Black Bunny's Bushrangers - Bushranger on an Ostrich.

Bushranger on an ostrich rides again

FISHERMAN Henry Carmichael no doubt got the shock of his life when he pulled in to shore after a day on Lake Albert only to be held up at gunpoint by a bearded child draped in jewels sitting atop an ostrich.

The incident near the town of Meningie on September 17, 1899 was among more than a dozen armed holdups staged by legendary South Australian bushranger John Francis Peggotty – the Birdman of the Coorong.

But it was to be his last.

The shirtless Peggotty fired twice at Carmichael but missed both times. He fled when Carmichael reached for his rifle and took aim at the diminutive bandit in a bid to claim the bounty on his head.

Carmichael set off after Peggotty but was no match for the ostrich, which excelled in the soft sand and vast dunes of the Coorong, about 150km southeast of Adelaide. So he instead took aim from a distance and fired several shots, hitting the ostrich and Peggotty before they disappeared on the other side of a distant dune.

When Carmichael finally clambered up the dune he found the dead ostrich, a broken gold chain worn by Peggotty and a trail of blood leading into the scrub.

The eccentric bushranger was never seen again and his stash of gold chains and jewels are said to be buried deep in the Coorong.

Peggotty’s previous robberies included two murders and the theft of more than a million dollars worth of cash and jewels, which he proudly draped across his body.

But despite only being about the size of a seven-year-old boy, Peggotty was not a child at all.

Born prematurely in County Limerick, Ireland, in 1864, the under-developed Peggotty spent some time in South Africa, where he learned to ride his getaway ostrich, before moving to Australia.

After settling in Adelaide he recruited a gang of boys and together they slid down chimneys and stole jewellery, which Peggotty had a fetish for wearing while half naked.

The gang disbanded and Peggotty was next seen draped in jewellery and brandishing pistols while perched on the back of an ostrich around the town of Meningie.

The small town has long been a popular toilet stop for people travelling from Adelaide to the Coorong National Park or to the seaside holiday towns of Robe and Kingston.

It sits beside Lake Albert, one of the lower lakes fed by the River Murray, and is a few kilometres east of the Coorong, a 140km long protected lagoon ecosystem surrounded by vast sand dunes.

The Birdman of the Coorong has been resurrected through a statue of Peggotty’s saddled ostrich on the Meningie foreshore and has become a popular tourist stop for hundreds of passers-by who pose for photos while perched in the saddle.

http://theleadsouthaustralia.com.au/industries/tourism/bushranger-on-an-ostrich-rides-again/

Bushrangers.

Over 2,000 bushrangers are estimated to have roamed the Australian countryside, beginning with the convict bolters and drawing to a close after Ned Kelly's last stand at Glenrowan.

Bushrangers were originally escaped convicts who had the survival skills necessary to use the Australian bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term "bushranger" had evolved to refer to those who abandoned social rights and privileges to take up "robbery under arms" as a way of life, using the bush as their base.

Bushranging thrived during the gold rush years of the 1850s and 1860s when the likes of Ben Hall, Frank Gardiner and John Gilbert led notorious gangs in the country districts of New South Wales. These Wild Colonial Boys typically robbed small-town banks and coach services.

In other infamous cases, such as that of Dan Morgan, the Clarke brothers, and Australia's best-known bushranger, Ned Kelly, numerous policemen were murdered.

The number of bushrangers declined due to better policing and improvements in rail transport and communication technology, such as telegraphy. Kelly's capture and execution in 1880 effectively represented the end of the bushranging era.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushranger

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