intervening. It would be, perhaps, taxing a man's means of information too severely to expect a forewarning of danger, when one feels that it could only be given at the peril of the informant and his family.

Source: The Bushrangers (1915, March 26). The Farmer and Settler (Sydney, NSW : 1906 - 1955), p. 4.