This volume recounts the early history of bushranging in Australia. Excerpt: Owing to the stringent military rule during the first years of convict settlement, the unknown character of the country, and the absence of prey in the shape of men with money or other possessions (the aborigines being the only occupants of the soil outside the properly formed settlements), those who were called bushrangers then were simply men who had broken away from their gangs in the hope of escaping from the torture of labour under Government. The name has been made to carry a very different meaning since then, being applied to men who, some from choice and some from necessity, ranged the bush as freebooters, "sticking-up" settlers and travelers and demanding in orthodox style "your money or your life."

This is a sequel to the first volume. The book is set during the period of bushranging in Australia. Excerpt: For some time after the robbery of the Escort at Eugowra Rocks, Hall, Gilbert, and O'Meally kept away from their usual haunts; but were by no means idle during their temporary seclusion, and not a few cases of "sticking-up" in lonely parts of the bush roads in the Lachlan district were, not without reason, charged against one or other of them by the authorities and the public. While the fate of their late companions—Mann, Bow, and Fordyce—was hanging in the balance they were arranging fresh plots under the very noses of the police. As in the case of Gardiner, a perfect system of "bush telegraphy" had been established in every locality where their friends resided; and as they invariably moved with a given object from their hiding places, and either returned direct to the place from which they had started or made for some other friendly shelter in another direction, they were always in touch with their "telegraphs" and were thus kept posted in every movement made by the force whose aim it was to capture them.

Frederick Wordsworth Ward, better known as 'Captain Thunderbolt', had one of the longest bushranging 'careers' in history. Plaguing New South Wales for almost seven years, he enjoyed much public support as he was intelligent, and charming. This book describes some of Thunderbolt's exploits and refutes many of the popular myths that surround him.