The Dharug and Lower Hawkesbury Historical Society

Invite you to BUSHRANGERS OF THE HUNTER VALLEY afternoon with our Special Guest Speaker Greg Powell

The Dharug and Lower Hawkesbury Historical Society are pleased to welcome on Saturday, 29th July, Greg Powell, the Lake Macquarie author and bushranger devotee. For the past 40 years Greg has been gathering information on the historic encounters of bushrangers and where and when they operated within NSW and Victoria’s wild colonial past.

Please join us as we listen to fascinating tales from Greg’s new book ‘Bushranger Tracks’ which highlights the many colourful individuals of our bushranger history in the Hunter Valley with the escapees, murders, robberies and captures of a wide array of bushranger characters.

This area was a real nest of bushrangers, from the convict days including the (in)famous Captain Thunderbolt, an expert horseman and bushman, who began his career in the Hunter Valley with robberies out at Tocal and Paterson. He was Australia’s longest surviving bushranger who took refuge in Barrington Tops and roamed the region around Uralla and the North West Slopes before being shot and killed at Kentucky Creek in 1870.

And in the 1920’s there was a lady bushranger, Jesse Hickman, who was accused of murdering her third husband; she was a successful cattle duffer who hid in a cave in the Hunter Valley, south-west of Muswellbrook before dying and being buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave at Newcastle’s Southgate Cemetery.

Greg will commence his talk at the Wesleyan Chapel, 6445 Wisemans Ferry Road, Gunderman at 1.30pm after a sumptious lunch at midday.

Cost: Members $ 15/ Non-Members $20. All welcome. Bookings essential: enquiries@dlhhs.org.au or 0405 321 478 ( leave a message) by Wednesday, 26th July. Come and be entralled with our colonial past.