The ‘Capture of the Clarkes’ this weekend tells just a part of the bushrangers’ tale, which began much earlier with the discovery of gold in the 1850s, which changed Braidwood.
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With gold came greed and boom-town problems: sly grog, drunks, transients, immorality and poverty. Tommy and John Clarke came of age in such a volatile environs.
Until 1861, the Clarkes’ records were clear. The family was known to be ‘bad’ and were almost certainly petty horse thieves, but they had never been convicted.
On May 14 in 1861, Tom Clarke was arrested, charged with stealing a horse, the property of Hugh Wallace, for whom the Clarkes ran cattle at Nithsdale. The evidence against the Clarkes was circumstantial, at best, and Tom was released.
Wallace was not convinced, however, and struck off Tom and his father John from his roll of employment. Jobless, Tom joined his uncle Pat Connell in his trade. Pat was a horse thief. So began the Clarkes’ downward spiral to bushranging.
Between 1861 and 1865, Tom was regularly in and out of jail, under suspicion for a string of robberies and minor offences. His deep ties to the district meant many locals were reluctant to inform on the young man.
At the time, the NSW Police Force was struggling to maintain law and order in the volatile frontier society.
A series of hold ups on mail coaches between Braidwood, and Araluen and Cooma were almost certainly committed by Tom working with cousin William Berriman.
With their gang the Jingera mob, they wreaked havoc on the district. In one case, Foxlow Station, on the plains of the Molonglo river suffered heavily. The Clarkes held it up in December 1865, stealing over £200 worth of goods.
Their crimes continued into 1866 with a series of raids on travelers, mail carts and stores in the area in early January.
By this stage the authorities were desperate to capture Tommy Clarke, the gang’s leader. The government issued a £200 reward for his capture on January 17.
This did not stop the Tommy, who with his gang in the next few weeks committed brazen robberies of the Michelago Post Office and the Yass Mail, among others. The gang became bolder and bolder, robbing stations, mail coaches and individuals throughout the surrounding region. They began to assault and intimidate anyone suspected of informing on them.
In April 1866 the gang led by Tommy Clarke and Pat Connell raided Nerrigundah, a tiny town on a tributary of the Tuross River. It was there that Constable Miles O’Grady was shot, probably by Tommy Clarke. This was the first murder that could definitely be attributed to a member of the gang. In response, the government declared them outlaws.
Until this point, John Clarke had played a very minor role, if any, but in June of 1866 he was confirmed as having participated in a raid.
The police suffered a series of humiliating setbacks, as the Clarkes continued to evade justice committing robbery after robbery for over a year. They gradually gained ground, however, as members of the gang were killed, or taken in to custody.
By the end of 1866 only a few members of the gang were left standing. Weakened and hopeless as their state was, the Clarkes had no choice but to continue in crime. As a declared outlaw, capture for Tommy would mean death, while courts were unlikely to look favorably on any member of the gang. The gang continued to terrorise the region however, with their firmly entrenched web of supporters still covering for them.
The murder of four special police officers in January 1867, caused public sentiment to firmly turn against the Clarkes. These four men had been employed especially to track down the gang. The officers had gone to Jinden to track down the bushrangers, but underestimated the strength of local support for the gang.
On January 9 1867 they failed to return to their lodgings at Jinden House. Their bodies were found the next morning, just 2 kilometres from the lodge. They had been ambushed from behind a tree, it was clear from the pound note sitting upon the breast of one of the murdered officers that they had been shot as a cold blooded revenge.
The Governor of the colony issued a reward of £5000 for the capture of the gang, a huge amount.
With the Clarke’s local support lost, and their energy depleted, Tommy and John Clarke were now living on borrowed time. They had just two months left as free men.
- The ‘Capture of the Clarkes’ re-enactment is April 29 at 2.30pm at the Braidwood Showground.
- Information taken from ‘The Clarke Gang: Outlawed, Outcast and Forgotten’ by Peter Smith