(piano music)
00:09 This podcast was recorded on Aboriginal land, the land of the Wurunjeri people of the Kulin Nations. This episode also discusses events that occurred on the land of the Dja Dja Wurrung people. We pay our respects to their elders past and present.
00:24 (piano music)
PENNY: Hello Christina, welcome to In Those Days, where.
CHRISTINA: Thanks Penny.
PENNY: We're going to be talking about yesterday's news today.
CHRISTINA: Trove Chat.
PENNY: What I want to talk to you about today, Christina, is another area of Trove. Not the newspapers. It's the books.
CHRISTINA: The books of Trove.
PENNY: The books of Trove. Because Trove indexes all the libraries of Australia and so. It's not 100% but you can look up, you can look up a book and find out which library it's in. All across Australia. Which is very, very useful.
CHRISTINA: Do you sometimes look up where your books are Penny? Through Trove.
PENNY: Most days.
CHRISTINA: I would be doing that.
PENNY: No but I do. Not every day.
CHRISTINA: And then approach them if they're not there.
PENNY: That's right. With a demand. But are you a member of your local library Christina?
CHRISTINA: No, I'm not Penny.
PENNY: You're not.
CHRISTINA: No.
PENNY: Interesting. Because I'm a member of 4.
CHRISTINA: Look, there's always an over-achiever in the room and I think that's you this afternoon Penny.
PENNY: I've got Yarra, Melbourne, Boroondara and Moreland. Although to be fair I haven't used Moreland for years.
CHRISTINA: And which is your fave?
PENNY: Oh, you can't choose a favourite.
CHRISTINA: Really?
PENNY: No, but what's good about Trove is that rather than having to go to all the individual catalogues I can just look in Trove and go, and it'll tell me, 'it's in these libraries'.
CHRISTINA: And then you know where to direct your library visit.
PENNY: Exactly. And that can be also very useful when I'm researching topics for this podcast.
CHRISTINA: I feel bad I'm not a member of a library now.
PENNY: If you're not using it, you don't need it. If you wanted to be, you would be.
CHRISTINA: So true.
02:13 (piano music)
TIM: I really thought 'I'm a member of 3 libraries'. I thought that would be impressive but you've blown me out of the water.
PENNY: Yeah, I think it was 5 at one stage but I can't actually remember the fifth so I might be making that up.
CHRISTINA: Maybe I'll go and look at Mornington again.
PENNY: Well, it's a good library service.
CHRISTINA: It's got a cafe there.
PENNY: Yeah, well, they often do. Okay.
TIM: I can tell you haven't been to Moreland for awhile though cos they've already changed their name to Merri-bek now.
PENNY: Of course. Oh, well. Urgh. (sounding annoyed)
CHRISTINA: Everyone's gonna judge you. God dammit.
PENNY: Okay, so we've got Tim Carruthers here, who,
TIM: Hello.
CHRISTINA: Hello Tim Carruthers.
PENNY: Has worked as an editor and is now a publisher in educational computer publishing. Is that it?
CHRISTINA: Wow, that sounded clunky Penny.
PENNY: Is that what you do?
CHRISTINA: Who are you Tim? Do we know you?
TIM: Well, that's not my title, but it's not completely off the mark. I worked as an educational publisher for a bunch of years and just in the past 6 months I'm now a digital product manager, which is working on educational digital products, so yeah.
PENNY: We've actually, this is a follow-up podcast because we had Tim in before to talk about the gold rush and his journey, when he tried to walk from Melbourne to Castlemaine in 2 days. We were reading a letter by a sailor who was walking from Melbourne, no he was riding a horse, from Melbourne to Castlemaine.
TIM: Easy mode compared to walking.
CHRISTINA: Yes.
PENNY: Yes, exactly. And it was a very long letter and we only got to Gisborne. And of course, Tim only got to Sunbury before he got picked up in a car. But I thought we'd carry on, cos the sailor's still going. He hasn't piked and gone home. So we'll just
CHRISTINA: He's pretty much on a pub tour.
PENNY: Yeah, exactly. So I thought we'd head on with day 2 and this is when he's going to go through the Black Forest, so that's quite exciting.
CHRISTINA: Sounds like a cake.
04:24 PENNY: Yum, yum.
“We breakfasted at 6 o'clock,"
Could have been cake.
CHRISTINA: Could have been. Hopefully high protein for the day ahead.
PENNY: "saddled our horses and started. The hot wind of yesterday had been succeeded by a chilly morning, and dark clouds travelling rapidly from the westward with occasional spittings of rain, gave omen of a cooler ride than that of yesterday."
So maybe they’ll stop at fewer pubs.
TIM: Well were there many pubs in the middle of the Black Forest in those days? I guess we'll find out.
CHRISTINA: Hopefully they've got some trail mix.
PENNY: "A short distance from the Bush Inn we entered the Black Forest, and soon the rain, which before was confined to a few drops occasionally, came down in real earnest, thick, fast, and constant.”
Now the Black Forest, I don't know when
CHRISTINA: Sounds spooky.
PENNY: It does.
TIM: Well, I was trying to figure out, who named it and when cos it's named after the famous Black Forest, the one in Germany.
PENNY: Or the cake.
TIM: Which the cake is named after. But yeah no, I don't know. It's not like an official name, it's not even on a lot of maps it's just, that's what everybody calls it.
PENNY: The earliest reference that I could find to it being called that was 1839. In Trove. And it was a dangerous spot cos bushrangers would hide and rob people. And it was famous for being the trickiest part of the journey. And I've got a picture of it.
CHRISTINA: Looks ominous.
PENNY: It's black and white. I mean, it's trees with a road.
CHRISTINA: As I said, ominous.
TIM: Even today it's still foresty and dark and rainy. So, yeah.
PENNY: And I guess, you know, there were a lot of people travelling. There was new wealth, there were ex-convicts around. There was non-existent or very corrupt law enforcement.
CHRISTINA: It was haunted as well.
PENNY: There were ghosts. Scary times. Okay.
“We were soon wet through, and our steeds, none of the best originally, showed symptoms of preferring a walk to any other pace.”
CHRISTINA: Well, who wants to run in the rain?
PENNY: Exact...Me. I was about to go 'yeah' and then I like 'No, you love that.'
CHRISTINA: Yeah, get out there Penny.
PENNY: It's really nice and refreshing. But he's so rude about the horses.
CHRISTINA: He is. I'm not on board with him.
