bushrangers in the novel

380 Pages·2012·2.22 MB·English

by  Aidan Windle

DINGO (MANUSCRIPT)
AND
GENTLEMEN AT HEART: BUSHRANGERS IN THE NOVEL

Submitted by
Aidan Windle
BA (Hons), Deakin University
Grad. Dip. Ed., The University of Melbourne

A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

School of Communication, Arts and Critical Enquiry
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

La Trobe University
Bundoora, Victoria 3086
Australia

December 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page No.

Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… v

Statement of Authorship………………………………………………………………………………………….. vi

Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................... vii

Dingo (Manuscript)…………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1

Gentlemen at Heart: Bushrangers in the Novel (Dissertation)

Preface……………………………………………………………………………………………… 257

Chapter One ........................................................................................... 262

Chapter Two........................................................................................... 283

Chapter Three......................................................................................... 301

Chapter Four........................................................................................... 325

Famous Last Words................................................................................. 347

Appendices

Appendix A: Untitled Verse, Van Diemen’s Land, 1825 ....................... 353

Appendix B: The First Century of Bushranger Literature...................... 355

Appendix C: A Whirlpool of Bushranger Aliases................................... 361

Bibliography................................................................................................................... 363

iii
LIST OF PLATES

Page No.

New South Wales Colonial Secretary Alexander McLeay’s request to Windsor police
for information to be included in a reward notice (for John ‘Bold Jack’ Donohoe)…… 263

Study of first bushranger for Bushrangers, Victoria, Australia, 1852........................... 273

'Stuck Up': A Once Common Episode of Australian life, Now Almost Obsolete........... 283

John Boyle O'Reilly the convict and John Boyle O’Reilly commemorated as a “Poet, Patriot,
Orator”............................................................................................................................. 291

Dodo with Skeleton.......................................................................................................... 303

Frontispiece of Bail Up! A Romance of Bushrangers and Blacks.................................... 308

Not so different… Bushrangers and their pursuers are literally on the same page
in Patrick Marony’s portraits from ca. 1894.................................................................... 314

Portrait of Gardiner, the Bushranger .............................................................................. 328

Mark ‘Chopper’ Read signs a replica of Ned Kelly’s armour........................................... 331

The Bushranger Pursued…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 335

iv
SUMMARY

Dingo (Manuscript) and Gentlemen at Heart: Bushrangers in the Novel is a PhD thesis
comprising a novel and a related dissertation. Moss ‘Dingo’ Donohoe is a coldblooded killer,
according to the police, Channel Nine and most of the Australian populace. He is Zara’s
hero. She remembers the scrap metal alchemist, the dad who went to jail for her. When he
escapes she is waiting, but neither of them is sure just whom she’ll meet. The Goddess Tran
Hoa Kim is a genetic engineer too busy trying to save the world to save her own fugitive
husband and daughter, Moss and Zara. The novel examines conflicts between the primal
and the civilised, the innate and the genetically or socially engineered. Crime, Australiana
and the grotesque combine in this compassionate black comedy about the making of an
unlikely legend.

The accompanying dissertation situates Dingo within a tradition of novels dating from the
1840s, in which authors have responded creatively to the mythology of the gentlemanly
bushranger. I show how this figure represented a departure from the unrepentantly
rebellious convict bolter (escapee) of earlier Australian folklore. Novelists such as Rowcroft
transplanted the familiar noble bandit character type into colonial settings. Nisbet, Hornung
and others drew on centuries of European literary heritage, as well as conventions of
adventure romance popular fiction, in their often whimsical characterisation of bushrangers.
I argue that this body of literature reflected important shifts in perception after the end of
convict transportation to the colonies and the ostensible close of the bushranging era post-
1880, as bushrangers became historical novelties instead of present threats. The
dissertation concludes by considering the cultural currency of the outlaw hero narrative
through an analysis of versions and subversions of bushranger mythology in Australian

novels since Federation.
v
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material
published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis or any other degree or
diploma.

No other person's work has been used without due acknowledgment
in the main text of the thesis.

This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other
tertiary institution.

