You ve heard stories about Scotsmen transported to Australia for criminal activities.
Today I m going to tell you the story of a Scotsman who went to Australia
THEN became a criminal... and a local hero. If you re interested in the people, places
and events in Scottish history then click the subscribe button
at the bottom right of the screen. In the meantime, let me tell you the story.
Our story starts in Duthil, near Aviemore, on 27th August, 1841,
with the birth of a child named James MacPherson...
So why am I at the botanic gardens in Brisbane? I ll be honest
there are two other places I wanted to take you, but neither were feasible.
Cressbrook Station, two hours west of here
...was a livestock station and is one of the oldest places in Queensland.
It s also where our story really gets going. ...but they never responded to my request
to go down there and film. ...and I don t fancy driving
for two hours just to be told to sod off. ...That blind date in Aberdeen was bad enough.
When James was 12 his parents took him and his nine siblings from The Cairngorms
to Australia. Daddy McPherson went
to work for D C McConnel of Cressbrook. Our hero James helped out on the station,
learned to ride horses, and shoot rifles, but the family eventually bought property
at Bald Hills, and James got some schooling in Ipswich...
I know it sounds like a long walk home for lunch,
but it turns out there s an Ipswich outside Brisbane...
where James s diligence, intelligence, oratory skills and fluency in languages
made him a model pupil. Will he be a diplomat,
a politician, a minister perhaps? He became an apprentice builder.
He also went to the Brisbane Mechanics' School at night where he was a prominent debater.
Maybe that role as an MP could come yet. ...but no.
In 1863 McPherson ran away and worked on various livestock stations,
honing those equestrian skills and becoming an accurate shot.
What profession was he practising for now I wonder.
Well, in 1865 he changed career... to become a highwayman,
a bush ranger, a cattle rustler, a stick up merchant.
Wherever you live you ll have a name for it. In Scotland we just say he s fae Dundee.
The Fifers have got to get a break some time. What makes you take a decision like that?
This wasn t a thoughtless NED who, through inadequacy, fell through the educational
cracks into a life of crime. This was an educated,
well-mannered young man who chose to leave society.
That a big call. Apparently,
in 1865, he d been working in a pub... and the landlord owed some back wages.
Take him to the small claims court I hear you say.
James did the next best thing. He and two accomplices held the publican up
at gunpoint, injuring him in the process. Apparently they got away with
'three cabbage tree hats, two pairs of riding breeks, one pair of boots,
a gun, a shirt, a bottle of whisky, and fourteen pounds of flour'.
Obviously he took the barter system approach to highway robbery.
A slightly different story about why this happy-go-lucky, educated young man,
decided on a life of crime was that, unhappy in his apprenticeship, he and two guys he met
had a go at shearing sheep. None of them had done it before,
and the farmer refused to pay them. When James asked for his wages, he just
happened to have a rifle in his hand. It wasn t aimed.
THEN they held up the Hotel, and that s when the publican was
accidentally shot in the face.
...and the government offered 50 hard cash for his apprehension.
MacPherson left his two
mates and headed for New South Wales There was a more experienced bush ranger
gang led by a chap called Ben Hall... and James wanted to sign up with them.
Everyone who s ever tried getting a job in a bush ranger gang knows,
the first part of the interview process... is to find the bush ranger gang.
While he was looking, he committed a few more highway robberies using
various aliases and languages, presumably to work up his CV.
If you do get to the final interview you want to have something to show in your portfolio.
A few hold ups in, he now had a horse. Needless to say, he had the polis on his tail,
led by one inspector Sir Fredrick Pottinger. Oh they had a few scrapes and skirmishes.
The last one was when MacPherson had lost his horse and was on foot.
They exchanged shots with each other before MacPherson escaped.
Now how he managed to escape on foot from an armed police officer on horseback
I have no idea, other than to say that James MacPherson
could outrun a horse... Alan Wells, Moscow Olympics.
Having shrugged off the polis he headed for the bush west of Sydney and quietly
sat down by the Lachlan river, presumably named after the Scot,
Lachlan MacQuarrie. James was,
enjoying the pleasure of a good book... but there s an interesting plot twist.
