90 YEARS YOUNG

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 708, 6 July 1929, Page 18

90 YEARS YOUNG

Saw Bushrangers in Tasmania MRS. MARY J. NICHOLAS Ninety years old today, Mrs. Mary J. Nicholas can look back to the time when her home in Tasmania was raided by bushrangers. Mrs. Nicholas, who was born in Tasmania, came to New Zealand about 25 years ago on the death of her husband, Mr. J. E. Nicholas, owner of a sheep station at BothwelL near Hobart. Today she lives with her daughter, Mrs. L’E. Barton, of Ayr Street, Parnell.

Ten years ago, at the request of her friends, she wrote an account of her adventure . with the bushrangers, and published it in booklet form. On May 20, 1569, her husband’s homestead. “Cluny,” was “stuck up” by three exconvicts known as the Sydney Jim gang, the last of its kind in Tasmania. The gang operated for about 12 months, and £ 500 reward was placed on the heads of the three men. Sydney Jim, who was a courageous and desperate man, had a good side to his nature, according to Mrs. Nicholas's narrative, but his companions, Wingey and Flowers, were of a lower type. Sydney Jim was a convict who escaped from Port Arthur about 1867, and worked for a settler at Shannon for about two years until he was recognised and reported by another exconvict named Smith. Sydney Jim then took to the bush, vowing vengeance on his betrayer, and together with two other men made his headquarters in the forest-clad hills round the Great Lake, from where he raided around the settled districts. The outlaws invaded Mr. Nicholas’s home about 7 o’clock one evening in 1869, and after a fierce struggle secured Mr. Nicholas and trussed him up. They then took all the cash, jewellery and clothes they could find, and partook of a meal. Had it not been for Mrs. Nicholas’s intervention the robbers would have forced her husband to carry their booty up into tho hills.

Some months later the gang was betrayed to the police by a shepherd’s wife, and their hut was surrounded at night. Sydney Jim died fighting, but the other two were overpowered, tried and hanged in Hobart Gaol. Mrs. Nicholas is still in good health, although her eyesight prevents her from reading and letter-writing, which she always enjoyed.