14th August 2019
A while back we did a road trip for a week, across to the Southern Tablelands area of New South Wales, a swathe of brilliant country between the Great Divide and the sea well south of Sydney. And the best place to stay there is the historic town of Braidwood, about half way between Canberra and the coast.
While we were there, we did – as we always do – a lap through the town cemetery, easily one of the best places in an old frontier town to find a story or two. And it was here we found this impressive memorial, carrying the same inscription on the other three sides, but with different names. Just had to be something fairly dramatic in this.
Today mostly about sheep, cattle, and forestry, European pastoral settlement of Braidwood began around the mid 1820s, but by the early 1850s it found itself right in the middle of gold rush fever, and wherever anyone found gold, it was only a matter of time and you had bushrangers. And the Clarke Brothers were apparently a couple of the best, or worse, there was, depending on which side of the shooting you were.
We’ve dabbled quite a bit in Australian colonial history but hadn’t really heard much of the Clarkes, due to - as one of today’s journalists could best explain it - "Their crimes were so shocking that they never made their way into bushranger folklore — people just wanted to forget about them."
Okay, just had to dig a bit deeper into this...
Thomas and John Clarke were the sons of a Irish shoemaker who’d been given seven years transportation to New South Wales in 1828, but eventually earned his Ticket Of Leave and married and settled in the Braidwood area, where he took up the sly-grog trade to make ends meet, along with a bit of cattle duffing, which he taught to his sons. As you do.
With the help of another brother and couple of uncles, the boys – collectively “The Jerrabat Gully Rakers” (they had an excellent PR man!) - became fairly adept at redistributing some of the area’s wealth, to the dismay of the local farmers, publicans, and storekeepers, not to mention the odd traveller or two. But then they expanded their enterprise into bailing up shipments from the surrounding gold fields, leaving the constabulary a touch flat-footed, although there were some rumours that a bribe or two might have been involved in their non capture.
Maybe if they’d left it at that, and even spread the wealth a bit, it may have ended a little better. But maybe not. Because what came next is said to have led to the introduction in NSW in 1866 of the Felons' Apprehension Act, a law that came up with the concept of “Outlawry” and what amounted to open season to shoot bushrangers on sight. I kid you not. The US had The Wild West, we had The Wild South!
And then the Clarke gang murdered a man they wrongly assumed was a police tracker. Clearly past the point of no return, and one by one various uncles and cousins (and younger brother) were rounded up or picked off.
Then came John Carroll, Patrick Kennagh, Eneas McDonald and John Phegan, four “special constables” (enthusiastic amateurs?) who set out in early January 1867 determined to hunt down the remains of the gang, who were all top riders and bushmen, which meant the party were themselves ambushed (some say then tied to a tree), then shot, with a blood-stained pound note pinned to one of them, maybe as a fairly abrupt message to anyone with the same idea, although some suggested it was simply to show that the gang didn’t blow them away just for their money! Not surprisingly, the inquest came down hard on Tom Clarke, his brother John, and gang member Billy Scott.
From then on it was only a matter of time. But, in April 1867, after a local flood went through, the remains of Billy Scott turned up – everyone reckoned he’d been done for by the Clarkes themselves – which left just Tom and John Clarke, with a total reward of ₤1,500 (= ap $150,000) on their heads. With good information and a squad of troopers and top Aboriginal tracker John Watkins on their trail, they were soon bailed up at Jinden Creek.
Bam bam, shots exchanged, some minor blood letting, and the Clarkes called it quits. No Ned Kelly type, armour-plated, headline-making shootouts for them. Heck no. They weren’t in the death-or-glory business. Even shook hands with the coppers! Who later had the reward divvied up between them. Besides, Ned Kelly and his myth-making crew were still yet a decade or so in the future.
Tom and John Clarke were hauled off to Braidwood, arraigned, put on the coach to Nelligen near the coast, chained to a tree for safe keeping for a while, then shipped off the Sydney, and tried. The jury took a whole hour to find them guilty of just about everything under the sun, and on donning his black cap the beak pronounced that they weren’t being hanged as retribution, but for being all round threats to the peace, good order, and the safety and welfare of society in general. Which I’m sure made the boys feel a whole heap better about it. Two months later they took the inevitable long drop from twin gallows at Sydney's Darlinghurst Gaol. Tom was 27 and John just 21.
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