Australia's First Attempted Political Assassination

In 1868, Prince Alfred, the second son and fourth child of Queen Victoria was 23 years old, when he visited Australia.

 Alfred (Alfred Ernest Albert; 6 August 1844 – 30 July 1900, Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW : 1931 - 1954), Sunday 31 January 1954

It was on 12th of March, that the Prince was a guest at the Sailor's Picnic at the harbourside suburb of Clontarf, New South Wales, when Henry O'Farrell, aged 35, came up behind the Prince and fired a revolver into his back.

Henry James O'Farrell, author of the assassination attempt on Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, ca. 1868

A local coach-maker named William Vial tackled O'Farrell. Immediately assisted by other bystanders, who outraged and enraged by O'Farrell's actions, came close to lynching him. 

The police arrived and whisked O'Farrell away after he had been beaten severely by the mob.

The prince sustained a serious injury to the right of the spine and was in hospital for two weeks.

A period of intense anti-Catholic and general, anti-Irish sentiment, followed, despite religion or affiliation. 

After his trial, O'Farrell was convicted and sentenced to death by judge Alfred Cheeke.

Alfred Cheeke (10 March 1810 – 14 March 1876) was a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Illustrated Sydney News and New South Wales Agriculturalist and Grazier (NSW : 1872 - 1881), Friday 31 March 1876

O'Farrell was hanged on 21 April 1868 in the Darlinghurst Gaol.

 Darlinghurst Gaol. It's not a bird cage, it's the scaffold. Sun (Sydney, NSW : 1910 - 1954), Sunday 27 April 1913

The Lady Bushranger With Convict Father and Aboriginal Mother

Born 7 May 1834, Mary Ann Bugg would grow up to become a notorious bushranger along with her significant other, Frederick Ward, otherwise known as Captain Thunderbolt.

Born at the Berrico outstation of the Australian Agricultural Company near Gloucester, NSW, to father, James Bugg, who had been transported from England for stealing two lambs, a wether sheep and two pigs. And an Aboriginal mother named Charlotte, Mary Ann received education in Sydney, but just after her fourteenth birthday, she married a man named Edmund Baker.

Mary Ann may have had a child during her marriage, but this is uncertain.

The marriage didn't last long, and soon, Mary Ann was in a relationship with another man, John Burrows. With him, she gave birth to two sons.

In 1855 Mary Ann was in a relationship with ex-soldier James McNally, with whom she had another three children. At This time, she was living near Mudgee.

in 1860, Bugg met ticket-of-leave convict Frederick Ward, who would later to become the bushranger Captain Thunderbolt.

Soon after meeting Frederick Ward (Captain Thunderbolt), Mary Ann was pregnant, and so, Ward took her back to her father's farm near Dungog.

Leaving Mudgee caused Ward to be in breach of the ticket-of-leave regulations. But he was also late for the convict muster and, he had returned to Mudgee on a horse that the owner claimed had been "stolen".

With his ticket-of-leave revoked, Ward was sent back to Cockatoo Island to serve the remaining six years of his previous ten-year sentence, along with an additional three years for the stolen horse.

Cockatoo Island - Old Sydney - 1819, Kaye

Meanwhile, Mary Ann gave birth to their daughter Marina Emily in 1861.

On 11 September 1863, Ward and, Frederick Britten, managed to escape Cockatoo Island, after hiding for two days, then swimming from the north side of the island, possibly to Woolwich.

Ward and Britten made their way to the New England district and robbed a shepherd's hut at Gostwyck, near Uralla on 24 October 1863.

A few days later, whilst concealing themselves near Big Rock and waiting to ambush the mail, the pair were spotted by troopers and Ward was shot in the back of the left knee.

Ward's crime spree had begun. However, it was during the Rutherford toll-bar robbery on 21 December 1863, when Ward woke the customs officer by banging loudly on the door, that he adopted his name Captain Thunderbolt. Delaney, the customs officer is said to have exclaimed, "By God, I thought it must have been a thunderbolt."

Returning to collect Mary Ann at Dungog, Ward, Mary Ann and two of the children travelled to north-west of Walgett and lived quietly for a time. 

Mary Ann was on the run with Ward as he committed robberies from the Hunter Region north to Queensland and from Tamworth nearly as far west as Bourke. She was the lookout, the scout and the food provider. 

Mary Ann Bugg (7 May 1834 – 22 April 1905) 

Mary Ann also had her own brushes with the law, such as being convicted of stealing 12 yards of fabric. But after a public outcry, it was found that Mary Ann was "wrongfully convicted", and she was released.

The relationship between Ward and Mary Ann Bugg came to an end in 1867. She would, however, marry another man and give birth to at least five more children.

Frederick “Captain Thunderbolt” Ward was eventually shot by Constable Walker in 1870, after he first shot Thunderbolt’s horse, in swampland near Uralla.

Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 - 1907), Saturday 4 June 1870, 

Photo of Fred Ward (Captain Thunderbolt) after autopsy, having been shot in 1870. 

