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2:24

This is a true crime podcast, as the title

2:26

suggests. So please consider this your warning that

2:29

it's not suitable for children. And it probably

2:31

will contain content that may be triggering to

2:33

some people. Also, it's an Australian true crime

2:36

podcast. So

2:38

Australian, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners

2:40

should be aware it may contain the

2:42

voices of deceased people. The

2:49

producers of this podcast are the Australian Australian The

2:52

producers of this podcast recognise

2:54

the traditional owners of the land

2:56

on which it's recorded. They

3:00

pay respect to the Aboriginal

3:03

elders past, present and those

3:05

emerging. Don't

3:09

think of Ned Kelly. Don't think of these

3:11

Wild West outlaws when you're talking about Captain

3:13

Moonlight. We're talking about a man who regarded

3:16

himself as a true gentleman of the era.

3:19

Chivalry, codes of honour, those

3:21

were the things that he sort of lived by. And

3:24

he was mystified by the fact that most

3:26

other people didn't see him that way. And it

3:28

was incredibly frustrated. And I think it led to

3:31

a lot of anger issues and eventually

3:33

to a massive showdown that became

3:35

front page news all

3:37

around the country in 1879. I

3:41

have vague recollections of primary

3:43

school projects about bushrangers. For

3:46

those of you living outside of Australia, that's

3:48

the name our forefathers gave to men whom

3:51

today we'd call armed robbers. Of

3:54

course, Ned Kelly is always the star of the show. But

3:57

I'm not going to go into the

3:59

details of his life. star of the

4:01

Bushranger show, thanks to his distinctive homemade

4:03

metal armour and his way with words.

4:06

As he stood on the gallows in Old

4:08

Melbourne Jail about to be hung, he was

4:10

quoted as saying, such is life. He

4:13

probably inherited his poetic streak from his

4:15

mother. Apparently her last words

4:17

to him were, die like

4:19

a Kelly. Tough

4:21

family. There

4:23

have been no less than six movies about

4:26

Ned. He's been played by Heath Ledger and

4:28

Mick Jagger, among others. But

4:30

other Bushrangers lived on in Australian

4:32

culture too, thanks to movies and

4:34

songs taught to children. It

4:37

helped if they had exciting nicknames

4:39

like Mad Dog Morgan, the wild

4:41

colonial boy Jack Doolan, Captain

4:44

Thunderbolt, and the man

4:46

we're hearing about today, Captain Moonlight.

4:49

In the early 19th century when Australia

4:51

was still a British convict colony, a

4:54

prison without walls, these men

4:56

were seen by many as folk heroes,

4:58

fighting back against the brutal ruling elite

5:00

that had sent them here. The

5:03

majority of the most famous Bushrangers were

5:05

former convicts themselves, who'd either been released

5:07

at the end of their sentence or

5:10

had escaped. Either way,

5:12

they found themselves in a foreign and

5:14

inhospitable land with no way home. Rather

5:17

than accept the menial and low paid

5:19

work available to former convicts at the

5:22

time, these men obtained horses and guns

5:24

and took to the lonely roads between

5:26

settlements to rob people. There

5:29

are many fascinating and often gruesome stories

5:31

about the lives and the deaths of

5:33

these men. Tasmanian Bushranger

5:36

Alexander Pearce and his gang got

5:38

lost in the bush at one

5:40

point and they began murdering and

5:42

eating each other. Pearce survived,

5:44

but when he later found himself on

5:46

the run with just one other companion, he

5:49

ate him too. Captain

5:51

Moonlight was a very different character. Despite

5:54

the fantastic nickname, there's been

5:56

conspicuously little information available about

5:59

him. That was until journalist

6:01

and author Gary Lenell started looking into

6:03

the story. The result is a

6:05

great book that uncovers some surprising aspects

6:07

of Moonlight's story. Aspects,

6:09

some say, are the reason he

6:12

hasn't been eulogized like his contemporaries.

6:15

The book is called Moonlight, the tragic

6:17

love story of Captain Moonlight and the

6:19

bloody end of the Bushrangers. And

6:22

Gary Lenell joins us on Australian True Crime to

6:24

tell us about it. What was the first book you wrote to the British to

6:27

tell you about the first book you wrote to the British? I grew up

6:30

in the 60s and 70s, so I remember being

6:32

given, you know, books for Christmas

6:34

or your birthday, which were the big

6:36

album of Bushrangers. And there'd

6:38

be a page or two devoted to each

6:40

Bushranger. Of course, there'd be an entire chapter

6:42

devoted to Ned Kelly. But

6:45

occasionally, you'd come across this character, Captain

6:47

Moonlight. And I was always amazed by,

6:49

A, what a great

6:51

name, perfect name for a

6:53

Bushranger. But there was very little information

6:55

about it. And I used

6:57

to think, well, the guy with that sort

6:59

of name is surely one of the great

7:01

Bushrangers in Australian history. Why don't we know

7:03

more about him? And I've got

7:06

a theory about that. I've got a theory about

7:08

why he was sort of written out of history, I

7:10

guess. And then a few years ago, I was researching,

7:13

I was in the middle of research for another book.

7:16

And I just came across a couple of the

7:18

documents referring to Moonlight. And I thought, well, put

7:20

that aside. And when I

7:22

get time, I'll start digging into it. And

7:25

soon enough, it came around. And suddenly,

7:27

I was heading down

7:29

a lot of rabbit holes, trying to find

7:31

the real Captain Moonlight. I

7:33

guess you could say he was a

7:35

very different Bushranger. He almost fell into

7:37

Bushranging by accident. And

7:39

really, I mean, you're talking about 1880, the

7:42

year that he met his untimely

7:44

end. And it was really

7:46

a closing chapter, I think, on the history

7:48

of Bushrangers in Australia. Because early

7:50

1880, you have Andrew George

7:52

Scott, who was Captain Moonlight, arrested,

7:55

and then go into trial for the

7:57

murder of a police officer later that

7:59

year. you have Ned Kelly arrested

8:01

and then hanged in the old Melbourne

8:03

jail. And after that,

8:05

there aren't that many more after it.

