IN READING the numerous reports of the Wild Scotsman’s exploits, it becomes apparent that James MacPherson would, in modern terms, be a contender for celebrity status.
If we look at his career without emotion, he did little more than rob the mail, steal and return horses, hold up an occasional coach and take revenge on a former boss who failed to pay his wages.
Yet according to numerous news reports of the time, he did it all with such aplomb and good humour that he quickly gained fame for his infamy.
Such was the nature of the Wild Scotsman that while he was greatly admired in some quarters he was scorned in others.
Some reporters sought out people who had known him before he became a bushranger to give readers an understanding of the man.
In a December 1865, report that was picked up by many newspapers, a journalist reported on an interview given by someone who had known MacPherson as a youth and as a young man.
“His deeds as a bushranger show that while he is a member of that fraternity, he is of no ordinary stamp,” the news item continued after outlining the Wild Scotsman’s latest exploits.
“He would be amongst the last men that a keen observer would pick out of the ranks as being likely to play such a part.
“An opinion formed of him from appearance was [that he was an ordinary man], however, that opinion soon alters when one has had a little conversation with him, as you find out that he knows much more than you would at first give him credit for. On more intimate acquaintance, you discover that it is not an easy matter to take his measure.
“You may have been months in his company, and the first you will know of his intimate acquaintance with the German language as a written language is, by some day finding him pouring over a book, in the strange print.
“In some similar, almost accidental way, you will learn that he speaks that language with the utmost fluency. He has been seen to get into a conversation with some new arrival from the Fatherland, and after a lengthy and animated chat, ‘Mein Herr’ will leave him with the impression that he has been talking to one of his own countrymen.
“He can do a trifle of French, and has a tolerable smattering of Chinese. Gaelic, he speaks as his Native tongue, and English of course.
“The language of the aboriginals he talks to perfection, and understands the dialects of several tribes. His general knowledge of those people is very great and he at one time commenced to write a description of their manners and customs, and to reproduce some of their legends for an English journal.
“During the twelve months he was employed in Brisbane he was looked upon by his acquaintances as a very curious chap, indeed.
“His strange demeanour, shrewd penetrative mind, fluency of language, and extensive general knowledge of much pertaining to human nature and society, combined with a most retentive memory and a restless roving disposition, made some of them court his company very much.
“He has often been heard to say that he felt living in Brisbane was as a parrot might be supposed to feel living in a cage.
“During his stay in Brisbane he was a member of the School of Arts, and reading books was the only occupation to which he devoted time and patience.
“The range of literature at his command there afforded him plenty of scope for selecting the works most to his taste, and the books that he did select, showed that he possessed an amount of intellectual discrimination, rarely to be met within so young a man.”
However, a report which appeared in many of the same newspapers only two weeks later was less sympathetic yet there a hint of admiration, too.
“The scoundrel MacPherson is still at large, is still plundering mails and sticking up travellers, is still doing this in the Burnett district, or was when last heard of.
“[He] was being followed by some of our most experienced and courageous bushmen, led by [Aboriginal] trackers, and the open nature of the country would, it was argued, prevent his continuance in the district – that if he was not got rid of by capture, he would be hunted away.
“The career of this fellow shows a mistake has been made in these calculations. If the country is open, he has proved that it may help the pursued as much as the pursuers, enabling him to move about with greater speed and agility.
“So, the fellow continues his plundering work with as much impunity and impudence as it formerly was carried on in New South Wales.
“When such men as Bligh, Murray and Clohesy – first class bushmen who will not shrink from endurance or danger – have been baffled or successfully defied, we may be sure the difficulties of capturing a well-mounted and armed man in Queensland have been greatly underestimated.
“When it is considered the enormous mischief and loss this one man has power to inflict on the whole community, and that his success is an invitation to other men to enter upon the same course of infamy, the law of self-preservation dictates that at once, whatever the cost, the thing should be crushed.
“Twice when the police have come upon him, their horses jaded and done up, he has found no difficulty in slipping away from them, disappearing as if he had dropped into the earth, to appear again most unexpectedly on the other side of the district some scores of miles away.”
• The fourth and final part of our series will appear in next week’s edition.