It turns out he hadn t shrugged off the polis at all, and he was surrounded.
Pottinger s information and an Aboriginal tracker meant that, on 28 February 1865
a police patrol surrounded him in a Billabong Creek northwest of Forbes.
You just knew there would be a billabong in the story.
His captors were surprised at his unassuming appearance...,
but he did have a mark on his arm where Pottinger had wounded him.
He was sent to Sydney for trial on a charge of shooting at Pottinger...
but before the trial... Pottinger accidentally shot himself...
dead. Hold on......
How do we know he hasn t done something like this before?
With both the witness AND the victim dead, the case against MacPherson was dropped.
Wohooo! He s off the hook!
Oh no he s not. Queensland want him extradited for
holding up that publican remember? Bugger!
He was put on a boat to be sent north to Queensland for trial,
but when the ship docked at Mackay on its way to Rockhampton,
MacPherson did a Harry Houdini trick and all that was left were his leg irons,
nailed to a tree with a note that read. Presented to the Queensland government
with the Wild Scotchman s best thanks, that gentleman having no further use for them,
the articles being found to be rather cumbersome to transit in this age of
enlightenment and progress. Many thanks. Adieu.
Och those school lessons came in handy right enough.
His guard was suspended,
and James MacPherson stole a horse, and got up to his old tricks.
Sometimes local folks would give shelter to this outlaw.
Don t do it kids
His main activity now became robbing mailmen. The mail was carried by horseback mailmen, who had
to face the harsh Queensland Bush and weather, the risk of sandstorms or landslides, and every
scary stingy, creepie crawly that Queensland has to offer,
all the while having to look out this way and that for the Wild Scotsman.
Sometimes, if he was missing a key piece of equipment
MacPherson would steal it from the mailman, but give it back later.
Pat McCullum seems to have been a regular victim.
The wild Scotsman would help himself to Pat's gear, then return it, with a note, such as
"This is Pat McCullum's saddle - see that he gets it back!"
He was known to collect together the personal mail he d taken
and forward it on to the rightful recipient. You see it was the cash contained
in letters that he needed. The letters... or cheques were no use to him
Once, McPherson
gave his regular victim, poor old Pat McCullum, a letter duly stamped and sealed, addressed to
His Excellency Sir George Ferguson Bowen, That was the Governor of Queensland
and with it a package that was to be given to a Mr. Bligh.
Once McCullum promised to post the first, and deliver the second
MacPherson let him go It turns out
that the package contained the useless cheques taken out of the LOCAL mail
and the letter to his Excellency, duly posted, contained statewide
cheques for 1700 with the explanation
that they were of no use to the Wild Scotsman. The price on MacPherson s head went up to 250
Now even when the baddie is a nice baddie, he gets his comeuppance.
For James MacPherson the inevitable capture came, not at the hands of wise and wily police,
but some sharp-eyed locals from a livestock station
near Gin Gin... a place you ll find
my wife at six o clock every Friday. Somebody answering the description of the
Wild Scotsman had been seen asking questions about a road that he made no attempt to take.
Suspicious. Later he was seen
nearby and the two guys who spotted him headed for the local livestock station.
Along with, the station manager and another bloke, they set out in hot pursuit.
Now I ve only been in Brisbane for a couple of days, but I can tell you...
hot is the only type of pursuit I can imagine in this place.
Within five miles they caught up with him. MacPherson saw them at full gallop
and he high tailed it on a horse, tired from the previous day s journey.
But the pursuers were gaining. He pulled up to unstrap his
double-barrelled gun, but one of the pursuers
covered him with a rifle and threatened to shoot. With a smile that was as wry as if it accompanied
good scotch, MacPherson said: I give up.
I knew you weren t the police by the speed you followed me down that hill.
Apparently the police couldn t ride at speed... without a blue flashing light on the horses head
McPherson was taken to the Maryborough court-house
where onlookers were disappointed that he wasn't 'flash' or 'ferocious looking'.
Seems like a nice bloke He was remanded for trial at the Brisbane Supreme
Court over the Willis public house robbery..., but was found not guilty.
