John Hazeldine went by the name Kangaroo Jack, and he liked to remind men what his evidence could do: he claimed it had hanged one man in England and transported two others. So when he and a young absconded convict named Parker were caught butchering a stolen bullock in the bush near Bathurst in 1828, Parker knew exactly what Hazeldine intended to do next. That evening, as Hazeldine knelt blowing a campfire alight, Parker struck him with a tomahawk.
The case against him rested almost entirely on a confession he was said to have made to two fellow convicts, men a settler who watched the trial branded liars who “contradicted each other in all other things” and may have been the real killers. It was enough. Parker, about 19, was hanged behind the gaol at Sydney on 28 September 1829, still hoping until the last for a reprieve.
He denied the murder almost to the moment the rope was placed around his neck, then confessed his guilt as the drop was prepared.
