The third in a series of caches highlighting Tasmanian bushrangers.
Richard Lemon was born about 1789 in Kent. A labourer, Lemon was tried in Surrey on 21 March 1803 for thieving and sentenced to transportation for life at the age of only 14. He arrived in Sydney on the convict ship Coromandel on 7 May 1804 and assigned to the surgeon John Harris on his property which now constitutes the suburb of Glebe. He was soon embroiled in further crimes – mostly petty theft. He and his later accomplice John Brown have been suggested by some to have been responsible for several murders in Sydney before they were sent to Van Diemen’s Land but there’s no proof of this and it seems unlikely they knew each other at this point.
Lemon was transported to Port Dalrymple (modern day Launceston) and put to work on a farm where he somehow became acquainted with the convict escapee Brown. He fled to the bush with Brown, taking a violent path that led to his early death. Instead of putting as much distance between themselves and the authorities, Lemon and Brown lurked around Port Dalrymple bent on revenge against specific soldiers for unrecorded wrongs. On 25 October 1807 they shot dead Corporal John Curry. And killed two more soldiers in cold-blood soon after. They made their way overland toward modern day Hobart, probably being the first non-indigenous people to make the journey. They made the Midlands — near modern day Oatlands — their home. Several topographical features around this area still bear Lemon’s name. Local indigenous mobs likely bore the brunt of Lemon’s and Brown’s sadistic streaks. A free settler, James Hobbs, told the Aboriginal Committee in 1830 that ‘Lemon and Brown....committed every species of cruelty upon the natives; they used to stick [bayonet] them and fire at them as marks [targets] while alive’.
During their time in the Midlands, Lemon and Brown were joined by another convict escapee, Irishman Richard Scanlon. Lemon grew paranoid as Brown and Scanlon kept conversing in Gaelic. While Brown was away from camp, Lemon shot Scanlon in cold blood and hanged him from a tree. Upon Brown’s return, Lemon was purported to have remarked: ‘Now Brown, as there are only two of us, we shall understand one another better for the future’.
After a few more violent robberies, Lemon and Brown were cornered by a small group of men seeking the £50 reward for their capture. In the ensuing struggle, Lemon was shot dead. And in a gruesome end to his story, his captors decapitated him and carried his head back to Hobart as proof of his death. Lemon’s head was exhibited on a stake in Hobart in March 1808. He was about 20 years old when he died.
FIND THIS CACHE AT YOUR OWN RISK. My beautiful Oregon 750t froze and died on my first visit to the GZ. And I came back bloody from my second visit. Perhaps Lemon doesn't like having a geocache named after him.......WOULD NOT RECOMMEND AT NIGHT!!
FTF Honours go to The Farmers 5 and Dragon 1982