John F. Gavin was a pioneer Australian film actor and director, one of the early filmmakers of the 1910s. He is best known for making films about bushrangers such as Captain Thunderbolt, Captain Moonlite, Ben Hall and Frank Gardiner. Known informally as 'Jack', Gavin worked in collaboration with his wife Agnes, who scripted many of his films.
Portrait of John F. Gavin, published in 1925.
Jack Gavin as 'Nelse Tyler' in The White Sheep (1924).
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
