Wollombi
'The bushrangers
left the Lake Macquarie area during the late
afternoon or early evening of December 16 (1840).
How they spent the next day is unknown - perhaps
they were recovering from the influence of liquor
- but by December 18 they had crossed the Watagan
Range to near the present day village of Millfield,
in the Wollombi District. This journey would only
have taken a few hours, but they had a large
quantity of stolen goods, which they more than
likely distributed among the gully rakers and
sympathisers in the timber industry and on the
properties in the district.
At sunrise on
December 18 the bushrangers raided the property of
Mr. E.C. Close, Illalung, where they entered the
stockmen's hut and found the stockmen and two
constables from Wollombi asleep in their beds. The
bushrangers broke the guns of the constables and
then made them carry corn two or three miles (4.8
km), to where they had their horses tethered at
the top of a mountain. The bushrangers then had
their breakfast, which was reported to be new made
bread, obtained locally. They also seem to have
had knowledge of where to find the constables as
they captured them while they were in their beds.
These fact reinforce the conclusion that there was
collusion between the bushrangers and the local
convict classes. Lieutenant Edward C. Close was
not at this property when the gang raided it. He
lived at 'Closebourne' in Morpeth, the house later
renamed Bishopscourt and now part of St. John's
Theological College.
The bushrangers
secured the constables with their own handcuffs.
They then took the constables and the overseer
from Close's and descended on the property of
Thomas Crawford, called Brown Muir, near the
present day village of Millfield. On the way to
Brown Muir the bushrangers bailed up a man on
horseback and handcuffed him to close's overseer.
Thomas Crawford
was in Maitland at the time of the raid. At Brown
Muir the constables were given bottles of spirits,
which were passed out the window of Crawford's
house. The newspaper correspondents one of whom
was Thomas Crawford himself, abhorred the
behaviour of the constables, describing them as '
vile constables' and 'pseudo protectors of the
peace.' When they were handed the bottles of
spirits they were said to have knocked the necks
from the bottles, and drunk the contents till they
became in a state of beastly intoxication.' The
constables were also said to be 'Hail fellow well
met' with the bushrangers, and their behaviour was
described as disgraceful in the extreme, worse if
possible than that of the bushrangers.
When Crawford
returned home he found 'every place of security
about the house was broke open; and almost every
piece of furniture more or less injured. The
bushrangers remained at Brown Muir for three hours
and fed their horses, ate dinner, compelled all
the men and women present to drunk large
quantities of wine and spirits and when they left,
stole a horse, two coats, trousers shirts, two
twenty shilling notes and several articles of
jewelry. They also took a man to guide them to the
next station.
The next stop
for the band was the property of Ellalong, near
the present day village of Ellalong, which
belonged to Robert Crawford. Here they stole a
horse, leaving another in its place. At Ellalong
the gang had the bell taken down and destroyed.
This was very willingly done by one of the
assigned men. They then ransacked the house and
made a present of tobacco to the assigned
convicts, before continuing on to the next
property.
The next
property raided was Glenmore, which belonged to
John Martin Davis. The gang arrived at the
property at about three in the afternoon. David
Dunlop the police Magistrate who had pursued the
gang as far back as August 1840, arrived at
Glenmore just half an hour before the gang, and he
and the Davis family were about to sit down to
dinner. As it was near Christmas the house would
have been decorated with Christmas bush an other
native flowers, the dinner would have been festive
and well prepared.
The bushrangers
were not seen till they were approaching the
house.......'
