Dan Morgan sticking up Round Hill Station in 1864. Photo: National Library of Australia.
On the southern roads of the colony of NSW in the mid 1860s there was no greater threat than the infamous bushranger known as Dan Morgan.
The mercurial highwayman waylaid travellers, stuck-up mail coaches and raided stations across the Riverina and Northern Victoria with impunity.
But in the winter of 1864, his crime spree took a murderous turn that put an enormous price on his head and all but ensured his own bloody demise less than a year later.
Described as a tall bearded loner and a skilled bushman, Morgan spoke with a slow colonial drawl and was known by numerous aliases through his short life.
As a young man he tried his luck on the gold fields and worked occasionally as a stockman before horse theft and armed robbery earned him six years on the Sydney chain gangs.
Granted a ticket-of-leave for Yackandandah in 1860, Morgan soon drifted back into crime and by 1863, ‘Beardy’ was a well known and feared bushranger in the Riverina.
On the afternoon of 19 June 1864, Morgan rode alone into Round Hill Station (Culcairn) and with pistols in hand, formally introduced himself to the manager’s wife and asked “where the grog was”.
An account from the Border Mail records that Morgan was presented with six bottles of gin before he gathered the station staff, took a drink and a meal and “chatted sociably, with a cocked revolver on either hand, and four more ostentatiously displayed in his belt”.
Heading outside after his meal, Morgan ushered the men to a bench near the cattle shed and compelled them to drink with him until they polished off four of the bottles.
Packing a fifth bottle of gin into his saddlebags, the bushranger was mounting his horse, when a gunshot rang out across the courtyard.
Accounts of what came next differ (perhaps clouded by all the gin!) but it seems that Morgan accidentally discharged his own revolver and assumed that he was being shot at.
In the chaotic moments that followed, the confused bushranger opened fire on the group of men.
“The ruffian coolly turned round in his saddle, took deliberate aim at Mr Watson’s head, and fired,” the Border Mail recounted.
“Seeing the deadly aim, Mr Watson involuntarily put up his hand, through which the ball passed, turning it probably aside, as it only touched his scalp.”
As Morgan fired left and right from his revolvers a boy named Heriot was shot through the shin. With Mrs Watson screaming and station hands running for cover, Morgan approached the wounded boy and put a pistol to his head.
“For God’s sake, Morgan, don’t kill anyone!” Watson cried and “with the inconsistency of drunkenness” the erratic bushranger became suddenly concerned for his young victim, cutting the boot from his wounded leg and carrying him to the house.
Morgan’s second murder occurred shortly after leaving Round Hill Station. Photo: Illustrated Sydney News, 1864.
Two of Morgan’s gang now joined him in the courtyard and, as rage turned to regret, a station hand named John McLean asked if he could ride to fetch a doctor.
Morgan agreed but later changed his mind and feared that he would tip off the troopers.
“He followed him along the road, overtook him five or six miles from the station, and, without ‘yea’ or ‘ nay,’ coming close behind him, fired at him,” explained the Border Mail.
“The ball entered the unfortunate man’s back above the hip and came out close to the navel, and he of course fell mortally wounded.”
Morgan returned to Round Hill with the gut-shot stockman and soon resumed drinking with his mates and “carousing until two o’clock the next morning”.
In the hours after the violence at Round Hill, Morgan doubled down on the murder when he encountered a pair of troopers on the road to Tumbarumba.
Sergeant David Maginnity was shot dead in cold blood and, when McLean also died of his injuries days after the Round Hill hold-up, the long bearded outlaw joined Ben Hall at the top of the colony’s most wanted list.
The reward for his capture was increased to the princely sum of £1000 and less than a year later, on 9 April 1865, Dan Morgan was gunned down at Peechelba Station near Wangaratta.