8:08

So, you know, they sort of bookend

8:10

that era. And moonlight, I find is

8:12

probably far more fascinating and far

8:15

more interesting than Ned Kelly. Kelly's the one

8:17

who gets all the publicity and all

8:19

the mythology that's built up around

8:21

the Bushrangers is the archetypal Aussie

8:23

Bushranger, I guess. But moonlight is a

8:26

deeper and somewhat darker character, I think.

8:28

And they both have these Irish

8:30

backgrounds. Just thinking that both Irishmen,

8:32

both born in Ireland, what makes a

8:34

person a Bushranger? Well, they

8:37

were basically outlaws, effectively the

8:39

Australian equivalent of the

8:41

Wild West when you saw those guys

8:43

with big black hats right into the

8:46

town called Tombstone, where death was

8:48

a way of life. And very similar here

8:50

in Australia back in the 1850s and 1860s,

8:52

a lot of them were either escaped

8:55

convicts or people who

8:57

just couldn't find work. There were a series

8:59

of depressions and recessions during the 19th century.

9:02

And so they took to the Bush and on horseback,

9:04

they discovered they could actually make a living. Most

9:07

of them not very successfully. Most of them weren't

9:09

that very good. And by

9:11

and large, a lot of them, not all of them, but

9:14

a lot of them did live by a code of honour. And

9:16

the code of honour said that you don't rob

9:19

women and don't scare children.

9:22

And it was kind of very

9:24

gentlemanly, kind of that 19th century

9:26

thing. Bushrangers were mostly

9:28

robbing banks. Was that how they were

9:30

mostly making their money? Yeah, they

9:33

robbed banks. Cob and Co, the

9:35

coach line. But let's go back

9:37

in sort of like the 1850s

9:39

and 1860s, there was no telegraph.

9:42

So the only news that came through to these

9:44

small towns and stuck out in the middle of

9:46

nowhere were letters from home

9:48

and the newspapers. And obviously, sometimes these

9:50

newspapers have been delivered three or four

9:52

weeks or even months later. So they

9:55

were always way behind completely different to

9:57

our world now. And this was an

9:59

era. when most of these Bush rangers

10:01

were discovering that if you went and robbed

10:03

a coach, it was carrying

10:06

gold, or you robbed a local bank,

10:08

you could get away and it might

10:10

take days before the local troopers, the

10:12

police, could be notified. They

10:14

troubled the rangers very easily. They were

10:17

able to hide very well in a

10:19

lot of the thick forested areas of

10:21

Australia. And really,

10:23

I mean, people complained, but police forces

10:25

back then were actually, a lot of them

10:28

were private affairs. A lot of people would put them together

10:30

and then pay them out of their own pocket. And

10:32

it wasn't until the 1840s and 1950s and

10:35

into the 60s that you began to have

10:38

colony-led police forces. And the quality

10:40

of some of these troopers wasn't

10:43

great. I mean, a lot of them

10:45

had, you know, you might say suspicious

10:47

backgrounds themselves, and they were there

10:49

because it was a regular income and they could feed

10:51

their family. And they could carry a

10:53

gun. I think there's long been an idea

10:56

that certain kinds of blokes would

10:58

be happy to be either a cop or a robber.

11:01

It's just a similar lifestyle

11:04

in those days. You certainly

11:06

can't underestimate the power of that.

11:08

And most of them had a, I guess,

11:11

an ideological bent. Bushrangers, they

11:13

were against the British Empire,

11:16

they were against the colonies of Australia,

11:19

and they felt harassed by the police force

11:21

at the time. They were political, weren't

11:23

they? There's always the

11:25

stories about Ned Kelly that the Irish families

11:28

supported him and hit him when need be

11:30

and things like that. There was a very

11:32

political perspective to Bushranging. That's exactly right.

11:35

And Moonlight was one of those as well. I

11:37

mean, he had a very different background to most

11:40

of the Bushrangers. I mean, most of them

11:42

were born on dirt floor slab huts out

11:44

in the bush and the outback. They

11:47

could barely read or write. They were barely literate at

11:49

all. And yet Moonlight

11:51

came from a very well-off family in Northern

11:53

Ireland. He was born in

11:56

1845 in a little town called Rathreeland.

