Bushranger or Common Thug – the story of Johnny Gilbert Whenever I drive to Canberra and then head west I always think of Johnny Gilbert. Historians call him a bushranger but that is just a romantic code word for “thug” and “psychopath”. At Binalong the late Edgar Penzig, an amateur historian who was obsessed with the bushrangers, has put up a plaque which reads as follows: “John Gilbert was shot dead by Constable John Bright in a battle with police near Binalong on Saturday 13th May 1865. Only 25 years old at the time of his death he had followed a life of crime for twelve years and was the most reckless villain of the Gardiner-Hall gangs of bushrangers. On the credit side it can be said that he was a splendid horseman, a deadly shot, game with fists or gun, always polite to women and of irrepressible good humour and witty speech. On Tuesday, 16th May, 1865, the body of ‘Flash’ Johnny Gilbert was buried in the police paddock near Binalong Township.” While Penzig was a remarkable historian and all his information is correct (and that sign has been the only one at his grave for decades) it really only tells half the truth. A new sign lists all Gilbert’s crimes (including murder) and it catalogues over 40 crimes in a little over a year. But, the story that Penzig manages to avoid, is the murder of Sergeant Parry. Talk about romancing the bushrangers! Here’s the real story: “On 16 November 1864 Ben Halls Gang, comprising Johnny Gilbert, Ben Hall and John Dunn, held up a mail coach between Gundagai and Jugiong and shot and killed the 32 year-old Sergeant Edmund Parry. Parrys death was the result of Hall and his gang engaging in an orgy of robbery. By the time the mail coach reached their hiding spot they had already held up nearly sixty people. The coroners verdict was: That on the 16th day of November, in the year of our Lord, 1864, at a spot about four miles to the south of Jugiong, in the colony of New South Wales, the deceased Edmund Parry did die from the effects of a gunshot wound, at that time and in that place wickedly, maliciously, and feloniously inflicted upon him by one John Gilbert; and two other certain persons, named Benjamin Hall and John Dunn, were then and there unlawfully aiding and abetting the said John Gilbert in so feloniously destroying the life of the said Edmund Parry. But, as Penzig would have it, “he was always polite to women”. Tell that to Sergeant Parry.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 07:38:19 +0000
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