PENNY: “The excessive heat of the previous day, added to a rough night in a stock yard, with but little to eat, had not improved their powers of progression. We however jogged on at a slow pace, the continuous strings of wayfarers up and down which we had never ceased to pass since leaving Melbourne, still kept up their scarcely broken lines, but by far the greater proportion were like ourselves, outward bound.”
So this is the big influx of people into the goldfields. And I've got some numbers. I don't know if they're right.
CHRISTINA: Share your stats.
PENNY: I've got Australia as a whole, their population grew from 430,000 to 1.7 million in the 20 years that followed the discovery of gold. So it's a lot of people arriving and a lot of them
CHRISTINA: A lot of gold diggers.
PENNY: Exactly.
TIM: I read there was a statistic of in one day 3,000 people arriving. A story of a riding 15 miles and passing one person every 20 seconds, which is dense.
PENNY: Exactly, it was a lot of people. And I think, thinking about what that would mean, obviously white people, like the land had been colonised for you know a few years by then, but it's that influx of people it's all of those people coming all at once. Like it must have just been extremely overwhelming and the dispossession just would have been so fast at that time. And then also the things that they were doing when they got there was really destroying the land as well. The Dja Dja Wurrung people, like with the gold diggers they did trade and exchange information with the miners, and so it wasn't all like a one way just having your stuff stolen but it was basically a pretty awful time.
TIM: I was reading 'Forgotten War' by Henry Reynolds and some other more recent history books that have come out, which apparently in large parts of Victoria and some parts of New South Wales a lot of local people were apparently wiped out by smallpox epidemics, in a lot of cases, even before the Europeans got there. Because smallpox had been spread in the early 1800s
CHRISTINA: That's horrible
TIM: By whalers and that sort of thing. And it really decimated the local populations. There was this sort of double whammy effect of really getting hit hard by this horrible, deadly super contagious disease and then another sort of half generation later this big influx of settlers.
PENNY: Yep. It's not a good time. But in this letter, this sailor he never acknowledges at all that anyone lives there.
CHRISTINA: He was a selfish man.
PENNY: “The rain seemed to have no effect in delaying or retarding their progression. On horseback, in carts, on foot, alongside of drays that were carrying their luggage (swag they called it) or alongside of no drays but carrying the swag themselves, they plodded along, seemingly unconscious of the drenching they were getting, or probably thinking that as the great bane of the diggers was want of water, the good in perspective would more than counter-balance any present inconvenience. I confess this was in my thoughts, and when the next day those we met told us that the rain had not extended to the Mount, I felt disappointed.”
And as you mentioned before Tim, I find it is often raining in Macedon and nowhere else.
TIM: That is absolutely true to this day.
PENNY: “Safely through the Black Forest, and slowly on the road we wended our way.
So they haven’t met any bushrangers in the Black Forest. Which is
CHRISTINA: Disappointing.
P; A little bit disappointing. But don't worry, cos they're keeping on going.
CHRISTINA: Excellent.
PENNY: "The rain had cleared off, and a cutting wind set in, but no " cutting " seemed to affect our steeds, which we were frequently obliged to dismount and take in tow,"
Complaining about the horses again.
"and when we arrived at the township of Kyneton,”
CHRISTINA: Kyneton.
PENNY: Kyneton
"twenty miles from the diggings, they were evidently too much knocked up to perform the remainder of the journey that day at least,"
CHRISTINA: As in they were too pregnant? Or they were just done.
PENNY: Yeah, I dunno. I think.
CHRISTINA: I just don't think they gave them much food or water.
PENNY: I think that was part of the problem. And then were like, 'It's not working'.
CHRISTINA: You haven't put fuel in.
TIM: It does seem weird. Didn't people use horses all the time and they would have been familiar that you can't just like ride them?
PENNY: Well, I guess, these are sailors.
TIM: Oh good point, maybe they didn't.
PENNY: Yeah, you have to feed these boats.
CHRISTINA: They're very confused. Keep looking for the anchor but they can't find it.
PENNY: “So they were turned into a paddock and we were compelled most reluctantly again to seek the shelter of an inn on the road to the diggings.”
So they're back in the pub.
CHRISTINA: Right.
PENNY: Now Kyneton has really changed quite a lot in recent years. Would you say Tim?
TIM: Yeah, yeah.
PENNY: Although, when I lived in Castlemaine. We never went to Kyneton. Did you ever go to Kyneton?
TIM: I did because my dad taught at schools sort of close to there and briefly for awhile at Kyneton so I remember going there a few times. And it always seemed a bit like Castlemaine but more flat. That was my childhood memory.
PENNY: It is really flat. Which is great for bike riding.
TIM: But yeah, it's got similar big fancy Victorian era buildings. Lots of inns.
PENNY: I dunno, probably 10 or 15 years ago it developed a lot of cafes.
TIM: The big growth industry in Central Victoria over the past 20 years.
PENNY: Exactly.
TIM: Cafes and small art galleries and shops that sell knick knacks.
PENNY: That's right. But our sailor though when he was there, he didn't like it much.
TIM: Were there any knick knacks?
PENNY: This is what he wrote:
“Crowded like the one of last night, in bar and parlour, in kitchen and tap-room, in every imaginable part of the lower portion of the house, with men in every garb and of various physio-"
Phisiog - I knew I wouldn't be able to do it. Physiognomies.
TIM: Physiognomies.
PENNY: Whatever.
TIM: I'm never sure whether to pronounce the 'g' in that one.
PENNY: We've done that word.
CHRISTINA: Moving on from that word.
PENNY: "in which the decidedly scampish greatly predominated, promised anything but a pleasant night. However we early engaged our three beds together in the same room, for which we soon had cause to congratulate ourselves. We retired early, but sounds of fighting, cries of robbery, &c., kept us awake nearly all night."
CHRISTINA: What a fun time.
PENNY: Bit of luck.
TIM: Well there you go, Central Victorian pubs haven't changed that much in all those years.
PENNY: He's getting to see, be part of some of the crime now, which is good.
"The first thing we heard in the morning was, that one man had been " stuck up, " against the stable door,"
Which is not as much fun as it sounds.
CHRISTINA: No.
PENNY: "and a robbery attempted in the middle of the night, and that only by his shouting murder lustily had escaped."
But if you're not actually murdered, should you shout that?
CHRISTINA: Well, no. It's going to be the classic boy who cried wolf situation. Next inn, no-one's going to listen to him.
PENNY: Someone's gonna pop up and go, 'Well, you can't be dead cos you're still talking.'
