Escape from Custody or Assignment

Escape as a means of gaining freedom was generally an action of desperation in most cases, desperation caused by one of many causes. Most convicts who escaped into the bush either were caught and sent to an iron gang or a penal colony. Some found it possible to settle in with Aboriginal groups, living as part of the tribe.

Of those who survived, most did so as bushrangers, living in the bush on the outskirts of settlements and making their living by raiding the settlers for supplies, sometimes with loss of life for the settler or themselves. Some stole and traded cattle.

There were many who could be classed as bushrangers, some of them becoming quite famous for their escapades. Most did not live very long and were either recaptured or shot as they carried out a robbery. Often living together in gangs, they supported each other to survive, perhaps holding up travellers on roads as well as farmers in their farms. At times, their depredations became such a problem that the Government was at a loss to control them. That is a separate part of the story of the Great Northern Road.

For wider reading, Great Escapes by Convicts in Colonial Australia (Warwick Hirst, published by Kangaroo Press 1999) tells the stories of six escapes by women as well as men, overland and by sea. As Hirst writes in the Introduction, they demonstrated startling determination and enterprise. For them escape was not just a bid for liberty, it was a challenge to authority and an end to a form of slavery.