Robert Burke - Australian Bushranger Traditional Cache
Robert Burke - Australian Bushranger
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ROBERT BOURKE A claim was made after his death that his real name was Clusky and that he had been born in Dublin in 1840. He and his sister were supposedly sent to Australia in 1854. The same informant said that he had committed several acts of dishonesty before he took to bushranging. In 1864 he was sentenced to three years for horse stealing in the Ararat District. Upon his release he headed north and worked as a cook on Humewood Station near the Murrumbidgee for about eighteen months, and then teamed up with a man named Quinn, and carried out a series of robberies in the Humewood district and later on the main road from Wodonga to Wangaratta. He was credited with robbing the Jugiong - Gundagai coach. On October 4th, 1868, unaccompanied by Quinn he rode into Diamond Creek Station, not far north-east from Melbourne. He was met by Ellen Hurst, the owner's daughter, and asked for a meal. The young lady thought by the condition of the man's clothes that he was a tramp, and took him into the kitchen to find something to eat. As he was eating some bread and meat, Ellen noticed a pistol protruding out of his belt. Slipping out of the room, she told her brother Harry, who loaded a pistol and returned to the kitchen with her. Harry Hurst said; "Good morning, matee, where do you come from?" He answered; "Cape Schanck." Harry said; "Where are you going?" to which he replied; "To Kilmore." Harry said; "The deuce you are, you are going a roundabout way to it." After a few more questions Bourke jumped up and moving his coat, revealed his pistol, and cried, "Do you know who I am? I am a bushranger!" Instead of drawing his gun, he made a lunge at Harry Hurst, who fired his pistol but missed Bourke, almost hit his sister as she was running out the door. Bourke drew his pistol and firing it at Harry also missed, and the two men wrestled with each other. During the struggle another shot was fired, the bullet of which passed through Hurst's side and lodged itself in Bourke's thigh. At that moment a man named Abbott ran in and overpowered the bushranger. Young Harry Hurst died about eight hours later and at Bourke's trial he claimed that Hurst fired first and that he was only defending himself. The jury did not believe Bourke, and on finding him guilty he was hanged some five weeks after the incident. It is interesting to note that Ned Kelly's grandfather, James Quinn, was married to a Mary Ann McCluskey, and it could be possible that if Bourke's name really was Clusky or McCluskey, that his associate, Quinn may have been a relative.
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