At the end of a glorious day hanging out at galleries, antique shops and the pub with friend and historian Matt Allen we walked to the station at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, Australia (where I live) for Matt to get the train back to the city. We were confronted with this glorious mural representing a bushranger named Govett, leaping off the cliff with gun in hand and bags of gold strapped to his horse. How gleeful is he? Ecstatic with ‘you’ll never catch me alive’ liberation – short-lived though (what with gravity and the considerable depth of the valley) his life or liberty from here on must surely be. Also RIP horsey.
Image: mural of Govett’s Leap at Blackheath railway station.
That is not a period weapon, said Matt, ever expert on colonial Australia. And I dunno, I answered. If I were carrying bags of gold I don’t reckon I’d label them with GOLD in big black letters.
{ 10 comments }
Phil 08.28.26 at 10:44 am
The research sounds fascinating. Have you done Ben Hall? Thanks to Martyn Wyndham-Read and Martin Carthy, he’s had an odd sort of afterlife on the English folk scene. (Forbes and Goobang Creek – the two places named in that song – are a fair way inland from Blackheath, now I look at it; whatever else he did, Ben Hall probably never troubled the gold deposit business.)
Phil 08.28.26 at 10:49 am
PS Of course, the song also mentions Lachlan, but as that’s even further inland it doesn’t affect the point!
Laban 08.28.26 at 4:50 pm
I like June Tabor’s version
https://mainlynorfolk.info/martin.carthy/songs/streetsofforbes.html
Incidentally I was in Melbourne Central Library one Saturday a year or two back, and the Reading Room was pretty much 100% Chinese students. I did wonder if I was looking at a future elite of Oz. Could be tricky, what with Five Eyes and all.
D. S. Battistoli 08.28.26 at 7:44 pm
Are there purple mountains’ majesty and amber waves of grain in Australia, too?
D. S. Battistoli 08.28.26 at 7:47 pm
J-D 08.28.26 at 9:50 pm
Ha!
Phil, the gold wasn’t mined in the Blue Mountains; Blackheath is a point on its transit route, not its origin. The districts further west where it was extracted are precisely those frequented by Ben Hall (and his associates). Ben Hall is generally reported to have been a member of the gang led by Frank Gardiner which perpetrated the 1862 Eugowra gold escort robbery, probably the biggest Australian bushranger robbery (he was arrested as a suspect but released for lack of sufficient evidence to charge him).
You’re not from round these parts, I take it, if you don’t mind my mentioning it?
John Q 08.28.26 at 9:52 pm
Ben Hall absolutely did trouble the gold escorts. The robbery of the gold escort at Eugowra rocks was the one of the biggest in Australian history with a take valued at $A10 million today. And Streets of Forbes is the best outlaw song of the 19th century, better than anything about Ned Kelly or Jesse James
J-D 08.28.26 at 9:59 pm
Phil, I hope you don’t mind my suggesting that you’re not from around these parts?
The gold wasn’t mined in the Blue Mountains; Blackheath was a point on its transit route, not the origin. The districts further west where it was mined were precisely those frequented by Ben Hall (and his associates). He was generally reported to have been a member of the gang (led by Frank Gardiner) which perpetrated the biggest robbery by Australian bushrangers, holding up the gold escort at Eugowra Rocks in 1862 (he was arrested as a suspect but released for lack of evidence to charge him).
D. S. Battistoli 08.29.26 at 7:35 am
Oh, and while my last two comments were a slightly ironic comparison to the American police state and a loving allusion to Toni Morrison’s leap-bookended Song of Solomon, I do just want to say, earnestly, what a fascinating combination of history, methodological process, anecdote, reflection, and work-in-progress this is.
Hannah Forsyth 08.31.26 at 1:22 am
Thanks so much, apologies for the geographical confusions (it helps me to hear them as I’ll have to take care in the book). And for the enthusiasm about Ben Hall! Bushrangers will certainly be included in a chapter on ‘policing the gold’, though I am not yet sure how. It seems impossible not to mention the Kelly gang, but Frank Gardiner and Ben Hall will almost certainly have a place of some sort. And Govett too, I think! I’m grateful for your support of my convoluted process DS Battistoli, I’ve given my meandering brain free reign since leaving academia – gosh it is more fun this way.
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