11:58

His father was very well-known. to do and quite

12:01

a powerful figure in that town. He used to

12:03

sort of adjudicate on criminal matters. So they were

12:05

the authority. His dad was the authority in

12:07

that town. Exactly. And he was sort

12:09

of caught up in the Protestant Catholic walls

12:11

of the time in Northern Ireland. This is just

12:13

after the famine that ripped

12:15

Ireland apart. You know, you had people

12:18

start to the point of starvation where

12:20

their bodies were found and

12:22

their lips were green and they'd be in

12:24

grass because that's all

12:26

they could actually find. So you're talking,

12:28

you know, extremes of poverty. Lots of

12:30

orphans. Absolutely. And yet Andrew

12:33

George Scott, as he was called then,

12:36

as a youngster, was born

12:38

into this family with a fair bit of wealth. He

12:41

was educated very well. The best teachers were

12:43

brought in. He read all of the classics, all

12:46

of the Greek philosophers. He very

12:48

well schooled, probably taught a couple of languages. And when

12:50

he was 10 or 12, he was sent

12:52

away to London to train with the British Navy

12:54

for a time. The family

12:57

then mysteriously loses their fortune

12:59

in the 1850s and they

13:01

have to emigrate. And New

13:03

Zealand is offering friends of

13:06

the empire right around the world the chance to

13:08

move to New Zealand. They'll give you 40 acres

13:11

and 40 pounds. And so

13:13

you can come and settle there and continue the

13:15

white man's rule over the Pacific. That's what they

13:17

were trying to get into more people in. He

13:20

goes there, he's 16 when he

13:22

arrives. And interestingly, one of

13:24

the first times he's recorded in history is

13:27

on the journey over on a boat called

13:29

the Black Eagle, which left from London to

13:32

New Zealand. The crew members

13:34

took a real disliking towards Andrew

13:36

George Scott, as it were, as he

13:38

would become known, Captain Moonlight. They

13:40

thought he'd had a few knocks on the

13:43

head, as how they describe him. He would

13:45

sort of veer from being pleasant and quite

13:47

funny on the boat to being moody

13:50

and sombre and not talking to anyone

13:52

for days. And that's the

13:54

first indication that we have that he sort

13:56

of struggles with this personality

13:58

issues that he has. and

14:00

probably would be diagnosed these days as

14:03

either bipolar or having some sort of

14:05

serious melody because there are a lot

14:07

of incidents in his life where he

14:10

just swung and he became very

14:12

violent and aggressive and at other times

14:15

he was extremely placid and erudite. He

14:18

ends up becoming a teacher for a short

14:20

time in Auckland. There are reports

14:22

that he forged checks

14:24

and also stole money from some

14:26

of his students. So he

14:28

obviously had leanings towards taking the easy

14:31

way out and eventually

14:33

arrives in Australia and goes

14:36

and visits a couple of friends. One of the

14:38

family friends is a one of the

14:40

head of the Anglican church in Melbourne and

14:42

he apports him a late preacher. So

14:45

Andrew Scott jumps on his horse and heads

14:48

off to places like Ballarat and Ararat. This

14:50

is the end of the gold rush in

14:52

Australia as well. There's a fair bit of

14:54

money around, particularly sitting in bank vaults. And

14:58

all along he starts nurturing

15:01

friendships with young men

15:03

around him. It's almost like he's a magnet.

15:06

They're usually a lot younger than him. He

15:08

has his own personal page when he

15:11

arrives in a place called Backersmarsh and

15:13

it's very unusual for a young man of

15:15

moonlight's age to have a page. This is

15:18

someone who looks after his horse, saddles it

15:20

for him, goes and gets his food

15:22

for him. And there's an

15:24

indication there that people thought this relationship was

15:26

a little bit different

15:29

to what they were accustomed to, particularly

15:31

in the bush in Victoria and New South

15:33

Wales. He ends up having

15:35

all sorts of arguments and all sorts of fights

15:37

with people. He's a fantastic preacher.

15:40

People love him. They flock from

15:42

tens of miles away on their horses every

15:44

Sunday morning to go and listen to him

15:47

give sermons in the local church.

15:50

Because he's got that powerful vocabulary,

15:52

he can talk, the

15:54

hair on people's neck would stand up. And

15:56

there are a lot of reports from people

15:58

that... They were astonished at

16:01

how fortunate they had this man with

16:03

this Irish accent giving them the

16:05

sermon every Sunday morning. I don't mean to be

16:07

dismissive, but I mean, obviously there wasn't much entertainment

16:09

going on at the time. No, there was no

16:11

Netflix. That was the problem. Yeah. I

16:14

mean, is it a problem or not? I don't

16:16

know. But I mean, you can see how then

16:18

having a guy like this wander into town who

16:20

is a great speaker, you know, would be something

16:22

to look forward to. You know what? There's

16:24

a part of me when I researched these books

16:27

and I've written a few books now dealing with

16:29

figures in the 19th century. And

16:31

I have this real pain for wanting

16:33

to live back then because life, it

16:35

was slower. It was so much simpler.

16:38

It was no social media. You

16:41

know, nowadays, I'm sure people like Moonlight

16:43

probably end up with, you know,

16:45

their own Instagram and their own

16:48

Tiktoker. I'd be definitely

16:50

a Tiktoker. 20 to 30 second

16:52

video with an Irish lilt in

16:54

his voice would be magical. But

16:57

they didn't have that back then. And so they basically

17:00

they either went to the local pub or

17:03

they sat around the fire at night. There

17:05

was no radio and it was just at

17:07

the dawn of the second Industrial Revolution. And

17:09

what was happening is at the same time

17:11

that these Bush Rangers are starting to run

17:13

out of space. Yeah, the cities

17:15

are getting bigger. Steam engines

17:17

are now going in between cities. There's

17:20

a bloke in Germany called Carl

17:22

Benz. He's just invented

17:24

a two stroke motor that will

17:26

then become the engine for the very first

17:28

motor car as we know it. There's

17:31

a bloke over in a Canadian farmhouse called

17:33

Alexander Graham Bell. And he's mucking around with

17:36

this invention that will eventually transmit

17:38

his voice on a telephone. And

17:40

then you've got Thomas Edison, who's just invented

17:42

the photograph, the recoil plier, which is taken

17:45

off all around the world. And

17:47

he's now fiddling with something called the long lasting

17:49

electric light bulb. Wow. And you've got

17:51

all of these changes going on as well. So

17:53

the world is actually getting smaller. And that's

17:56

not what the Bush Rangers really want.

17:59

They like the fast. of Australia in the

18:01

empty spaces and suddenly... And they don't want

18:03

means for information to travel,

18:06

certainly. No. And so by the

18:08

time Moonlight is ready to

18:10

rob his very first bank, you've

18:13

got the telegraph operating all around Australia, particularly

18:15

up and down the East Coast. Within

18:18

moments, you get news from Melbourne

18:20

or Brisbane into these small outback

18:22

towns and suddenly the world's

18:24

alerted to the fact that there are criminals in

18:26

their midst. So in

18:28

the end, Moonlight, he's working

18:31

in Ballarat in a place called Mount

18:33

Edgerton and he robs the local

18:35

bank. He has another

18:37

friendship with a young man

18:39

called Bruin, who ends

18:41

up falling out with him. And

18:43

we don't know why, but we suspect that

18:46

Moonlight's friendship was incredibly intense.

