On 1 September 1846, explorer John Horrocks was shot near Lake Dutton in the far north-west of South Australia. While reloading his shotgun during the expedition, a kneeling camel named Harry shifted its packload and tripped the weapon's trigger.
Harry, the camel responsible for the accident and reputedly the first camel to arrive in Australia, was shot dead on Horrocks's own orders before he died of his wounds on 23 September.
Martin Cash, Irish-born convict and bushranger, died on 26 August 1877 at his farm cottage in Glenorchy, Tasmania, aged 68. Twice he escaped from the supposedly escape-proof Port Arthur penal colony, the second time by swimming the shark-infested waters. On Boxing Day 1842, Cash and two companions absconded from a work party and launched an eight-month bushranging spree across Van Diemen's Land, robbing mail coaches and homesteads before his eventual recapture. His 1870 autobiography, The Adventures of Martin Cash, ghostwritten by a fellow former convict, became a bestseller. He was one of the few bushrangers of his era to die of natural causes, cheating the gallows.
James Alpin Macpherson, known as the Wild Scotchman, was one of Queensland's most notorious bushrangers before his capture and imprisonment. Released from prison in 1874, he lived out the remainder of his days quietly, working as a stockman and station overseer far from his outlaw past.
Macpherson died on 23 August 1895 at Burketown, Queensland, aged 53, after falling from a horse. The man who had once terrorised the bush met his end not in a blaze of gunfire, but in an ordinary accident on the land he had spent his later years working.
1895·"Poor Don, We Will Meet in Heaven": George Lynch Hanged in Adelaide for a Jealous Pursuit MurderTrue crime stories, dark history and tour news, straight to your inbox.