Hold on. If the robbery
that started this whole thing off wasn t a robbery, none of this ever needed to happen.
He COULD have gone into politics and robbed people legally.
As it was, he was returned to Maryborough, to face two counts of Mail Robbery Under Arms.
Now THAT there was no getting out of.
For each count he was given 25 year sentences to run concurrently.
Harsh... but an example had to be set.
He was sent to St Helena Island. That s the other place I wanted to take you.
The island and the remains of the gaol are a tourist attraction,
but there are no boats running all the time I m in Brisbane.
What s that about?
If you re going to have a tour service that only runs once a month
why would you run it on the same day as the other company who also
runs intermittent tour services..., AND make it the day I fly to Cairns??
Now, I m flying to Cairns to do one of my live Stories of Scotland shows.
Don t worry, this isn t an advert. By the time this video goes live I ll
have done the Cairns gig..., but remember I ll be touring
the show all over Scotland in autumn in Perth, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dumfries, Gala,
Portree, Motherwell, Dunoon, Greenock, Giffnock, Dunfermline and more.
There ll be a link for dates and tickets in the description below.
The point is that he was sent to a prison island surrounded by sharks
that tourists can now visit every second Tuesday when there s a full moon, an o in the month,
and there s no DFS Winter sale. So you had about as much chance
of escaping St Helena Island prison as you have getting into it as a tourist today.
...but in 1874, a petition was sent to the Governor to get him out.
Clemency for McPherson! He wasn t that bad a guy.
Remember all the cheques and private letters he d sent back?
What are the chances of HIM being let out?
Well let s look at the record of the 160th prisoner admitted to St Helena Island.
Not long after he arrived he, along with five others made an escape attempt,
during which James was shot in the wrist.
...but that wasn t the only incident James McPherson was punished for during incarceration:
July 1870: signing a petition asking for fresh vegetables;
October 1870, assaulting a fellow prisoner; January 1871, refusing to work;
Again January 1871 Fighting; February 1871 Making a noise in his cell;
May 1871 Disobedience of orders; ...and May 1871 Making frivolous complaints
Presumably about the frequency of tourist ferry services from the mainland,
Between one thing and another James MacPherson spent a lot of his time on St Helena
in solitary confinement... so did they really think that he
would be given clemency? Well he was.
You see the petition for his clemency was not only signed by prominent upstanding citizens,
but a minister of the church, members of the Queensland Parliament,
the stonemason with whom he d apprenticed in his early years of upright conformity and McConnel,
the owner of Cressbrook Station where his family found work on arrival...
and who promised James work once more. His references for an upright life
turned out to be much better than the CV for the bushranger job
all those years ago. When he was eventually released,
he went to his father's house..., but his dad turned him away.
McPherson did, indeed go back to Cressbrook where his Queensland story had begun.
He worked as a stockman, and later, as an overseer.
Another manager at the time went on to write the 1882 bushranger novel
Robbery Under Arms. I wonder where he got his stories from.
In 1878, he married and went on to have seven children.
In the early 1890's, he and his family moved to Burketown, where he set up his own business.
He was now well-respected in the community. But James MacPherson didn t die in his bed.
In July, 1895, on the way home from the funeral of a friend,
his horse bolted then fell on him. He didn t die on the spot, but endured
three days of torment with his injuries as the helpless doctor administered morphine.
Whatever you think of James MacPherson,... on 23rd July, 1895
he passed for eternal judgement, buried in an unmarked grave in Burketown cemetery.
But his memory continues, as the town of Gin Gin where he was captured,
commemorates the memory of James McPherson to this day,
with a statue, an annual festival and The Wild Scotchman markets every Saturday.
Their prices are probably criminal
Like Robin Hood in Nottingham, Rob Roy in the southern Highlands
or Macpherson s namesake in the north east of Scotland, where he, himself, originated...
he remains a character in the Queensland psyche. If you know the folk songs of Scotland,
you ll have heard of another James MacPherson who was a rogue and a freebooter back home.
His story is quite different, and there s a video about
it coming up on screen now. If you become a Patreon member you
support the channel AND get extra stuff, so why not click the link top right... or
buy me a coffee in the description below In the meantime