Bushrangers in the Novel

DINGO (MANUSCRIPT) AND GENTLEMEN AT HEART: BUSHRANGERS IN THE NOVEL Submitted by Aidan Windle BA (Hons), Deakin University Grad. Dip. Ed., The University of Melbourne A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Communication, Arts and Critical Enquiry Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences La Trobe University Bundoora, Victoria 3086 Australia December 2011 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page No. Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… v Statement of Authorship………………………………………………………………………………………….. vi Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................... vii Dingo (Manuscript)…………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Gentlemen at Heart: Bushrangers in the Novel (Dissertation) Preface……………………………………………………………………………………………… 257 Chapter One ........................................................................................... 262 Chapter Two........................................................................................... 283 Chapter Three......................................................................................... 301 Chapter Four........................................................................................... 325 Famous Last Words................................................................................. 347 Appendices Appendix A: Untitled Verse, Van Diemen’s Land, 1825 ....................... 353 Appendix B: The First Century of Bushranger Literature...................... 355 Appendix C: A Whirlpool of Bushranger Aliases................................... 361 Bibliography................................................................................................................... 363 iii LIST OF PLATES Page No. New South Wales Colonial Secretary Alexander McLeay’s request to Windsor police for information to be included in a reward notice (for John ‘Bold Jack’ Donohoe)…… 263 Study of first bushranger for Bushrangers, Victoria, Australia, 1852........................... 273 'Stuck Up': A Once Common Episode of Australian life, Now Almost Obsolete........... 283 John Boyle O'Reilly the convict and John Boyle O’Reilly commemorated as a “Poet, Patriot, Orator”............................................................................................................................. 291 Dodo with Skeleton.......................................................................................................... 303 Frontispiece of Bail Up! A Romance of Bushrangers and Blacks.................................... 308 Not so different… Bushrangers and their pursuers are literally on the same page in Patrick Marony’s portraits from ca. 1894.................................................................... 314 Portrait of Gardiner, the Bushranger .............................................................................. 328 Mark ‘Chopper’ Read signs a replica of Ned Kelly’s armour........................................... 331 The Bushranger Pursued…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 335 iv SUMMARY Dingo (Manuscript) and Gentlemen at Heart: Bushrangers in the Novel is a PhD thesis comprising a novel and a related dissertation. Moss ‘Dingo’ Donohoe is a coldblooded killer, according to the police, Channel Nine and most of the Australian populace. He is Zara’s hero. She remembers the scrap metal alchemist, the dad who went to jail for her. When he escapes she is waiting, but neither of them is sure just whom she’ll meet. The Goddess Tran Hoa Kim is a genetic engineer too busy trying to save the world to save her own fugitive husband and daughter, Moss and Zara. The novel examines conflicts between the primal and the civilised, the innate and the genetically or socially engineered. Crime, Australiana and the grotesque combine in this compassionate black comedy about the making of an unlikely legend. The accompanying dissertation situates Dingo within a tradition of novels dating from the 1840s, in which authors have responded creatively to the mythology of the gentlemanly bushranger. I show how this figure represented a departure from the unrepentantly rebellious convict bolter (escapee) of earlier Australian folklore. Novelists such as Rowcroft transplanted the familiar noble bandit character type into colonial settings. Nisbet, Hornung and others drew on centuries of European literary heritage, as well as conventions of adventure romance popular fiction, in their often whimsical characterisation of bushrangers. I argue that this body of literature reflected important shifts in perception after the end of convict transportation to the colonies and the ostensible close of the bushranging era post- 1880, as bushrangers became historical novelties instead of present threats. The dissertation concludes by considering the cultural currency of the outlaw hero narrative through an analysis of versions and subversions of bushranger mythology in Australian novels since Federation. v STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis or any other degree or diploma. No other person's work has been used without due acknowledgment in the main text of the thesis. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution. Signed: Date: vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My return to study has been a tremendous privilege made possible by my supportive family. Thanks to my supervisors, Dr Lucy Sussex and Dr Susan Bradley Smith, for their wisdom and guidance. I am grateful to La Trobe University for the scholarship stipend which has made my candidature financially feasible. Early in my candidature Dr Alexis Harley inadvertently collected some of my creative writing from the copy room and, uncertain of its authorship, gave constructive written criticism and tracked me down. The English Program is like that. Students, too, particularly those in the novelists’ workshop, have been ever willing to offer ideas and advice. Thanks to Christine Burns and Loretta Calverley in administration. They make the most recalcitrant photocopier work and the most stressed out student grin. My brother, Joel Windle, has been an invaluable guide to academia. In my home town, thanks are due to Fiona Stevens for the ‘writer’s retreat’ and, along with Robyn Rogers, for childcare. Thanks also to Liz McDonald for ‘inside’ information. vii viii Dingo 1. Rules Moss wakes to taste the finest trace of earth in his mouth. A northerly scours concrete and steel and delivers a message in gasps under his cell door. ‘Today’s the day,’ he croaks. ‘Budgie, today’s the day.’ His cellmate rolls over and bangs his knee against the wall, a dimension away from this prison on the bare arse of the western suburbs. Moss smiles patiently in the false dawn. There it is, the buzz of being the only person in the world who knows what’s going to happen. He almost pities the screws, who believe like children in rules. Almost. They’ve mastered the seven hundred inmates at Namatjira Prison the way people have mastered fire: in some measure, sometimes. Today he is grateful they will enforce the rules, in the face of a February heat wave, and send his community service team out for the morning. Moss is alive and will prove it to his daughter. ◊ ◊ ◊ The prisoners’ morning minibus ride ends beside a murky creek at Clifden, where they have laboured on a boardwalk since before Moss’s transfer from remand six months ago. At first the new recruit to the Nurturing Nature team tried to prolong the weekly 1 outings and win prisoners’ approval by telling officers that the boards would have to be ripped up. The safety tread was on the underside. ‘Thanks, dickhead,’ scolded Mac, a middle aged inmate with a boxer’s nose. He accentuated each honk with an open palmed whack to Moss’s head. ‘We were gonna finish all eight hundred metres of boards before we got someone to notice they were the wrong way up.’ The hot wind that woke Moss in the night has itself fully awoken and it thrashes the men mercilessly. Senior Officer Dover and her colleagues watch from under the bridge, while the six prisoners work listlessly, waiting for the call to down tools. Moss stares through streaming sweat, not at the boardwalk before him but at a map in his head. Clifden is a cluster of houses and a tennis court. No shops. The creek to his east runs into a lake further south, buffering suburbia. The forest, if the scrubby republic of rabbits qualifies as a forest, meets farmland to the west and north. ‘Are you gonna do it or not?’ Mac honks. Moss’s heart pounds. Has Budgie brought Mac in on the plan? ‘Listen, Moss, we might be on a go-slow, but I’ve been holding this board steady so long, I reckon pricks will be getting out of jail for murders they haven’t even committed yet before you get around to drilling a bloody hole.’ ‘Ha. Sorry Mac.’ ‘Must be time for smoko.’ He signals to the officers, who nod. The prisoners wander to the shady sanctuary under the bridge. They sip from water bottles, drag lovingly on their cigarettes and listen to Mac’s story of a prisoner who attempted to pose as his cellmate for a conjugal visit by the cellmate’s wife. Moss can see Budgie raising eyebrows so bushy that they could never ask a subtle question. Is today the day? A shrunken ogre, another inmate once called the man whose smells and snoring and sketches of mutilated corpses Moss has lived with for six months. He shrugs.

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