18:49

The police go after him, but he escapes and

18:52

he jumps on a boat and flees

18:55

to Fiji, where he

18:57

fleeces a lot of people of their

18:59

fortunes, allegedly purchases an island of his

19:01

own for 30 quid, and

19:03

then decides to come back to Australia

19:05

and sails through this monstrous storm, skippering

19:08

a boat into Sydney Heads on Boxing

19:10

Day. He's soon arrested, not

19:13

long after that, brought back to Melbourne

19:15

and sentenced to jail for 10 years

19:17

and ends up in Pentridge. And he's

19:19

there roughly at the same time as

19:21

Ned Kelly is serving one of his

19:23

sentences for stealing a horse. So

19:25

it's likely that the two crossed paths,

19:27

but more importantly, Captain

19:30

Moonlight comes across a young guy

19:32

called James Nesbitt or Jim Nesbitt.

19:36

And they become

19:38

not just best friends, but

19:40

soulmates. And as

19:42

the rest of the world has speculated down

19:45

the track, lovers as well. Nesbitt

19:48

came from a broken home. His

19:50

father was drunk. He was always

19:52

fighting with Nesbitt's mother. And

19:55

Nesbitt was clearly looking for a strong father

19:57

figure in his life. And he's coming back.

20:00

across Captain Moonlight in

20:02

Pentridge. And Moonlight was a troublesome prisoner

20:06

in Pentridge. Pentridge was the prison

20:08

in Australia. It was the darkest

20:10

hellhole. There was one guy

20:12

there who acted as the part-time hangman.

20:14

Oh, yes. We've heard about him. Yes. But

20:16

so he's also a prisoner. Yeah. Yeah. And

20:18

his party trick was to catch rats

20:20

in the jail yard and then skewer

20:23

them on basically your old, your average

20:25

rat kebab and cook

20:27

them over coals. Not many other people,

20:29

not many people took him up on his offer, but he

20:31

seemed to relish the meal. It was

20:33

probably the best bit of protein he had actually in that

20:36

prison. Probably the freshest bit of protein, that's

20:38

for sure. Now, was Moonlight calling himself

20:40

Captain Moonlight at this stage? Yeah.

20:42

He called him, he called himself Captain Moonlight

20:44

when he rocked the bank in Ballarat in

20:47

about 1870. So he came up with that himself,

20:50

didn't he? Yeah. But look, the

20:52

origins of Moonlight and it's spelled

20:54

M-O-O-N-L-I-T-E. They

20:57

go back because there was a Captain

20:59

Moonlight during some of the Protestant

21:01

Catholic wars in Northern Ireland at the

21:03

time. There was also a Moonlight,

21:06

a nickname of a prisoner in Pentridge at the time.

21:08

So we're not too sure how and

21:11

why he took it, but he

21:13

had signed a note saying, just rob

21:15

the bank and then you're sincerely Captain

21:17

Moonlight, as polite as

21:19

ever. And then people knew him

21:21

and he was an enormous

21:23

figure for the time during his trial in

21:26

Victoria. It was front page

21:28

news. Tens of thousands of people would

21:31

flock the streets just to see the latest

21:33

edition of the newspaper. There

21:35

was no radio obviously. So the only information

21:38

they could get with the newspaper delivery boys

21:40

shouting at the headlines all of the time.

21:43

And in a way, it was

21:45

a little bit like the gangsters

21:48

in LA and

21:50

New York and in the

21:52

underworld in Melbourne and Sydney suddenly

21:55

getting their own Instagram accounts

21:57

and they're all becoming celebrities.

22:00

And a lot of these Bush rangers were

22:03

celebrated and there was a big debate going

22:05

on in society about why

22:07

are we giving these criminals

22:10

hero status? You know, why do

22:12

we worship them? And there's a

22:14

really interesting thing that happened during the trial

22:16

of their life in Sydney after

22:19

a shootout with the police. And a

22:22

guy writes to a newspaper and he says, I don't

22:25

know what's going on with the world these

22:27

days where the newspapers are full of stories

22:29

in great detail about these criminals, these Bush

22:31

rangers. I get up

22:33

in the morning to go and get the paper

22:35

to read about it. And my two daughters have

22:37

already rushed outside and got the newspaper and won't

22:39

give it to me until I've devoured every word.

22:42

And so you can see the celebrity sort

22:44

of status already kicking in. And the stories

22:46

were really flamboyant too, weren't they? The way they

22:48

wrote in papers at that time was

22:51

really colourful. I love going through the

22:54

old newspapers and just not even reading

22:57

the articles I'm supposed to be researching,

22:59

but also the letters to the editor

23:01

section, because that gives you a

23:04

great insight into people's thinking at the

23:06

time. And they're

23:08

very prurient, they're very rigid

23:11

in their views, very conservative. I

23:13

mean, this is a very

23:16

conservative sexual era as well. We're

23:18

talking about the Queen Victoria era.