CHRISTINA: Yeah, the knife might be in, but it's not over.
TIM: Well he could be crying 'Attempted murder'.
PENNY: Yes. Attempted murder. That's right. Not manslaughter. You have to be dead for that too. I studied law for two years. I now about these things.
"Another had been actually robbed of £40, for which offence one man was in charge of the chief constable of the village and his watchhouse-keeper, (the only available " force "”
‘Force’ is in quotation marks.
"in the place) in one of the rooms in the hotel. While seated at breakfast word was brought us that the constable and his assistant had just brought the prisoner out to convey him to the watch-house, when he had been rescued by the rest of the gang, headed by a negro, a well known character, of gigantic pro-portions, going by the name of Black Douglas.”
CHRISTINA: Oh. Inappropriate.
PENNY: He's a bushranger. Yes, well, he was famous for being a bushranger. Which I found interesting because when I think of bushrangers, I think of white people, because that's what I was taught, particularly Irish people.
TIM: I don't think I'd ever heard of Black Douglas until a year or two ago.
PENNY: Yeah, and because I think that kind of, male, white bushranger sort of archetype that's been in films, and movies and books and songs, that's just what we're used to. But actually, there were different types of people who were bushrangers as well. I found this historian called Meg Foster and she is an historian of banditry.
TIM: That's a good thing to specialise in.
CHRISTINA: That's sensational.
15:53 PENNY: So she's living her best life. And she has researched and written a lot about Black Douglas and also other bushrangers who don't fit that stereotype. And she wrote her PhD thesis about it, and then in 2022 she published a book called 'Boundary Crossers' where she discussed some of these people, including Black Douglas and she showed that there was a lot of myths about Black Douglas. To talk about this, I found his obituary from when he died. And I thought if we go through that, and we compare it to what Meg Foster her actual research on actual facts about his life, it's quite interesting. So this is from The Age from the 17th of May 1892 and it's titled 'Death of a Notorious Bushranger'.
"Bendigo Monday.
A notorious criminal, whose name was in the early "fifties" a terror to colonists generally, and especially to diggers going to Melbourne, died in Bendigo gaol yesterday."
So that’s exactly where our sailor came across him on the road to Bendigo in the '50s.
"This individual, Charles Russell alias "Black Douglas," was born at Bristol, England, 75 years ago, and arrived in the colonies while still a young man.”
Now, if we go into Foster’s research about his life he was born William Douglas, not Charles Russell, that wasn't his name that was a pseudonym he used. He wasn't born in the UK, he was born in Philadelphia.
CHRISTINA: Same same.
PENNY: They just didn't mention this, but he was well-educated and he could read and write and so he probably was a sailor and so from America he went to England and there he was convicted of stealing 2 coats and then he was transported to New South Wales. And he did not like being a convict and he got flogged a lot and then sent to Tasmania, which is where they sent all the naughty convicts.
TIM: As you were saying last time, Van Dieman's Land.
PENNY: Yeah, he's a Vandemonian. And the obituary goes on:
"At first he devoted himself to prize fighting,"
So he was a prize fighter, and that's probably where he started using the name Black Douglas. So he may have chosen that name himself, or someone else might have given it to him.
TIM: Well it's a riff on the old Scottish Black Douglas.
PENNY: I didn't know about this. What's this?
TIM: I know very little about the Scottish Black Douglas but basically in Medieval times like the 13-hundreds so this was this sort of Scottish warlord character, who a bunch of things happened
PENNY: I think I read a poem about him.
TIM: Yeah. He became a famous figure.
CHRISTINA: Isn't Black Douglas a whiskey as well?
TIM: Yeah, and that's named after that Black Douglas.
PENNY: Oh but a lot these bushrangers and figures they often are referencing other people and people get amalgamated as well by legends.
TIM: I think amonth the portrayals, his death at the Black Dinner served as one of the inspirations for the Red Wedding in 'Game of Thrones'.
PENNY: Oh he is famous!
CHRISTINA: It's been confirmed.
PENNY: The obituary continues:
“but afterwards turned his attention to bushranging, and soon gained great notoriety for his lawless deeds."
And this is where, actually, Meg Foster's like, no he was only a bushranger for a very short time. And he was only definitely a bushranger in 1841, when he absconded as a convict and then he was living in the bush and robbing people. Once you get the reputation for being a bushranger then it just kind of carries with you wherever you go.
And the obituary says:
"He was a powerfully built man, 6 feet 3 or 4 inches in height.”
He was actually 5 feet 8 inches.
CHRISTINA: He often wore heels.
PENNY: 5'9 1/2" at most. He was a lot taller than other people, like I think the average height was about 5 feet 4. But they just exaggerated. They were just like 'He's really tall. Really tall. Ah 6 feet.'
CHRISTINA: He's just constantly on a step.
TIM: It's like the law that you're not allowed to say someone's tall or powerfully built unless you can also say 'Oh, at least 6 foot'.
PENNY: Yeah.
“Diggers returning to Melbourne were frequently waylaid and robbed. One of his exploits was robbing a gold escort between Bendigo and M'Ivor. Eventually, however, he was captured.”
He was never charged with robbery, theft, or murder as a free man in Australia so once he was free and living in the Bendigo area, never charged with that.
In 1855 he was arrested by a mob of miners and he was nearly lynched. He was suspected of having robbed tents and of murdering a woman in Avoca. But in the end, he was actually only charged with entering two tents.
TIM: You can be charged with entering the tent?
PENNY: Yeah, so I don't think he actually did these things. There was just a mob formed and like said, 'The black guy did it.' And then I mean, you can imagine how innocent you'd have to be to get off from the law as a black person in that era.
“Since his release from imprisonment for those offences, he has served several terms for petty crimes, and when he died was in gaol under a sentence of three months received at Rochester for vagrancy. Of late years he has been of a rather quiet disposition, and made pretence of being skilled in phrenology.”
I mean to be honest, he probably was probably just about as skilled as anyone else in phrenology.
CHRISTINA: Well that's exactly right.
PENNY: It's completely made up, so yeah, he was
CHRISTINA: He gave it a go.
PENNY: Apparently, he used to do it in the pubs. And so what Foster reckons is that his reputation was really fearsome and people said that he did all this stuff, but he was actually mainly just drunk and homeless.
CHRISTINA: Poor guy.
PENNY: Which wasn't really rare on the goldfields.
CHRISTINA: No.
