1866: He Was Fed Breakfast, Then Declared Himself a Bushranger and Shot His Host
Henry Facey Hurst, the pioneer settler after whom Hurstbridge in Victoria was later named, was feeding a hungry stranger at his station near Diamond Creek on the morning of 4 October 1866 when his sister spotted a revolver hidden under the man’s coat. Hurst quietly loaded his own gun and confronted him. Offended at what he called an insult, the stranger leapt up and announced, “I am a bushranger”: Robert Burke. Burke tried to fire first, but the cap misfired; Hurst got his shot away, and Burke then fired three rounds of his own, one tearing into Hurst’s stomach and lodging in his own leg.
Though mortally wounded, Hurst clung to Burke until a friend, Joseph Abbott, wrestled the bushranger down and tied him with a halter. Hurst bled to death that evening. Burke was convicted of wilful murder, though the jury recommended mercy on the grounds that Hurst had fired the first shot. He was hanged at Melbourne Gaol.