The Australian Miss Havisham of Newtown

Charles Dickens never visited Australia, but two of his sons spent time here. And it is thought the sons, or reformer Caroline Chisholm, who corresponded with Dickens, told him about an unusual Australian woman, Eliza Donnithorne, inspiring the character of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations.

Eliza Donnithorne was born in South Africa, where her father, James Donnithorne, had worked for the East India Company. Her mother and two elder sisters died during a cholera epidemic in the 1830s.

James Donnithorne decided to retire to Sydney, Australia, residing at a Georgian style house called Camperdown Hall, at 36 King Street, Newtown, Sydney. Years later, the building was known as Cambridge Hall. 

After living with her brother and his wife in England for some years, Eliza joined her father in New South Wales. 

After this, stories differ. But the gist of the story is that at the age of thirty, Eliza became engaged to an unsuitable young man. But she was jilted on her wedding day, in 1856, when the groom did not appear. 

Eliza is said to have turned the guests away from her home and closed the door. She ordered that the wedding feast and the table settings remain, which they did, slowly mouldering and gradually being buried in layers of dust.

In 1886, Eliza died, still wearing her wedding dress.

Kyogle Examiner (NSW : 1912; 1914 - 1915; 1917 - 1954), Friday 22 February 1946

Wingham Chronicle and Manning River Observer (NSW : 1898 - 1954), Tuesday 28 June 1927

Australian Fossils Are the Oldest Ever Found

Organic matter has been found preserved within pyrite in stromatolites of 3.5 billion-year-old fossils, discovered in the 1980s. 

These fossils, found in the Pilbara region, provide evidence for the earliest known life on Earth. 

The organic matter found in the fossils closely resembles the remnants of biofilms formed by microbe colonies.

Previously, evidence of 3.48 billion-year-old microbes was found in hot spring deposits in the Pilbara, the same age as the crust of Mars. There is evidence that Mars once had hot springs, too, which raises hopes that fossils may one day be found on Mars.

As Earth is about 4.54 billion years old and the oldest rocks are about 3.8 billion years old, these 3.5 billion-year-old fossils are very old indeed. 

Finding these Australian fossils may also bring us closer, to possibly answering: how did life develop on Earth?

Stromatolite (Dresser Formation, Paleoarchean, 3.48 Ga; Normay Mine, North Pole Dome, Pilbara Craton, Western Australia) 1, James St. John

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American Convicts Before Australia

Before the American Revolution, America was a dumping ground for a great many British criminals. It was American independence in 1776, which drove the British to find another midden for their overflowing prisons. 

At this time, parts of Africa were considered for the prison settlement, until Sir Joseph Banks, with his great wealth and authority, made sure that the only real choice was the Great Southern Land.

From the 1600s, until the American Revolution of 1776, Britain sent all its convicts sentenced to transportation, to North America and the West Indies. Though, until the Transportation Act of 1718, transportation was an uncommon punishment. The 1718 Act made transportation a more common punishment for crimes. And, as it was the Age of Enlightenment, transportation was also considered to be a more humane alternative to a death sentence. 

Prison Hulk "SUCCESS", at Hobart, Tasmania, AUST

Transporting criminals to America not only cleared out the prisons but it saved the government lots of money and provided cheap labour to the colonies, as many prisoners were sold off as indentured servants for a period of seven years. Selling the prisoners as indentured servants also helped to pay for the voyage across the seas and make the British Government a bit of money. 

The estimated numbers of these prisoners transported to America varies between 50,000 and 120,000, but because of the lack of documentation, it is difficult to really gauge the numbers. 

The 1781 Act did make it tougher, however, for prisoners who escaped while still in Britain, with the aim of avoiding being transported and serving their sentence. These escaped convicts would be executed when they were eventually caught. Convicts who returned to Britain early, too, before serving out their sentence would also be executed. Though, interestingly, most of the servants sent to America as indentured servants decided to stay on in the colonies, once they had served their time.

Those sent to Australia, couldn't really expect to go home after serving their sentence, as the trip would take more than three months back to the old country. The trip back home for the ex-American prisoners took an average of six weeks. And where was the money for the voyage to come from?

Some convicts did return from the colonies and stories of their tribulations and adventures became very popular tales told in autobiographies and newspapers. The author, William Defoe went one step further and created fiction around this theme. In The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Moll first finds out about convict transportation after travelling to Virginia with her husband. Her mother-in-law, who is later revealed to be her real mother, has been transported to the American colonies, as a "favour", rather than being executed. Moll soon realises that her husband is, in fact, her brother.

Moll later returns to England and becomes part of the crime world. As does Sweeney Todd, the “Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” who is unjustly transported to Australia and upon returning to England, begins a murderous rampage of revenge. 

The Australian children of convicts or emancipists, those currency lads and lasses, it must be said, not only spoke differently and were taller than their British ancestors, but healthier, hardworking and law-abiding. So there.