Signed:

Date:

vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My return to study has been a tremendous privilege made possible by my supportive family.
Thanks to my supervisors, Dr Lucy Sussex and Dr Susan Bradley Smith, for their wisdom and
guidance.
I am grateful to La Trobe University for the scholarship stipend which has made my
candidature financially feasible. Early in my candidature Dr Alexis Harley inadvertently
collected some of my creative writing from the copy room and, uncertain of its authorship,
gave constructive written criticism and tracked me down. The English Program is like that.
Students, too, particularly those in the novelists’ workshop, have been ever willing to offer
ideas and advice. Thanks to Christine Burns and Loretta Calverley in administration. They
make the most recalcitrant photocopier work and the most stressed out student grin. My
brother, Joel Windle, has been an invaluable guide to academia.
In my home town, thanks are due to Fiona Stevens for the ‘writer’s retreat’ and,
along with Robyn Rogers, for childcare. Thanks also to Liz McDonald for ‘inside’ information.
vii
viii
Dingo

1.

Rules

Moss wakes to taste the finest trace of earth in his mouth. A northerly scours concrete and
steel and delivers a message in gasps under his cell door.
‘Today’s the day,’ he croaks. ‘Budgie, today’s the day.’
His cellmate rolls over and bangs his knee against the wall, a dimension away from
this prison on the bare arse of the western suburbs. Moss smiles patiently in the false
dawn. There it is, the buzz of being the only person in the world who knows what’s going to
happen.
He almost pities the screws, who believe like children in rules. Almost. They’ve
mastered the seven hundred inmates at Namatjira Prison the way people have mastered
fire: in some measure, sometimes. Today he is grateful they will enforce the rules, in the
face of a February heat wave, and send his community service team out for the morning.
Moss is alive and will prove it to his daughter.

◊ ◊ ◊

The prisoners’ morning minibus ride ends beside a murky creek at Clifden, where they have
laboured on a boardwalk since before Moss’s transfer from remand six months ago.
At first the new recruit to the Nurturing Nature team tried to prolong the weekly
1
outings and win prisoners’ approval by telling officers that the boards would have to be
ripped up. The safety tread was on the underside.
‘Thanks, dickhead,’ scolded Mac, a middle aged inmate with a boxer’s nose. He
accentuated each honk with an open palmed whack to Moss’s head. ‘We were gonna finish
all eight hundred metres of boards before we got someone to notice they were the wrong
way up.’
The hot wind that woke Moss in the night has itself fully awoken and it thrashes the
men mercilessly. Senior Officer Dover and her colleagues watch from under the bridge,
while the six prisoners work listlessly, waiting for the call to down tools. Moss stares
through streaming sweat, not at the boardwalk before him but at a map in his head. Clifden
is a cluster of houses and a tennis court. No shops. The creek to his east runs into a lake
further south, buffering suburbia. The forest, if the scrubby republic of rabbits qualifies as a
forest, meets farmland to the west and north.
‘Are you gonna do it or not?’ Mac honks.
Moss’s heart pounds. Has Budgie brought Mac in on the plan?
‘Listen, Moss, we might be on a go-slow, but I’ve been holding this board steady so
long, I reckon pricks will be getting out of jail for murders they haven’t even committed yet
before you get around to drilling a bloody hole.’
‘Ha. Sorry Mac.’
‘Must be time for smoko.’
He signals to the officers, who nod. The prisoners wander to the shady sanctuary
under the bridge. They sip from water bottles, drag lovingly on their cigarettes and listen to
Mac’s story of a prisoner who attempted to pose as his cellmate for a conjugal visit by the
cellmate’s wife.
Moss can see Budgie raising eyebrows so bushy that they could never ask a subtle
question. Is today the day? A shrunken ogre, another inmate once called the man whose
smells and snoring and sketches of mutilated corpses Moss has lived with for six months.
He shrugs.
‘You’ve been quiet this morning, which makes you either shifty or dense,’ Budgie
mutters. ‘And you, Mister Mega-Memory Artsy Fartsy Fuckin’ Donohoe, aren’t as dense as
2