OUR RESEARCH

BUSHRANGERS


Bushrangers are bad people who escaped into the bush and survived by committing armed robbery, ‘bolters’ was the bushranger’s first name. Bushrangers were often convicts who had escaped when they first came to Australia. They thought in the bush, life would be better. Life wasn’t better, a few bushrangers survived. Often hunger drove people to crime. Bushranger’s targets were police and wealthy ( rich) people, convicts turned into bushrangers to steal more money.


Bushranging reached its peak in the mid- 1800s, travellers and coaches were carrying gold. Jackey Jackey and Ned Kelly were once bushrangers, but are now folk heroes, bushrangers were mostly thieves and dangerous murderers, Ned Kelly and Jackey Jackey’s adventures are told in songs and retold in poems, bushrangers robbed people, and murdered people in their own ways.

Below is a picture of the Bushranger Ned Kelly.





Jackey was a good folk hero bushranger, he never robbed people. He fought bad people who harmed others, but Jackey was arrested in 1841 because he murdered an unknown person. Ned Kelly is the most famous Australian bushranger, people see his family as being persecuted by the law. He was born in 1855 in Victoria.



Black Caesar is known as Australia’s first bushranger. His real name was John Caesar, he escaped jail four times and was captured four times. He was born in 1770 Madagascar in the east coast of Africa, he was a slave (once) in the West Indies, and he escaped and then headed for London. Black was found and then killed with out a warning by William Blakehurst, in 1796.



Mad Dan Morgan was arrested for 6 months, he was released in the year 1850, in 1862, Morgan escaped, and that’s when he became a bushranger, his real name was Daniel Morgan, in 1865, Morgan rode to a police station and held people hostage, but he was captured, and had his head got cut off so scientist’s could study it. For Mad Dan Morgan it wasn’t an easy life being a bushranger.
Daniel (Dan) Morgan (c. 1830 - 1865), by Samuel Calvert, 1864, courtesy of National Library of Australia.

FOOD AND ENTERTAIMENT



You can sit near a fire and tell stories sing and play music, you can go to a theatre or a music hall on a Sunday, and there were sports such as football, cricket, and boxing. We still enjoy games and entertainment today from the gold fields, diggers brought musical instruments to sing with, and they were the flute, violin, and concertina.


Diggers enjoyed dancing, and acting with each other, circuses travelled around putting on shows, a dance called the ‘cancan’ was a favourite dance, theatres put on puppet shows for kids, like there parents, kids don’t be quiet in shows, kids always make fun of the actors.



At large fairs there were things like running, jumping, weight throwing, and tug- a- war, ‘Prize fighting’ was only on Sunday’s, it’s where you form a circle like a ring and shout encouragement of your favourite fighter, some people tried to BAN ‘Prize fighting’ forever. Hunting in Britain was a sport for the rich people, in Australia it was for everyone.


ENTERTAINMENT AT HOME

You can read, write, draw, play cards, and backgannon, the popular thing was music making, it’s where you make music with instruments. Books and other stuff are in short supply, people buy books in stores as they run out, you can be pleased to get a six- year- old Adelaide newspaper, also it would be weeks for other supplies to arrive.





FOOD AT HOME

They cook stew in a pot over a big fire, or they have roasted meat hung up near a fire, or they have damper (we don’t know what it is), all of those different foods were their/ everyone’s main meals, they have there meals in the middle of the day.