TIM: On the other hand, were there, was it rare for 5 foot 9 men from Philadelphia
PENNY: That's the thing that was rare. And then he became like a bogeyman for everyone's fears, like about black people and then also about the goldfields in general that they were filled with these lawless scary people and he was just a really good representative of that for people to kind of latch on. And so there were like rumours that he used to rob people and then tie them naked to a tree with bull ants in their boots. Did not do that. Definitely did not do that.
CHRISTINA: Very specific thing to do.
PENNY: Exactly. And people liked to brag that they met him and say 'Oh, Black Douglas came along' or 'I saw Black Douglas and he did these awful things'.
TIM: You really get the impression that writing in the newspaper in the 1800s was even closer to fiction
CHRISTINA: Facts optional.
TIM: Than it is today.
PENNY: Well today. I guess it's debatable. It's hard to quantify, that's for sure. And so that made me think, look, I wonder it was even him who broke this guy out of gaol but actually he was arrested for that and he was convicted for it. And he defended himself in court. On that occasion he assaulted a police officer, but that was the most serious crime that he was convicted of. That's not much compared to
CHRISTINA: No. All the claims.
PENNY: All the bull ants situation. So the sailor continues:
“We were glad to get away from such society,"
I actually get the feeling that he was kind of glad to get away from it, but he's also a bit excited that he got to see it.
CHRISTINA: I think he was.
TIM: Well if someone's going to be you robbed and threatened with murder, it's always nice where you can be comfortable in bed at the same time.
"as soon as we had caught our horses and saddled them, were on the road again."
CHRISTINA: I like to think that they had trouble catching their horses in the morning. With their foul attitudes towards them.
PENNY: The supposedly slow horses.
CHRISTINA: Hopefully someone got kicked.
PENNY: "Still the same unvarying swarm of people ; an apparently never-ending stream, and still continuing till we arrived at the diggings, which we did at two o'clock, and following along the bank of Forest Creek, in a short time we came to an anchor at the wooden edifice which was to be our shelter for a time."
CHRISTINA: He's finally found his anchor.
PENNY: He's found his anchor and he's actually at the Goldfields.
TIM: Is that a literal ship anchor or is that a turn of phrase?
PENNY: No, we came to an anchor.
TIM: There you go.
PENNY: He means they stopped. But yes, because he's a sailor. I didn't even think about it like that. He's just full of sailor words.
CHRISTINA: He folded up his sails. I don't know what you do on a ship.
PENNY: That's what they do at night. Fold 'em up, pop them in the drawer.
CHRISTINA: Out again in the morning with a fresh set.
PENNY: That's what we do with our shade sail. Every six months. Take it down or put it up. Cos you don't want it up in winter.
CHRISTINA: I didn't know you had a shade sail.
PENNY: Oh, very hot in the courtyard without it.
TIM: Well, you practically are a sailor.
CHRISTINA: I mean, there's no difference really.
PENNY: That's our sailor's journey for today. He makes it to the Goldfields. He craps on a whole lot more once he's there. But what I wanted to talk to you about today is bushrangers. Like many people I am a little bit fascinated with them. So I wanted to ask you guys, 'Tim what did you learn about bushrangers?
TIM: I remember having to rehearse the song of the Wild Colonial Boy, 'Jack Doolan was his name'.
TIM and PENNY (singing): "Of poor but honest parents he was born in Castlemaine.
CHRISTINA: Oh. That must have been quite specific to your school.
PENNY: Oh yeah, cos we lived near Castlemaine. So we were very proud of Jack.
TIM: Absolutely.
PENNY: Jack Doolan. But it's very confusing about who that actually was. It's two different people probably. And only one of them was actually born in Castlemaine. To be fair, I wasn't born in Castlemaine.
CHRISTINA: Where were you born?
PENNY: East Melbourne.
CHRISTINA: Oh. Interloper.
PENNY: What about you Tim?
TIM: I was also born in East Melbourne and moved to Castlemaine as a toddler.
CHRISTINA: What's with that? What's with the East Melbourne connection?
PENNY: Hospital.
CHRISTINA: Oh, so there wasn't one up there?
PENNY: No, well my parents lived in Broadford Kilmore, which is not that far from Melbourne really.
TIM: I'm a child of city folks so I'm a total blow-in.
CHRISTINA: Well, it's good that the accepted you eventually.
TIM: No, no. My parents have lived in Castlemaine for more than 40 years, but they're still not as local as the people who have been there forever.
CHRISTINA: Disappointing.
PENNY: But that song, I really felt quite proud that, the name of the town was in the song.
TIM: And the other thing that came up a few times was Captain Melville because there's the Melville caves, not too far away from, just sort of West of Bendigo, North-West of Castlemaine, which we went to on some school excursions cos it's also some nice big rocks and you can climb on them and go camping and stuff. They were legendarily the place where Captain Melville had hidden out and it's got a great view of the surrounding countryside so the story was always that 'Oh Captain Melville could keep a look out if there were any approaching police.'
PENNY: Is it true?
TIM: I'm not sure. But given that every historical record I've read of Captain Melville says that Melville was actually operating Mount Macedon, which is quite some distance from the Melville Caves, I'm tempted to think that it might be a bit of wishful thinking.
CHRISTINA: It was just an excuse for an excursion.
PENNY: Well that's the thing with bushrangers, there's truth and then there's the storytelling and it's all very confused.
Christina, what about you? You're a city kid.
CHRISTINA: I am.
PENNY: And you went to school in the city.
CHRISTINA: I did.
PENNY: Did you still learn about bushrangers?
CHRISTINA: Just your basic Ned Kelly. Not really anything else, to be honest.
PENNY: Yeah, I guess we did get a little bit more didn't we.
CHRISTINA: Yeah.
TIM: And there's all the trips to Sovereign Hill and that sort of thing.
PENNY: Did you go to Sovereign Hill?
CHRISTINA: Did go to Sovereign Hill. Bought the umbrella lollies, or whatever they were.
PENNY: They were yum.
CHRISTINA: Never got one the old-fashioned photos taken though. Very disappointed though, I never got one of those.
PENNY: They'd be expensive.
CHRISTINA: I think they were. I think that's why my parents kept shepherding me away from them.
PENNY: We went on a, we went recently with the kids and they enjoyed it. But jeez they find little ways, all through the place you can spend money.
CHRISTINA: It's like Disneyland.
PENNY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA: With a gold panning undertone.
PENNY: It was better than I thought it would be. Because I remember it being fantastic as a kid.
