Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/519

 There was talk of a 'rising' at Mudgee, which did not come off; and doubtless all the 'banditti,' by which term they are referred to in this interesting letter signed G. Suttor, under date October 27, 1830, were shot or taken in usual course. Let us trust that our country may never fall short of sons of the soil ready to act with the courage and loyalty of the Messrs. Suttor and the other Australian volunteers in the 'battle' described.

Although gold-mining on a large scale practically commenced in New South Wales in the month of May 1851, when Mr. John Richard Hardy was appointed the first Goldfields Commissioner, and, with a body of mounted police, commenced to issue licenses and to administer the law at Ophir, where a large number of diggers had already collected, and where an eighteen-ounce nugget was found a day or two after their arrival, no robberies of consequence were committed. Still, tent thefts were frequent. Mysterious disappearances from time to time took place, while drunken brawls, horse-stealing, unlicensed liquor selling, and such-like, kept the police fully employed.

But no organised road robbery on a large scale occurred until 1862. Then all Australia was thrilled by an announcement of the gold escort robbery by Gardiner's gang, near Forbes in New South Wales. A peculiar significance attached to this daring crime, from the fact of the perpetrators being chiefly native-born Australians. It shook the general belief, long held, that the sons of the soil were free from the reproach attached to their progenitors. The New South Wales natives were proverbially sober. Not prone to the graver crimes, reared amid favourable surroundings, the type had developed few of the faults of former generations. Much might be expected of the coming race. This optimistic opinion was now unrooted. The details of the crime left but little hope for the philanthropist, while it confirmed the cynic's mockery of his kind.

On the 15th of June 1862, the gold escort coach from Forbes was stopped and robbed by Gardiner's gang, eight or ten men in all, with blackened faces, and wearing red shirts. Bullock drays had been placed across the narrow road, and a rude breastwork constructed, at a place locally known as