Michael Howe styled himself the Governor of the Ranges and spent years terrorising colonial Tasmania at the head of a bushranging gang, turning on his own allies whenever it suited his hold on command. When two kangaroo hunters, Worrall and Pugh, finally cornered and killed him on 21 October 1818, his knapsack was found to hold a crude journal bound in kangaroo skin and written in kangaroo blood.
The little book revealed a man haunted by his own crimes: dreams of being murdered, of dead comrades, of narrowly escaping capture, and, in one unexpected line, of the sister he had left behind. Alongside the dreams were long lists of seeds and flowers, the quiet fantasy of a killer who always meant to vanish into the bush and farm it in peace. Howe never got the chance; after Pugh clubbed him to death, his head was carried to Hobart to claim the reward on his life.