CHRISTINA: Were there still lots of Clydesdales around?
PENNY: We went on the horse-drawn carriage, yes. Paid for that.
CHRISTINA: How much is that?
PENNY: Might have been 5 bucks each. We probably got a family ticket for maybe 15/20.
TIM: I think I read that the staff are striking at the moment so solidarity with the workers of Sovereign Hill.
CHRISTINA: They're wearing modern clothing.
PENNY: Well, whatever it is, I'm absolutely on their side, I'm sure that
CHRISTINA: They've got their reasons.
PENNY: Exactly.
CHRISTINA: They're not just humbugs. I did like those jars of lollies too.
PENNY: They have really good lollies, but we're not having them until they treat their workers right.
CHRISTINA: Can you order those online? I wonder. Some boiled sweets from Sovereign Hill.
PENNY: Is that still crossing the picket?
CHRISTINA: I don't know.
29:34 PENNY: So there was another bushranger connection when I was in school that I remember, that was very exciting. I think I was in grade 5 or 6. And there was another school in my area that did a play, it was a musical, I remember it being called 'Captain Midnight' and it was so good Christina. It was about a bushranger and his dad died and
CHRISTINA: Were you devo you weren't in it.
PENNY: Well, I was really jealous of the school that did it. And I thought they were amazing. It was so fantastic and then, I've been friends with Tim from about year 7, and only very recently I said, 'Do you remember that play Captain Midnight? Did you go and see it?' And what did you say Tim?
TIM: I was in it.
CHRISTINA: Nice.
TIM: It was my school.
PENNY: He was there!
CHRISTINA: The man and the legend.
PENNY: And who did you play Tim?
TIM: I played the small but pivotal role of the Governor.
CHRISTINA: Excellent.
PENNY: So he was on the, kind of on the baddie say, I would say.
CHRISTINA: Was it a musical?
TIM: It was a musical. There was definitely songs.
PENNY: After Tim and I talked about this we could not remember what the actual play was, or anything about it.
CHRISTINA: Just that it was amazing.
TIM: There was a bushranger. There was a governor in it. There was also Queen Victoria makes a least a small appearance.
CHRISTINA: As all good plays deserve.
PENNY: And so I then, well I had to ask on Facebook and fortunately I said 'Does anyone in Castlemaine remember this play?' and then someone else goes, 'Oh well, it's actually a fairly well-known children's book and it was adapted into a play.' And it was written by Randolph Stow. The book, originally, 'Midnite: The Story of a Wild Colonial Boy'. And this is the book, and I used Trove to find that, that Melbourne Library had a copy of that. He wrote it in 1967 and they republished it recently. It's a classic. And it's actually really funny.
CHRISTINA: Are we gonna see one of your books made into a play or musical Penny? Cos I would be bang up for that.
PENNY: I'd go a TV show but
CHRISTINA: Or a film
PENNY: That'd be exciting.
CHRISTINA: Can I be in it?
PENNY: I think there's not quite enough action. Yeah, you can be in it.
CHRISTINA: Alright I'm in it.
PENNY: You can be a teacher.
CHRISTINA: I don't mind which one.
PENNY: Or you can be a Grade 5, whatever you feel.
CHRISTINA: Whatever feels right on the day.
TIM: This is getting off-topic but the Olympics sport one, absolutely I can see that as an Australian movie.
PENNY: Anyway, but the play adaptation was written by Richard Tulloch and it had music by John Bates and that was first produced in 1989 and then professionally
TIM: So it was only a couple of years before our school did it then.
PENNY: And then it actually wasn't published as like a book until like the mid-90s. So you were doing it before it was really published.
TIM: There must have been some kind of a connection with somebody for that then. I wonder. It was clearly, like the whole primary school was involved with it. All the teachers were very sort of, making a big deal about it. They had auditions. All the roles, except I think for the narrator, everybody else was actually played by real primary school kids. With obviously the preps being little bumbling chorus type
CHRISTINA: Trees and bushes.
PENNY: And having read the book now it totally definitely lends itself to the stage and particularly as a musical cos there's songs and stuff in it already. And actually in 1968 I found on Trove. This was before the actual play was written, but a class did an adaptation of one of the scenes themselves. This is from the Western Herald.
TIM: Oh wow.
33:20 PENNY: The Burke Western Herald from the 12th of July 1968. And this is the report.
"At The Primary School
Class 4C"
CHRISTINA: Go 4C!
PENNY: "Teacher Miss A. Donoghue
4C presented a play based on a short extract from the Highly Recommended Book of the Year, 'Midnite,' by Randolph Stow.
This is the story of a wild colonial 17 year old boy who is all alone in the world except for 5 animals, and in desperation turns to bushranging, and calls himself Captain Midnite. 4C adapted a scene where Midnite (Sam Buster) and his Siamese Khat (Michelle Dwyer)
CHRISTINA: Go Michelle!
PENNY: "held up and robbed a stagecoach, but Midnite is baffled by Trooper O'Grady (Ian Duncan) who, while pretending to give Midnite advice, picked his pocket. Peter Loder pompously acted the judge."
They don't say who played the Governor, which is
PENNY: "The play was thoroughly enjoyed by all."
CHRISTINA: I wonder if 4D liked it. Only 4C was allowed to participate.
PENNY: "Well done 4C"
TIM: Well done 4C.
PENNY: Now Christina I wanted to ask you, did you have any roles in primary school plays?
CHRISTINA: I was hoping for this moment, Penny. I did. I was a regular up there.
PENNY: And what plays did your school do?
CHRISTINA: So we used to do some, I guess those weird ones where you're not really sure what play it is, but you remember the character that you played. So I remember in prep being a cockatoo.
PENNY: There's a cockatoo in this.
CHRISTINA: And I do remember that my mum spent a lot of time making me a yellow cockatoo headdress.
PENNY: Your mum would do great costumes.
CHRISTINA: Out of poster paper and at the last minute I left that on the seat cos I was embarrassed by it. And I remember my teacher bringing it up on stage and there was a moment where I flat out refused to put that on my head. And in the same production I was also a rabbit. I was very versatile. And I do remember my friend Eva, also being a rabbit but I do remember having a very uncomfortable moment when it suddenly became clear that Eva had weed on the stage whilst she was a rabbit. And all of the other rabbits had to sort of dag off the stage with wee-feet. Cos you know how every primary school production you just wore coloured tights and a skivvy. So we're all in our white tights and skivvies with a tail attached to our tights and you could see your undies through your tights.
