13/12/2025
Weekend windback to 170 years ago this week – when Chinaman’s Flat turned into the wildest, dustiest, most poorly-planned showdown this side of the Bet Bet Creek!
The district had been crawling with stick-up merchants for weeks. Travellers around White Hills – that scrubby stretch between Maryborough and what we now call Bowenvale – are getting bailed up so often it’s starting to feel like an unofficial welcome ritual.
Word finally reaches the Maryborough camp that the local rascals have been spotted down Chinaman’s Flat way – and Sergeant Morton rounds up a posse who are very ready to stop being shot at for a living.
By the time the coppers ride in, they find two bushrangers who absolutely do not feel like surrendering. One genius decides the best way out is to fire wildly at police and run away at the same time – a bold strategy, Cotton, and it goes exactly how you’d expect.
The constables return fire, drop him instantly, and he’s hauled off to the Maryborough hospital where Dr Laidman does what he can… but the bloke’s injuries are past saving.
His mate? Vanished like pipe-smoke on a windy night. By sunrise, he was long gone – and if he’d been born 170 years later, he’d probably be living it up with Dezi Freeman!
During the dust-up, the dying bushranger still managed to fire off three wild shots – one of them punching clean through Constable Raston’s cap.
In modern-day Goldfields Police terms, that translates roughly to:
“I came one centimetre away from getting my skull redesigned by a bloody lunatic – and the Premier will still say crime stats are fine.”
The rest of the district? A complete circus. Maryborough, Dunolly and Chinaman’s Flat were all buzzing with thieves, stick-up men, shady characters, and the odd opportunistic weasel.
Much like today, locals were begging for the government to step in and clear out the nefarious riff-raff before the whole countryside turned into one big bushranger team-building retreat.
Different times, same vibes: everyone begging for more police, the police begging not to get shot, and the bushrangers begging not to get caught. Only one side brought enough luck that night though.
