Boy Bushrangers

Hokitika Guardian, 11 April 1922, Page 1

Boy Bushrangers

WILD EXPLOITS IN VICTORIA. SYDNEY, March 29. Two hoy bushrangers—John Henry Maple and Robert Banks—have been terrorising the district of Neerin, in Gippsland, Victoria. The stories that have been published of their wild exploits waken memories of the Kelly gang. The hoys who are 18 years of age, escaped from reformatory homes, and went into the country on a pillaging excursion. They broke into several stores, and from one obtained two rifles and 2000 rounds of ammunition. Last Friday morning they appeared before the house of a farmer named Johnstone, in the Neerin district, and fired 12 shots round the premises. The farmer’s daughter, Bessie, opened the door leading into the yard, and stepped hack just in time to miss a bullet which came from behind a stump 50 yards away.

Then the police got to hear of the affair, and several of them went out to arrest the boys, and Constable Bartils received a bullet in reply to his demand for surrender, and a volunteer searcher, George Wollsteneroft, who was on horseback was shot, and seriously wounded. A duel of bullets folloved and Maple and Banks got away into the bush.

hue-and-cry was raised. Reinforcements were rushed out from Sale by motor car, carrying four service rifles, 50 rounds of ammunition, field glasses—in fact, all the equipment of war on a small scale. The bush was searched throughout the night, but the youths could not be found. Maple was said to know the locality thoroughly, and to have an intimate knowledge of the thick bush in the district. At Neerin Junction everybody obtained some sort of a rifle or revolver and joined in the chase. Led by black trackers, the searchers set out for Lntrobe River, where Maple and Banks were last seen. The party split up into two divisions, but the only result was one party was nearly fired on by the other, being mistaken for boys moving through the scrub. Various reports led the searchers ou the track of the youths, and with about 40 policemen, beside practically every man in the. district engaged in the search, it was decided to sweep across every inch of the district in which the boys were known to be. Banks was captured on Sunday. He told the police that Maple had three hundred cartridges, and had said that he would shoot any man who came within fifty yards of him. He cut the ends off several bullets, and said that they were sure to kill that way. So daring did Maple become that instead of disappearing into the dense scrub country around the Neenm district, where he had a big chance of evading capture for many weeks, he preferred to take to the road, cross open paddocks, and crawl over areas with bracken fern waist deep. These methods brought about his downfall. On Monday when a search party, comprised chiefly of district bushmen, discovered him in a patch of bracken fern from which he could not escape, the desperate youth accepted the challenge, and, hemmed in as he was by 14 men with rifles directed at him, he coolly raised himself from his cover, and with his Winchester rifle fired a shot, reloaded with remarkable raprditv, and fired again at his would-be captors. He tried a third shot. The rifle jammed, and as he sought cover o crain 13 rifles and one revolver, which were levelled against him, poured m a fusilade. Maple was seen to roll over, and the men who ran forward found him unconscious with blood trickling from a bullet wound m hrs forehead between the two eyes, tie died shortly afterwards.