TIM: Oh my goodness that poor kid.
CHRISTINA: It was horrific. And we showed that footage at Eva's 18th cos her parents recorded it.
PENNY: So you know it's not just in your memory.
CHRISTINA: It's not just in my memory, no. So that was one of my faves.
PENNY: That's so good.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, and we did a number of Gilbert and Sullivan musicals, which I think were quite ambitious for primary school. We did 'The Mikado'. And then we did 'Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat'.
PENNY: Oh my god. Your school was really.
TIM: That's ambitious. I'm pretty sure Castlemaine North Primary School did Captain Midnite and then that was it.
CHRISTINA: That killed everybody.
PENNY: Have a big old rest.
CHRISTINA: Someone went on Workcover after that.
PENNY: But let's go back Tim. Let's go back to the auditions. Tell us about them.
TIM: I didn't actually audition for the governor.
CHRISTINA: Rigged.
TIM: I think nobody auditioned for the Governor, which is why I got the role. But
CHRISTINA: 'Tim, we've a role that we think would really suit you. There's not much speaking.'
TIM: That was more or less it.
PENNY: 'There is a hat.'
CHRISTINA: 'And some chains.'
TIM: Well, no no, well as 11-year-old me I thought the funniest think would be if I auditioned for the role of Queen Victoria, cos then I could speak in a funny voice.
CHRISTINA: Hilarious. 'Sit down Tim.'
PENNY: I read this to my son, this book to my son, and I did the voice, yeah.
TIM: Well you know what it's like then. But yeah no, oddly enough the teachers didn't think that making an 11-year-old boy play Queen Victoria would be the best move. So no, I got to be the Governor instead. Which was pretty fun. I got to have a cool blue cardboard hat, which I kept for years.
CHRISTINA: The cardboard hats are coming out today, aren't they?
PENNY: Yeah. Becky Fitz played Khat, which completely makes sense to me cos she was quite actory and it's a big part.
CHRISTINA: She would have worn tights and a skivvy. With a tail made out of pantyhose stuffed with a newspaper.
TIM: She absolutely did.
CHRISTINA: 100%.
PENNY: Lizzie Welsh was a cockatoo. She would have been little then, so she did really well. And we don't know, Troopy O'Grady, is the other really big character and we can't remember.
CHRISTINA: Someone'll ring in and let us know.
TIM: I was searching for my copy of the program and could not find it before this podcast episode. But I wish I could remember who played O'Grady. Captain Midnite was played by, I believe, Lockie Taylor, my friend at the time.
CHRISTINA: Has he gone on to great things in Hollywood?
TIM: Well, not that I know of. But he was very good. He was smart and talented and could do some singing. It was, it worked really well. And I think it, for a primary school play you need a good, smart charismatic kid to do the lead role or else it's gonna completely fall apart.
CHRISTINA: Absolutely. Entire productions are built around that one kid.
TIM: He was that one kid.
PENNY: That was the problem with our play, when we did ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ at my school, and I played the title role.
CHRISTINA: Did you?
TIM: Really?
PENNY: I did.
CHRISTINA: Penny. I didn't realise I was in the presence of such greatness.
PENNY: Yeah, but it was actually one of those things where I got the, I was really excited I got the main role and then when we got the scripts and started looking through it. My sister Georgina got the role of the narrator, and I was looking through and I was like, 'She's got my lines than me!'
CHRISTINA: Outrage. But you got the costume.
PENNY: Yeah, but then I realised I just did not like acting.
But the original professional production of 'Midnite' by the Black Swan Theatre in WA. And it had some future stars in the cast actually. Midnite was played by Kevin Harrington, aka Kevin from 'Sea Change'.
CHRISTINA: Loved 'Sea Change' Bring back 'Sea Change'.
PENNY: He would have been a kid then. And then Troopy O'Grady was played by Richard Dillane who now lives in the UK and he's been in every British show you can think of. 'Midsomer Murders', 'Silent Witness'.
CHRISTINA: Other ones.
TIM: 'A Touch of Frost'.
PENNY: Probably. Is that one?
CHRISTINA: 'The Bill'.
PENNY: Probably, yes. So, it's a proper play. Now, Randolph Stow, are you guys aware of his work?
CHRISTINA: No.
TIM: I remember the name, cos
PENNY: He's Western Australian.
TIM: Yeah
CHRISTINA: Is that a real name, Randolph?
PENNY: He's a proper, proper author. We studied his book 'Merry-Go-Round in the Sea' in year 12.
TIM: Yeah, that's a famous one.
PENNY: He's Western Australian, so the book is actually set in Western Australia. Now my memory of the play is that it was set in Castlemaine. Was I projecting, or did they change it?
TIM: No, no they absolutely changed it from Western Australia. In fact, my role was originally, in the book it's the Governor of Western Australia. No, I was the Governor of Victoria. And the other change they made, I think, was to make a big deal out of Lola Montez as a character. Being a famous dancer who was renowned for being a spy and things and I think they made a bigger role for someone to pretend to be Lola Montez.
PENNY: Oh actually there was a character here, who he goes over to visit in England. So what's the connection between Lola Montez and Castlemaine?
TIM: Well, Castlemaine has got the Theatre Royal, which is, it had I think the longest continuously operating theatre, sort of, record. I don't know how many caveats there were around that record. A theatre, that was in Castlemaine, and is a theatre to this day. And Lola Montez was this very famous identity, who was renowned for being, I think, a spy and having affairs with the Austrian Emperor and a whole bunch of wild stories like that that probably weren't true. But she came to Castlemaine and famously did her legendary spider dance and it was a big deal that got written up in various stories during the Gold Rush and so of course they got an 11-year-old to play Lola Montez.
PENNY: Who was that? Who played Lola Montez?
TIM: I didn't remember this, but I think somebody said it was Gemma Dean-Furlong.
PENNY: Oh! Yes! That would be good! She would be great at that!
TIM: So I think that was the change and moving it to Victoria to make it a much more. Oh, hang on, Lola Montez wasn't, didn't have an affair with the Austrian Emperor. She became the mistress of the King Ludwig of Bavaria. So, impressive.
PENNY: Yeah, which makes total sense that they set it, cos Castlemaine has that Gold Rush bushranger connection. And also, Midnite is actually subtitled 'The Story of a Wild Colonial Boy', which as we know is a song about Castlemaine. So, maybe. So, it would have been very confusing for everyone if they had have kept it in Western Australia I reckon. So Tim, you sung though in your role as the Governor?