23:22

Relationships between men are

23:24

seen as blasphemous, let alone between

23:27

women. And yet this has always

23:30

been lying at the crux of the

23:33

relationship between Captain Moonlight and James

23:35

Nesbitt and some of the other younger men that

23:37

he met along the line. A

23:40

lot of speculation over the last century

23:42

was he Australia's first and possibly only

23:45

gay Bush rager. And

23:48

that seems to have come a lot out

23:50

of the relationship. Well, I think it's partly

23:53

why we never read that much about him

23:55

in our Bush Ranger books when we were

23:57

kids, that the history... historians

24:00

of the time decided that his relationship

24:02

with James Nesbitt was just a little

24:04

bit too much for readers of the

24:07

era. And there was

24:09

a lot of self-censorship going on. And

24:11

I think they deliberately erased Moonlight, a

24:13

lot out of the history. Yeah. I

24:16

can see that the gay Bush Ranger would not

24:18

have fitted into that glorification of Bush Rangers.

24:21

Well, it doesn't because our

24:23

view of Bush Rangers and outlaws,

24:26

they represent macho

24:28

machismo, it's all there. They're

24:31

laden with testosterone. The

24:34

reality was that a lot of them were just brutes.

24:37

You can imagine the smell of some of these guys. They

24:40

wouldn't have had a bath for months. They were hiding out

24:43

in the Bush. They would have sweated

24:45

all day on horseback. You

24:47

can imagine the stench. And

24:49

yet they were hailed in certain quarters,

24:52

particularly among working class people as

24:54

these heroic figures who were defying

24:57

authority. And by young women,

24:59

according to anecdote, which I find very easy to

25:01

believe. Yeah. Well, I

25:03

know maybe I'm still waiting

25:05

for someone to explain to me that that

25:07

whole issue of women who write to

25:10

prisoners in jail, but also

25:13

the ones on death row. I thought you were going

25:15

to say just the basic like, you know, women love

25:17

a bad boy. But no, you're right. That's a whole

25:19

other level. Women who are

25:21

into killers and that's ongoing. It's

25:24

incredible. It's not going. But I

25:26

was the death row in the US and Texas. You'll

25:29

find almost every inmate there in

25:31

correspondence with a lot of women. And

25:34

that's quite phenomenal. So yeah, as I

25:36

said, history just keeps repeating itself time

25:38

and time again, despite the fact that

25:41

we've got all this new technology. As

25:52

promised, I am thrilled to announce that

25:54

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at by heart comm So

28:48

by the time moonlight gets out of

28:50

Petridge prison, it's 1879

28:53

he doesn't have a penny to scratch he

28:56

goes on the speaker circuit and delivers

28:59

these lectures and you know, we talk about

29:01

the lack of entertainment back then while Getting

29:04

a lecturer to a small country town

29:07

Would attract five six hundred people on a Saturday

29:09

night and they'd all pay a penny each

29:12

and made all cram into the local pub

29:14

into the dining area and moonlight

29:16

it walk in in a in the best suit

29:18

that money could buy No

29:20

one knows where he was getting this cash from

29:22

at that stage and he

29:24

would deliver a two-hour lecture impromptu

29:26

without notes Beautifully said

29:28

talking about the evils of the justice

29:30

system and how prisoners weren't being rehabilitated

29:34

Shocking conditions. I mean no one really

29:36

cared. No, but it's juicy It's juicy

29:38

stuff to hear a bloke from Petridge

29:41

tell you what's really going on in there and

29:43

what? I saw yeah, you've got an

29:45

insider's account but the police

29:47

were harassing him and So

29:49

he felt as though he couldn't walk down the street

29:52

without some of the troopers stopping him So

29:54

he decided to leave Victoria and Melbourne where

29:56

he was so he along

29:58

with four or five other young men

30:00

who, well, basically his gang,

30:02

I guess you could call his posse.

30:05

They didn't ride because they, he was the

30:07

only one who could ride a horse. They

30:10

walked from Melbourne up to

30:12

the border with the colony of New South

30:14

Wales and then followed the Murray River along

30:17

until they got to Gundagai, just outside Gundagai

30:19

to a place called Walter Badgery, which is

30:21

a very big sheep station there. Thousands

30:24

of acres and

30:26

they went looking for work. And

30:29

in the cold, gloomy, rainy night, the

30:31

owner of the station came out and said, no, I don't

30:34

have work for people like you. Move on. They

30:36

went back up in the hills, spent a

30:38

very damp night as it continued to pour rain and

30:40

moonlight turned to his guys and said, let's

30:43

take the station. That's ours. We need

30:45

to eat. So I think his

30:47

pride had been hurt that he hadn't been able to

30:50

find work for these young men around him as well.

30:52

And he was very obsessed with this code

30:54

of honor that he lived by, that a

30:56

man had to be chivalrous and he had

30:58

to have an honor and rules to his

31:01

life. So he was embarrassed and humiliated. So

31:04

the next morning they went down and

31:06

stole guns and staged a siege and

31:09

took over the station for about three days

31:11

and people kept coming through, through the gates

31:13

and seeing what was going on and they have to take

31:15

a few more hostages. And in the end, they had about

31:17

40 people hostage

31:19

inside this old farmhouse. And

31:21

that's when the troopers arrived and

31:24

there were a series of shootouts and showdowns that

31:27

took place over the coming 12 hours. And

31:31

eventually in one of the crossfire

31:33

of one of these great shootouts, a

31:35

trooper was shot dead. He'd

31:38

take days to die from the lead poisoning

31:40

from the bullet. And James

31:43

Nesbitt, moonlight watched as

31:45

the bullet splintered the glass of one of the

31:47

huts that they were hiding in and

31:50

entered the temple into his brain. And

31:52

when the police arrived, they

31:55

found moonlight cradling James

31:57

Nesbitt in his arms and kissing

31:59

him. passionately as though he could sort of bring

32:01

him back to life and he was just

32:04

lying there, you know dead in his arms and more

32:06

like they they all say all of the accounts

32:09

from the police at that time whether

32:11

he was a completely shattered man that he'd

32:14

lost the love of his life and he

32:16

cradled Nesbit's body for some time before the

32:19

police hauled him away. Another

32:21

young boy that was in part of

32:23

his posse had also been shot dead. So

32:26

Moonlight and the last remaining members of his gang

32:28

were put on a train and taken to Sydney

32:30

for a show trial because

32:32

the government of the time the colony

32:35

had claimed that there were no more Bushrages

32:37

and then suddenly they'd been embarrassed by this

32:40

massive shootout. It's

32:43

hard to sort of really quantify just

32:45

how compelling people found this and it

32:47

wasn't just in Australia it was global.

