John Edwards: 2018

John Edwards has been fascinated for many years by the intriguing stories that surround Captain Thunderbolt (Frederick Ward), AKA the “Gentleman Bushranger“, and his partner, Mary Ann Bugg, a Worimi woman, with an Indigenous mother and convict father.
An Australian mythology was born during the 1860´s alongside what has been referred to as a “bushranging epidemic”. in which rural farmers and others chose to support local bushranging in defiance of the recently-established state-run police authority.
In what was initially a romantic “Robin Hood style” game of pinch from the rich, give to the poor, the bushranger´s name quickly grew both in heroics and mythology. The increasing audacity of bushranging was much inline with the increasing fatalities to all sides.

Narratives surrounding convict and bushranger images are integral to our Australian psyche with figures such as Ned Kelly, Captain Thunderbolt and Jack Doolan thriving in the imagination. Bush ballads are penned and images painted about such figures famed for stealing, philandering, ‘mateyness’ and murder. Despite such waywardness, they attract enormous sympathy and public intrigue, in part because of skill and stealth in evading the law. Less is known about their feisty, gun-toting partners. Such a woman was the Indigenous Mary-Ann Bugg, also known as ‘Black Mary’. She was Thunderbolt´s, ‘the gentleman bushranger’ second wife and the only female bushranger. ~ John Edwards, 2018