TIM: You know, I have a memory of singing. But I can't really remember whether it actually happened or not. Whatever I sang, there was not very much of it. I'm not, singing is not really my great sort of skill.
PENNY: And what was the, what was the music? Was it live music, or was it recorded?
TIM: Well, it was supposed to have been live. Or at least sort of recorded music with everybody singing live. But at the end the school clearly chickened out and instead recorded everybody's dialogue so that it would play through loudspeakers.
PENNY: Everyone's dialogue?
TIM: Yes.
PENNY: I don't remember that.
CHRISTINA: How bizarre.
TIM: They were too scared.
PENNY: So you were just standing there? Were you mouthing the words?
TIM: Yeah, mouthing the words.
CHRISTINA: Like a Brittany Spears concert.
TIM: They were obviously scared that the kids would be too quiet, and you couldn't hear them. And there wasn't the cheap available tiny microphones, to mike up the kids.
CHRISTINA: You just have to stand up the back and yell at them to speak up.
PENNY: Well, I tell you what. The audience didn't care. We bloody loved it.
TIM: We were all lip-synching.
CHRISTINA: That's great.
PENNY: And what do you remember about the plot of the play?
TIM: I remember that he's a bushranger and there's something to do with gold. There's a whole thing about him getting imprisoned and then escaping again. And apart from that.
PENNY: That's pretty much what happens. I mean, I at the time just really watched as 'oh this is about bushrangers and a guy who's had a hard life and then some good things happen.' The book and the play are totally taking the piss out of all those bushranger tropes and fairytales and the folklaw around it. Like it's really making fun of it in a lot of ways. It's a very funny book and Randolph Stow, I always thought he was funny. 'Merry-Go-Round in the Sea' is a very serious book but it has just a couple of lines in it that are really funny. So I'm glad he got to sort of, break out of that prisoner of war camp nonsense that he was going on about.
CHRISTINA: It was a phase.
PENNY: Exactly. It's got some funny lines in the book. Like the judge at one point, when he's being bushranged, says, "Have pity on me, I have 11 cousins and a great-aunt in Wagga Wagga.' And then there's a cow called Dora and he says, "The thing to remember about Dora is that she was a very aggravating cow, and she knew it."
CHRISTINA: I love that.
PENNY: He's good. And they use 'bushrange' as a verb all the time. So every time they want something they're like 'Oh, should be go and bushrange some'. And so I really enjoyed it. It's a little bit dated. And in the book, it does mention Indigenous people, but very much only in the background, it's almost like
TIM: I was trying to remember
PENNY: In the play it's not mentioned at all, they cut it out entirely.
TIM: That makes sense. I was trying to wrack my memory and be like, 'Did they have any kids in black face?'
PENNY: Nah. Because they weren't characters. Just they just absolutely weren't characters. It was only ever 'oh we saw some people' or we saw some, there was some rock art that they looked at. And that's it.
What was the critical reception of the play like?
TIM: I have no idea.
PENNY: Because I know from Newstead that we loved it.
TIM: I think people were pretty positive about it. Everyone seemed to have a good time. It's so weird thinking back on it. Particularly when you do something like that as a kid and all you get are these weird little kid memories. And you can just tell that there's so much that must have been going over your head, that all the jokes that are aimed at adults. And all the other elements of it. I didn't even know that other schools had been invited to go see it.
PENNY: How many performances did you do?
TIM: I think we only did 2 or 3.
PENNY: God we were lucky!
CHRISTINA: Yep. It was limited season. They didn't make enough money to put a roof on the gym even.
TIM: It was great.
PENNY: I did a little bit of research about the real Captain Midnite is.
TIM: Well my memory was that it was a weird sort of composite character of. Is that right?
PENNY: Yeah, basically. There was actually a bushranger called Captain Midnight, and he operated around Dubbo. He was a bit of a, he was a pretty full-on bushranger. Like he stole horses, cattle, shot a policeman.
TIM: Did he have a cat?
CHRISTINA: Or just a cockatoo?
PENNY: And a cow and a sheepdog and it's really nice, they lived in a cottage. When he died he wouldn't tell anyone his real name and he said, "My right name I will never tell. I have lived like a dog and like a dog I will die."
TIM: As far as last words go, that's pretty woawr.
PENNY: Yeah, I mean it's good dramatic stuff. Maybe not for a kids' show. And he's ironically buried with the name 'Thomas Law' on his tombstone. Is that irony?
TIM: Buried under the law.
PENNY: But, even though there was a real Captain Midnight, that is not who Stow based his Midnite on. He based it on Moondyne Jo who was a bushranger, escapologist and nostrumonger.
CHRISTINA: What's that?
PENNY: I forgot to look up what that means.
TIM: I thought a nostrum was like a small room in a church. Maybe I'm misremembering that.
PENNY: I dunno know. But anyway when I looked up Moondyne Jo's history. The story of the book pretty much just follows his life. He was amazing and I actually found an article about him this is from the Northern Argus, Western Australia. "Escape of Moondyne Joe"
TIM: Oh, oh I figured out what a nostrum is. It's also a medicine prepared by an unqualified person, especially one that is not considered effective.
CHRISTINA: Excellent.
PENNY: Excellent. So he's just flogging.
TIM: Flogging snake oil.
PENNY: Ivermectin.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, pretty much. It'll cure Covid. Or worm horses better.
TIM: Very effective on worms.
48:32 PENNY: "Probably no event in the colony ever more tickled the risible faculties of the public, than did the escape of the notorious convict "Moondyne Joe," on the afternoon of Thursday last week….
Joe's ingenuity in making his escape from his apparently hopeless condition has gained him many sympathisers, who express an opinion that he has earned his freedom, more especially as Mr. Hampton"
Who was the Governor.
"is said to have told him, when he saw him put into the cell which had been specially prepared for him, that if he managed to make his escape again he would forgive him."
Which is what happens in the book.
TIM: Yeah.
PENNY: Which I thought was just completely made up, but it's real.
"That cell was made wonderfully strong as much so as iron and wood could make it, and in it Joe was kept chained to a ring in the floor or wall, allowing a movement of about one yard, in heavy irons, with one hour's exercise daily in one of the yards….
Joe was set to work at stonebreaking under the eye of the sentry upon the prison walls, and the warder of the chain-gang working in the yards. How long he was so employed we know not, but on Thursday afternoon on being visited by the warder, the prisoner was gone, and in his place was a neatly contrived dummy…"
TIM: That is spectacular.