32:50

You know the reports of the trial

32:52

reached the New York newspapers they filled

32:55

pages in the London newspapers as well.

32:58

He was a global sensation and

33:00

at the time Ned Kelly was still at

33:02

large in Victoria so suddenly this

33:05

nightmare it sort of reappeared for

33:07

the authorities having assured

33:09

everyone that crime was on the

33:11

on the downturn and the Bush Ranger era

33:13

was well and truly over and

33:15

you had this man moonlight in the

33:18

dock and he's in the

33:20

dock and during his trial and

33:22

he delivers these astonishing speeches. You know

33:25

it's like a Greek old philosopher or

33:27

orator he just up there on his

33:29

feet just talking for half

33:32

an hour to an hour without a break and

33:35

people just found it incredibly compelling but

33:37

he was found guilty and I don't think there's any doubt

33:39

that he was going to be found guilty. He was

33:42

found guilty of murder. Of murdering the

33:44

trooper who had died. They

33:46

claimed the bullet that killed the trooper

33:48

had come from Moonlight's gun but

33:51

you know what you're talking

33:53

about 1879 1880 there's no

33:55

ballistics there's no homicide detectives

33:58

you know it's just. their

34:00

say against the Bushrages say? Yeah,

34:02

but I guess given that he'd already been convicted

34:05

once, he'd done jail time and had

34:07

got out and taken

34:09

up crime again would have been an embarrassment too,

34:11

wouldn't it? Yeah, it was. And

34:14

they just, the authorities didn't like me. They

34:16

didn't like what he represented because he was

34:18

intelligent for a start and he

34:20

could hold an argument with them and in

34:22

many cases embarrass judges

34:24

and lawyers because he was

34:27

so knowledgeable and so good at public

34:29

speaking. In January 20, in

34:32

1880, he was led to the

34:34

gallows and that's where he finally

34:36

met my favorite character out of this incredible

34:39

tale that spans that 19th

34:41

century, a guy called

34:43

Nosy Bob, who was the state

34:45

executioner. His real name was

34:47

Robert Rice Howard, but everyone

34:49

called him Nosy because he'd been made the

34:52

state executioner in the 1860s. He'd

34:54

been a cab driver. Cabs back

34:56

in the 1860s were horse

34:58

driven, obviously, with a little carriage

35:01

on the back and they called handsome

35:03

cabs. And one day

35:05

he was kicked by, the horse kicked him

35:07

with its rear leg and took his

35:09

nose off. And so

35:11

Nosy Bob had this great big hole in the middle of

35:13

his face. I don't know if you've seen that video

35:16

game or the TV series just made it

35:18

fall out, where the

35:21

ghoul has an absolute hole right

35:23

in the middle of his face. That's

35:25

Nosy Bob. Wow. One of

35:27

the journalists when he met him described Nosy

35:29

as being spider legged, arms

35:31

like a gorilla, a flat face without

35:33

a nose and huge feet. So

35:36

he wasn't the best looking guy

35:38

around, but he'd been made state

35:40

executioner and he became

35:42

my favorite character out of this

35:44

whole story because he's such a rich

35:47

and interesting guy. And

35:50

you don't get anyone like him these days. No nose.

35:53

The executioners were always regarded

35:55

as pariahs in society. Nosy

35:58

Bob loved having a beard. He'd go down to his

36:01

local hotel. Whenever

36:03

he had a glass of beer, the publican would

36:05

smash the glass on the floor so that

36:07

no one could ever have their lips touch the

36:10

glass that the state executioner had

36:12

drunk from. That's

36:15

how he was seen. Now, he had a wife and

36:17

he had two young daughters that he doted on. And

36:20

for a man who was an expert at

36:24

turning off the lights in

36:26

the eyes of all of these daughters, he

36:28

was actually great at bringing life into the

36:30

world because he was a fastidious gardener. He

36:33

bred hulks and pigs. And

36:36

he's just an extraordinary character. I'm looking

36:38

at illustrations of him from the day. And

36:40

yeah, you're right. It's the girl. Yeah.

