Aboriginal tracker
Videos
Page
Aboriginal trackers were enlisted by Europeans in the years following British colonisation of Australia, to assist them in exploring the Australian landscape. The excellent tracking skills of these Aboriginal Australians were advantageous to settlers in finding food and water and locating missing persons, capturing bushrangers and dispersing other groups of Indigenous peoples.
Portrait of John Piper, an Aboriginal tracker who accompanied Major Thomas Mitchell in his expedition across the Great Dividing Range, c.1836
Members of the Queensland Native Police who assisted in the search of bushranger Ned Kelly and his gang
A contingent of Queensland Police trackers were sent to Victoria to help in the hunt for the Kelly Gang in 1879. The trackers along with Queensland and Victorian police officers pose in Benalla Police Paddock. Back Row L-R: Senior Constable Tom King (Standing); Troopers Jimmy, Hero and Barney and Victorian Police Superintendent J Sadlier. Front Row L-R: Queensland Sub-Inspector Stanhope O’Connor, Troopers Johnny and Jack and Victoria Police Commissioner, Captain
Bushranger
Videos
Page
Bushrangers were originally escaped convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia who used the bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term had evolved to refer to those who took up "robbery under arms" as a way of life, using the bush as their base.
William Strutt's Bushrangers on the St Kilda Road, painted in 1887, depicts what Strutt described as "one of the most daring robberies attempted in Victoria" in 1852. The road was the scene of frequent hold-ups during the Victorian gold rush by bushrangers, mostly former convicts from Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania), which collectively became known as the St Kilda Road robberies.
Convict artist Joseph Lycett's 1825 painting of the Nepean River shows a gang of bushrangers with guns.
Vandemonian bushrangers plundering and burning a homestead
Bushrangers attack mounted policemen guarding a gold escort