Black Bunny's Bushrangers (T) - Captain Thunderbolt. District of Kowen, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
By Just a cacher on 20-Apr-19. Waypoint GA8346

Black Bunny's Bushrangers - Captain Thunderbolt.

Frederick (Captain Thunderbolt) Ward.

Despite dubbing himself with a title more fitting for a comic book hero than an Australian bushranger, 'Captain Thunderbolt' Frederick Ward recruited children for armed holdups and shootouts with police.

Originally a drover from Paterson River, New South Wales, Ward was charged with horse thievery and sent to Cockatoo Island in August 1856 to serve 10 years of hard labour. After escaping on 11 September 1863, he settled into a life of armed robbery.

Among Ward's juvenile accomplices was 16-year-old John Thomson, who was shot and captured by police during an armed robbery, 16-year-old orphan Thomas Mason, who was captured by police and convicted of highway robbery, and 13-year-old runaway William Monckton.

On 25 May 1870, Ward was shot-dead by Constable Alexander Walker at Kentucky Creek, Uralla.

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2014/10/australias-most-notorious-bushrangers

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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