36:43

It's the girl, isn't it? Yeah. It's

36:45

terrifying. And he terrified people. People, women would be walking

36:47

their kids down the street. They'd see Nosy Bot walk

36:50

into him after he'd had one too many beers at the

36:52

local park. And they just crossed the street

36:54

and hide from him. And this

36:56

was the first meeting between these two, but it

36:58

seemed as though that they were destined to meet

37:00

because Nosy had

37:02

been a hangman for 20 years and

37:04

there was a real science behind hanging

37:06

people. You had to lubricate

37:09

the rope, soap it up, stretch it,

37:12

because then you had to weigh the

37:14

person that you were hanging so

37:16

you could figure out the drop. But

37:19

Nosy Bob had to do all of the

37:21

work in preparing. But

37:24

he didn't weigh Moonlight, but he had already received

37:26

all of the details and they took him

37:28

to the gallows and there

37:30

were about 40 people allowed in, including

37:32

the editor of what was then called

37:35

the Bulletin Magazine, J.F. Archibald, who the

37:38

Archibald Prize is Australia's biggest art

37:40

prize. It's named after money

37:42

that he donated to keep that running. And

37:46

he writes at length about this

37:48

trial and also about the hanging

37:50

itself and how most

37:53

of the judiciary, the top lawyers

37:55

and the top politicians, there

37:57

was almost a fight among them to get tickets to get

37:59

it. in to see the hanging outside

38:02

the prison. There were 10,000 people

38:04

estimated to be on the streets, all

38:06

waiting for that moment when he dropped and

38:09

the sign went up out the front of the

38:11

prison that the execution had been carried out. It

38:15

was just a few months later that Ned Kelly

38:17

was then hunted down in court with Glen Rowan,

38:19

taken back to Melbourne and then eventually hanged as

38:22

well. And that kind of put a shadow over

38:24

the whole Moonlight story as well. But

38:27

he was certainly, for that hero,

38:29

Moonlight was among the most notorious

38:32

bushrangers Australia had ever seen. And

38:34

such an interesting character. So I

38:36

guess that would account for why, as

38:38

I said earlier, I remember as a

38:40

kid, songs and things about Captain Moonlight,

38:42

but so much so that I thought he

38:44

was just kind of a character, a fairy

38:47

tale character. I didn't realize he was a real person,

38:49

but now I realize it

38:51

was his flamboyance, for whatever better word, I

38:53

think maybe, that made him so memorable,

38:55

but at the same time, a bit

38:59

could have made the authorities fearful of him. Yeah, I

39:01

think that's one of the two key reasons. And the other

39:03

one being that he

39:06

was probably gay. We

39:08

don't know for sure, but there are

39:10

letters that he wrote. And the most

39:12

interesting thing about him is what he

39:14

wrote in the final night of

39:16

his life. I mean, he sat there with a

39:18

candle in his death cell at

39:20

Darlinghurst jail. And in his

39:23

own handwriting, using a fountain pen, spent

39:26

most of that night writing letters to people

39:28

all around the world, thanking them for their

39:31

assistance over the years. And

39:33

they're amazing. When you, I had to go into

39:35

the archives to have a look at them and

39:38

to read the file, you have to put

39:40

on these white gloves so that you don't,

39:42

your dirty fingerprints, don't get over the originals.

39:45

And it really brings a bottle up

39:47

to my throat. I got very emotional when

39:49

I was reading them because I looked at

39:51

these pages and I could

39:53

actually see where he'd been pressing his

39:56

fountain pen hard on the paper

39:58

and the ink had smudged a little bit. And

40:00

then later in the night, as he gets more tired,

40:03

the letters start to slay it a little bit

40:05

as his hand gets tired. So

40:07

you're almost there watching this bloke,

40:10

you know, write basically his last

40:12

memoirs. One of the letters

40:14

he writes is to Jim Nesbitt's mother. And

40:17

he says to her, he

40:19

actually uses an extract from a

40:22

poem, this English poet Felicia Hemmons.

40:25

And she wrote a poem about a lost lover. And

40:28

there's a real clue in all of that. And

40:30

he says, I have won my fame from the

40:33

breath of wrong and my soul hath risen for

40:35

thy glory strong. Now call me

40:37

hence by thy side to be, the world thou

40:39

leavest has no place for me. Give

40:42

me my home on thy noble heart. Well

40:44

have we loved, let us both depart. And

40:48

he can actually pick that up out

40:50

of his memory. And here's a bloke who's going to die

40:52

the next morning on the

40:55

gallows. And he actually

40:57

has that brain that allows him to

40:59

sum it up large slabs of an

41:01

epic poem. And he sends

41:04

it to James Nesbitt's mother. And he also includes

41:06

in that letter, a lock of hair

41:08

that he took from Jim, that he

41:10

kept around his finger for a while,

41:12

almost like a ring to remind himself

41:14

of Jim. And he also stated

41:16

that his trial that after he

41:19

was executed, he wanted to be buried with

41:21

Jim. So the two of them could

41:23

be together. The authorities were having none of

41:26

that, none of that. They were never going

41:28

to give in to moonlight whatsoever. So

41:31

he was buried in a basically

41:33

an unmarked grave just outside of Sydney.

41:36

And it took a century before some

41:39

activists actually read about his trial

41:42

and decided to lobby the government

41:44

to allow him to be disinterred

41:47

and taken back to where James's body

41:49

was. Now they still don't know where

41:51

James is buried these days. The mists

41:53

of Thailand as soon as they're raised.

41:56

Most of the Bushragers, bank robbers, all of those

41:58

sort of criminals. We usually buried

42:00

in unmarked graves. No one

42:02

really put up a sign for them because

42:04

the authorities decided it was best that everyone

42:07

forget them. Well, I mean, we've lost Ned

42:09

Kelly's head. That's how much people didn't want

42:11

to memorialize them. They

42:13

lost a lot of heads back

42:15

then. There was Frederick Deming who

42:17

was a Jack the Ripper suspect

42:20

who I've also written about. His

42:22

head went missing as well in that great

42:24

stuff up at the old Melbourne jail when

42:26

they were, and Pinchridge as well. So there's

42:29

been a lot of mix ups like that, but the fact that

42:31

he took the time to write

42:33

to Jim Nesbitt's mother and he

42:35

talks about, please regard me as much of

42:37

a son to you as Jim was. You

42:40

don't get Bushrangers writing like that. I mean,

42:42

the biggest equivalent we've got is probably Ned

42:45

Kelly's derildary letter. And

42:47

even that is kind of regarded as a

42:49

bit sus that maybe someone, one of the

42:51

other Bushrangers wrote it for him who was

42:53

more literate. So to actually

42:56

have a Bushranger in his own hand, writing

42:58

about his memories about the people who

43:00

helped him over the years and how

43:03

he was completely misjudged is unprecedented

43:05

almost. I mean, you don't get literate

43:07

criminals. No, you don't usually. Usually that's

43:09

part of, I think, the reason why

43:11

they end up being criminals myself. But

43:14

was he still in touch with his family? Did he

43:16

still have any relationship with his parents? The

43:18

parents were in New Zealand. Yeah, they'd

43:20

moved there. And his father, having been

43:22

a high ranking official in Northern Ireland,

43:24

then became a lay preacher himself, a

43:26

pastor, and used to

43:29

look after on the Northern Ireland of New

43:31

Zealand. We've got

43:33

report. He wrote a letter, but it's been lost.

