Sergeant Parry Memorial at Jugiong. Photo: Chris Roe.
In the language of the day, Police Sergeant Edmund Parry “died game”.
The 32-year-old was shot and killed in 1864 as he went shot-for-shot in a horseback duel with one of the colony’s most notorious bushrangers in the hills outside Jugiong.
The Ben Hall Gang was a loose confederation of bushrangers who terrorised regional NSW from the Central West to the Riverina in the early 1860s.
The gang committed more than 100 robberies, including the largest gold heist in Australian history, they were involved in dozens of shootouts with police and private citizens, and murdered at least five people.
On the morning of 16 November, 1864, the charismatic Ben Hall was accompanied by core gang members Johnny Gilbert and John Dunn as they staked out the road south of Jugiong to wait for the mail coach.
Dozens of travellers unwittingly walked or rode into their trap and the gang held them up, relieved them of their valuables and added them to a growing group of prisoners.
At around 12:30 pm a police constable named James McLoughlin appeared on the road, leading a packhorse north on his way to begin a transfer from Gundagai Station to Jugiong.
As two of the armed bushrangers galloped towards him demanding that he surrender, McLoughlin stood his ground, drawing his colt revolver and firing back at them until the gun was empty.
With his horse wounded in the exchange, the constable rode for the scrub where he hoped to reload, but was intercepted by Dunn and escorted over the hill to join the 60 or so prisoners held at gunpoint by the third highwayman.
Tumut’s Wynyard Times reported in the aftermath that the crowd spent the next several hours waiting in the November heat for the bushrangers’ target to arrive.
“About 10 minutes to three the mail from Gundagai came along with constable Roche of Yass on the box with the driver, and Mr. Rose, police magistrate of Gundagai, who was a passenger going to Yass, in the inside, followed on horseback by Sub-inspector O’Neill and Sergeant Parry of Gundagai,” the Times explained.
“Mr Rose waved his handkerchief as a signal for the police to draw up, and as they did so the three bushrangers, Hall, Gilbert, and Dunn, having first ascended the hill, turned sharply around and rushed on the police with a revolver in each hand.
“The ruffians urged their horses onward by the motion of their bodies, yelling and booting like so many madmen, and as they closed with the police, one of the most deadly encounters yet recorded took place.”
An engraving depicting the shooting of Sergeant Parry by bushranger John Gilbert at Black Springs. Photo/artist: Oswald Rose Campbell.
As the first shots were fired constable Roche hopped down from the coach and, armed with a pair of pistols, a revolver and a carbine, legged it off into the bush where he sat out the encounter.
Gilbert meanwhile took aim at Sergeant Parry while Hall and Dunn rode at Sub-inspector O’Neill.
“Nine or 10 shots were fired at the sub-inspector, who returned six or seven,” The Gundagai Independent wrote.
“With Gilbert and Sergeant Parry it was shot for shot.”
O’Neill’s horse was spooked by the gunfire and crashed into a tree, injuring the policeman who fought to hold his seat and fired back at the outlaws.
He blasted at the incoming Hall with his carbine before he raised the rifle over his head and “flung it at the leader of the gang, striking him on the head with such force as almost to fell him to the ground; then drawing his revolver he turned quickly and fired at Dunn”.
With just metres between them, the men traded shots simultaneously and a bullet clipped the shoulder of O’Neil’s coat before a second shot put a hole through his tunic.
Meanwhile Gilbert had engaged Parry, demanding his “surrender, and at the same time fired, the ball taking effect in the back of the head, but not disabling him from continuing the encounter,” recorded the Wynyard Times.
“Gilbert again commanded him to surrender, but he replied that he never would to a bushranger so long as he had any means of defence.
“The ruffian then fired the fatal shot, which entered the back at the left side, when Parry fell back on his horse, and died almost instantly.”
Now outnumbered three to one, O’Neill returned fire until the five shots of his last revolver were spent and he raised his hands in defeat.
Gilbert approached Parry’s body, turned him over and observed, “He’s got it in the cobra [head].”
While the young Canadian outlaw was said to have expressed some regret over the death of such a “game fellow”, he soon turned the murder to a boast, asking the captured Constable McLaughlin “How would you like a cove like me after you?”
In the weeks after Parry’s death, the Yass Courier reported the verdict of the coroner’s jury.
“The deceased Edmund Parry did die from the effects of a gunshot wound, at that time and in that place wickedly, maliciously, and feloniously inflicted upon him by one John Gilbert; and two other certain persons, named Benjamin Hall and John Dunn, were then and there unlawfully aiding and abetting the said John Gilbert in so feloniously destroying the life of the said Edmund Parry.”
