Portrait Gallery

of Bushrangers

Bushranging hasn’t really died out in Australia as everybody knows; these days they merely do things differently. Bill Wannan’s new book, Tell ’em 1 Died Game, puts firmly on record the stories of the traditional bushrangers, from “Black Caesar” to Jack Brad shaw (the last of the notorious outlaws), and does a better job of it than any previous book on Australian outlawry.

With the stories go all sorts of information and ballads from contemporary records, and illus trations galore. There are even fine, detailed drawings of the firearms of the times.

Australian bushrangers dif fered from the outlaws of the American West, who reigned for a brief 30 years or so. Bush ranging was rife in Australia for most of the nineteenth century, and most of the continent, not just one area, knew the taste of it.

The origins of Australian bushranging, says Wannan, were in a convict system which bred a unique kind of desperado who, years after the convict system had disappeared, liked to think he had something in common with the supposedly chivalrous highwaymen of England, the Turpins and Duvals.—Sl.

(Tell ’Em I Died Game.

Lansdowne Press, Melbourne. 37/6.)