PENNY: I mean in the books the cat just comes along and saves him all the time. This is actually more impressive.
TIM: Well, to be fair, we don't know that he didn't have a cat. Maybe the cat brought him a key?
CHRISTINA: Cats are pretty clever.
PENNY: I am sorry about that. Sorry Khat.
"When the escape was dis-covered the consternation amongst the prison officials is said to have been worth witnessing; the warder, who did not ascertain the fact until he had actually taken the dummy by the arm, was nearly sick with fright; the superintendent could not believe it, and brought forward a theory that it could not possibly be a fact, however, the alarm bell was rung, the gun was fired, and the police and military distributed,"
TIM: I'm surprised they haven't made a movie of this.
PENNY: Yeah, like what a cool guy. And basically in the end, cos this guy kept escaping, it was too embarrassing so they just let him stay out.
CHRISTINA: Just go out.
PENNY: And then the other person who the character's based on is Captain Starlight, who the book says was a "Bushranger, gentlemen, Clerk of the Geological Survey Department of WA".
CHRISTINA: And now works at the Royal Children's Hospital.
PENNY: Exactly, he really worked his way up respectability-wise. But he killed a lot of, no he didn't, he killed a policeman. He stole cattle, he did fraud, he seemed to be a pathological liar with no moral compass. He was also very clever, well-educated and became a public servant.
CHRISTINA: Great. What a jampacked CV.
TIM: Wow.
51:22 This is from the Kalgoorlie Western Argus from the 4th of December 1900, and this is just after he died and it's "The Starlight Story. Starlight as a Civil Servant".
Okay, so when he was a civil servant he was known as Major Pelly.
TIM: So along with everything else he became a major.
PENNY: Yeah. He said he'd done stuff in India.
"Our inquiries prove that he was a most mysterious person; his conduct at times was so strange as to cause those who had to associate with him to assume that he was occasionally bereft of his senses. For instance, he had whims that he carried out to what appeared to be extremes, and which not infrequently bordered on the ludicrous."
So the rest of the article is basically just about people complaining how he was weird at work. It's very relatable content actually.
CHRISTINA: It is relatable.
PENNY: And just so that does kind of mean that the next time you have a colleague who does seem a bit odd.
CHRISTINA: Only one?
PENNY: Sorry, I forgot you worked in a school.
CHRISTINA: Yes. Many.
PENNY: They could be bushrangers.
CHRISTINA: They could.
PENNY: That's all I'm saying.
"His behavior in the office also rapidly excited curiosity. At times he was quite rational, but at other times he became eccentric, and was an object of pity. When the Geological Department was located in Pier-street he informed his fellow-officers that he was engaged to be married to a niece of his landlady. This was credited, because it was not an unusual custom to see a young woman escort "Major Pelly" to his office, and KISS HIM before leaving him at the office door."
And what I like about this is that they've written “KISS HIM”
CHRISTINA: They have in big bold.
PENNY: In capitals line like a heading.
CHRISTINA: KISS HIM.
TIM: Wow.
PENNY: Are we in grade 5?
CHRISTINA: We are.
TIM: Well look, if you've got a newspaper you're trying to sell in Western Australia in 1900, you want the big facts out in big letters.
CHRISTINA: Will I read this article? KISS HIM? Yes, I will.
PENNY: I'd love it if the weirdest thing someone at work had done was just kissin' someone, that'd be alright. Though you're not meant to, are you, no.
CHRISTINA: Depends where you work.
TIM: It was at the door of the office. It wasn't, there wasn't any kissing in the office.
CHRISTINA: They weren't standing at the photocopier going for it. As far as we know.
PENNY: So, Midnite, the book and the play is based on like a mishmash of these two characters, which is very common with, as we've talked about with bushranging stories that they'll kind of blend people together. And when I first started looking at this before I knew about the real Randolph Stow story, I thought that it might have been based on a play called Captain Midnight, in 1901. At that point bushranging had only just sort of finished in the last 20 years.
TIM: Well there was a big sort of, I know sort of equivalently in America that was when you had the sort of Buffalo Wild West, when it was just old enough that it was a big sort of nostalgia kind of thing.
PENNY: Yeah, people romanticised it pretty quickly. And of course, actually the songs came out at the time and people would write those ballads about bushrangers and people were sympathetic about them. And that article we read about Moondyne like very jaunty about a criminal. Very sympathetic about him. There was 'Robbery Under Arms', which was a novel about bushrangers, which had a Captain Starlight in it.
CHRISTINA: Nice.
PENNY: And Captain Starlight was based on the real Captain Midnight.
TIM: That's very confusing. Wasn't there also a Captain Moonlight?
PENNY: Yeah. I didn't even get into him. But you see what I mean, it is like totally confusing. Like that's the real one who's made up of these two fake ones, who was the real one. Like it goes all around. And then, and we're not even talking about the most famous bushranger of all, Ned Kelly. And the first feature film ever was made about Ned Kelly in 1906.
TIM: So it was clearly very zeitgeisty to be still telling bushranger stories.
PENNY: So I think people have always been a bit scared of bushrangers but also a little, there's also been that public idea of them being thrilled by them, which this book is just like all about. Like it's always talking about bushranging being romantic and it's totally sending up that idea.
TIM: Well even before this, I suppose if you want to take a bit long view it goes back to, you know, there's all those stories about English highwaymen, like Dick Turpin. And before that you've got Robin Hood, which was obviously a big sort of, there was Robin Hood songs hundreds of years ago.
PENNY: There's some whole theory about it banditry historians, they call them ‘social bandits’ I think.
TIM: Social bandits.
PENNY: People who are stealing but for
CHRISTINA: For the greater good.
PENNY: But yeah, but also had public sympathy for their deeds. But anyway, thank you so much Tim for coming and talking to us about this play, which is very fond in my memory and I just had no idea that I knew someone who was in it. Can I get your autograph?
TIM: Thank you very much for inviting me on again. This has been really great.
CHRISTINA: It was fun.
PENNY: Fun to talk about bushrangers. They're fun!
CHRISTINA: They are.
TIM: They've fun as long as you're sleeping comfortably in your bed while it happens to somebody else.
56:53 (piano - The Wild Colonial Boy)
PENNY: Bushrangers. And I'm excited about this topic and I'm worried that we're not gonna get to the bit that I'm most excited about.
TIM: Which is the bit that you're most excited about?
PENNY: The play.
57:36 Piano music.