43:36

One of these letters were actually never sent

43:38

that he wrote, which is also one of

43:40

the great tragedies of Mooliad's life. He

43:42

spent all of his time and effort on it and the authorities

43:44

seized them and they were kept in a box. And

43:47

it wasn't until about 100 years later

43:49

that someone, researchers stumbled across them and

43:52

found them all there and perfectly preserved.

43:54

So did Mrs Nesbitt never get her letter? No,

43:57

it doesn't look like it. Oh, that's tragic. It

44:00

was printed in the newspapers, funnily enough. So there

44:02

was a fair bit of leaking going on by

44:04

the authorities, which you can't believe, can you? That

44:07

politicians and jail officials would have been leaking information

44:10

to the press. You start, I can't believe that.

44:12

There's no way, no, that would have happened. No

44:15

way, but at least hopefully she saw it there.

44:17

Yeah, well, you would think so. And I think

44:19

she was a woman who'd had a

44:21

lot of disappointments in her life. You know, she'd had

44:23

a husband who used to beat her, her

44:26

youngest son, Jim had run with a

44:28

gang and then been taken by moonlight

44:31

and then was killed in a shootout.

44:34

So things have never really looked up for the

44:36

early listeners, very poor part of Melbourne. I

44:39

mean, some of the tenements and the

44:41

slums that people were living in

44:43

on the outskirts of all the major metropolitan cities

44:45

around the world in the 1870s and 80s were

44:47

disgusting. They

44:49

were shameful. I mean, the

44:51

sewage systems were non-existent. The pollution

44:53

was incredible. The amount of rubbish

44:56

that used to pile up against

44:58

these homes. I mean, we

45:00

talk about third world conditions and that's what some

45:02

of these families were sort of growing up in.

45:04

And there was a lot of unemployment

45:06

around at the time as well. The

45:09

economies had been ravaged by a worldwide

45:11

recession. So a lot

45:13

of people couldn't find work. And so they,

45:15

at one stage when moonlight and his gang

45:17

tried to escape Victoria and they went

45:20

on that long walk to the Murray River,

45:23

they shot a koala because

45:25

they were so desperate for food. I wouldn't think

45:27

there'd be a lot of meat on a koala.

45:30

No, a bit of flat. All they do

45:32

is sit there eating gum leaves off gum

45:34

trees all day. So they're

45:37

effectively stoned for 24 hours because

45:39

the eucalyptus makes them high. And

45:42

apparently the eucalyptus then goes through the

45:44

rest of the body. So it's

45:47

quite a rancid taste apparently, but

45:49

that's how desperate they were. I

45:51

think they may have also shot a few sheep along the

45:53

way too, a few stray sheep

45:55

along the way from the farms. But

45:58

that was the era that these people were sort of. living

46:00

in. And it was just before,

46:02

you know, the second industrial

46:05

revolution brought all these benefits, you know,

46:07

brought the electric light bulb into the

46:09

home. So they were on that sort

46:11

of like crossover point in history. Really

46:13

fascinating time. And brought a lot of

46:15

employment to Australia as well. So these

46:18

guys were just kind of in the middle, weren't they?

46:20

They were in between the gold rush and the next

46:22

boom. So they're just kind of wandering around. And

46:25

you see that with

46:27

people like Ned Kelly and a lot of

46:29

the other outlaws, let's call them in Australia

46:31

at the time. These are the last days.

46:34

These are the last great days of these

46:36

guys hiding out in the bush because now

46:38

the troopers could receive a telegraph telling them

46:40

that a crime had been committed within

46:43

minutes. They could be on their horses tracking them

46:45

down. People often

46:47

complain about Australian history.

46:50

It's almost as though we're embarrassed by it, that

46:52

at least white Australian history is only a little

46:55

over 250 years old. But

46:58

we always go, well, we just don't

47:00

have the epic figures, historical figures

47:02

that Europe had and UK, US

47:05

had the revolutionary war and then

47:07

the civil war. When you actually dig

47:09

a little bit deeper, Australia's got

47:11

cast of characters that are just

47:13

astonishing. And Captain Moonlight

47:16

has never received really the attention

47:18

that he always deserves. We

47:20

wouldn't know that much about him if we

47:22

hadn't have come across those letters because

47:25

that's what really starts and

47:27

ends. The letters that he wrote, particularly on

47:29

the last night of his life, 19th of

47:32

January, 1880,

47:34

he was sitting in his death cell in Darlinghurst jail and there

47:36

was a half moon hanging in the sky at 10 o'clock at

47:39

night. He would have been in this small

47:41

cold brick room there

47:43

with the candle burning away,

47:46

writing all of these letters that he had

47:48

no idea would actually end up being read

47:50

by hundreds of thousands of people over

47:52

the coming century. It's quite an astonishing story.

48:00

Thank you to our guest today, Gary Linnell.

48:02

There's a link in the show notes and

48:04

on our Facebook page, as always, to help

48:06

you buy your copy of his book, Moonlight,

48:09

the tragic love story of Captain Moonlight

48:11

and the bloody end of the Bushrangers.

48:15

If you need support after listening to this podcast, you

48:17

can call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or

48:21

contact 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or 1800respect.org.au. Indigenous

48:30

Australians can contact 13 Yarn on 13

48:32

92 76 or 13yarn.org.au. Thank

48:42

you for downloading this episode of Australian True Crime.

48:44

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