Ian W Shaw - The Other Side of the Mountain

Ian W. Shaw is an acclaimed writer of narrative nonfiction who has made an important contribution to Australian history and to Australias understanding of itself as a nation. After a decade of school teaching and twenty-five years working as a security risk analyst for both government agencies and large private companies, Ian became a full-time writer in 2012. Ian has published seven works of Australian and military history, all of which are characterised by his ability to locate and access hidden tales from our past, and for his meticulous and far-reaching research.

Books by Ian W. Shaw

Operation Babylift

Murder at Dusk

The Rag Tag Fleet

Glenrowan

The Ghosts of Roebuck Bay

On Radji Beach

The Bloodbath

Woodslane Press Pty Ltd

10 Apollo Street

Warriewood, NSW 2102

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02 8445 2300 www.woodslane.com.au

First published in Australia in 2020 by Woodslane Press

2020 Woodslane Press, text 2020 Ian W. Shaw

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Printed in Australia by McPhersons

Cover images: Paintings from the Horrocks expedition, Gill, S. T. (Samuel Thomas), NLA nla.obj-134354182-1, nla.obj-134370990-1, nla.obj-134371955-1, nla.obj-134372439-1

Book design by: Luke Harris

Contents

Introduction

B ushrangers, explorers and adventurers ... The Other Side of the Mountain chronicles three true, but almost forgotten, stories of life, death and adventure on the colonial Australian frontier.

Although Ralph Entwistle, John Horrocks and Horace Wills are not as well-known as their more famous contemporaries, the impact that these early bushrangers, explorers and adventurers made on the development of different parts of our early Australian society should not be underestimated.

The Ribbon Boys of Bathurst recounts how a gang of bushrangers arose during the early colonisation of the well-watered grasslands and well-forested hills that lay to the west of the Blue Mountains. This area was a new frontier of challenges and possibilities for the pastoralists, small farmers and ticket of leave men, as well as the convicts who would be required to clear the land.

One convict called Ralph Entwistle was the founder and leader of the notorious Ribbon Boys; some of the earliest bushrangers in Australia. Like so many of the convicts who were transported to Australia, it was actually a relatively small mistake that triggered their uprising and lead to terrible consequences that far outweighed the original misdemeanour.

Set almost 700 miles to the south-west of Bathurst, in the new colony of South Australia, The Great Beyond is an example of early exploration by the English gentlemen who came to Australia of their own free will.

John Horrocks was one such gentleman, an intrepid and passionate explorer who had the wealth, the drive and the urge to commit to significant expeditions. Horrocks journey into the semi-desert country that Bourke and Wills would more famously traverse 14 years later, was shorter than he hoped and ultimately ill fated. However, he too deserves a much more prominent place in our history books.

Horrocks had the foresight to see the benefits of using camels in exploring Australia and he went on to use the very first camel to arrive in Australia as part of his expedition, something future explorers would find invaluable in their explorations.

The Last Frontier focuses on another early pioneer, Australian born Horace Wills, who overcame an extremely challenging childhood and was determined to achieve success as a pastoralist.

Horace was an adventurer who led his own overlanding party into new areas of settlement to the south and south-west of the limits of settlement in New South Wales. He was a man who lived for the challenges that life offered, and he was more successful than most.

Horaces relationship with the Aboriginal people he encountered while he and the other pastoralists were forcing them off their traditional lands reflects the often-fraught interactions of these two vastly different cultures. However, unlike most of his contemporaries, Horace was determined to work alongside rather against the Aboriginal culture and people, an incredibly progressive and positive view for that period of Australian history.

While our history books recount the momentous advances made when Europeans spread across the continent, the stories of Ralph Entwistle, John Horrocks and Horace Wills are a reminder that those advances were almost always built on smaller endeavours, often made by people whose names we rarely hear today.

The Land Beyond the Mountains

N ot to put too fine a point on it all, Britain founded Australia as a dumping ground for its exploding population of convicts. Irrespective of arguments over the social, religious, political or economic pressures that led to the soaring conviction rates, Britain had run out of options to house those unfortunates its legal system deemed to be criminals. The loss of their North American colonies and the failure to find suitable alternative sites for convict settlements in West Africa and elsewhere made the European landings up and down the east coast of Australia both timely and inevitable. The same pressures that created those settlements guaranteed they would continue to grow once established.