Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this post names Aboriginal people who have died, and includes historical photographs of them. It also describes murders and an execution.
If you drive north-west from Sydney through the Central West, past Mudgee and out towards the Castlereagh, you come into Gilgandra Shire – wheat country, river flats, and quiet roads. Just outside town, in the locality of Breelong, something happened on the night of 20 July 1900 that still sits heavy in local memory: the killings at the Mawbey family's place, the arrest and court hearings that followed in Gilgandra, and the long manhunt that carried Jimmy Governor and his brother Joe right across New South Wales.
I came at this post from two directions: from the Darlinghurst end, where Jimmy was tried and hanged, and from the Castlereagh end, where Gilgandra and Breelong still mark the ground. The distance between those places is more than kilometres. It is the distance between a Sydney sandstone gaol and a fencing camp on a creek, between Federation fireworks and a family murdered in their own house.
This post is the full story as far as the reliable sources will take us – Jimmy Governor's early life on the Talbragar, the family's years around Wollar and Gulgong, his marriage to Ethel Page, the fencing contract at Breelong near Gilgandra, the murders, the Gilgandra court proceedings, the chase, Joe's death by gunshot north of Singleton, Jimmy's trial and hanging at Darlinghurst, and what became of Ethel and the children. Where the sources disagree, I've said so. Where I couldn't verify a figure, I've left it out.
Birth on the Talbragar – family and country
According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Jimmy Governor was born in 1875 on the Talbragar River in New South Wales. Wikipedia, drawing on Laurie Moore and Stephan Williams's book The True Story of Jimmy Governor, places that birth near the old gold-rush settlement of Denison Town. He was one of eight children of Sam (later known as Thomas or Tommy) Governor – also called Grosvenor – a bullock-driver of Aboriginal descent originally from the Namoi River country, and Annie Fitzgerald, from the Mendooran district. The ADB records that Annie's mother was of the Wanarruwa (Wonnarua) people.
Modern accounts often describe Jimmy and Joe as men of Wiradjuri and Wonnarua country. The Talbragar and Denison Town district sits in country long associated with the Wiradjuri, and the AIATSIS catalogue for Frank Clune's book on the Governors lists Wiradjuri, Wonnarua and Gamilaraay among the language groups connected with the story. The ADB itself is more cautious on labels and sticks to the family details above. Either way, Jimmy grew up moving with bush work, between river camps, stations and Aboriginal reserves, in a colony that was already fencing Aboriginal people out of their own country.
The ADB says Jimmy was short, good-looking, with reddish hair. He went to a mission school and to school at Gulgong; Moore and Williams add Denison Town and Wollar, and say he may also have been at Coonabarabran and Allynbrook on the Paterson. A former Wollar schoolmate later recalled that Jimmy and his younger brothers Joe and Jackie "could read and write tolerably well". Schooling was patchy because the family moved whenever Tommy found bush work, and New South Wales education policy in those years made it easy for white parents' complaints to keep Aboriginal children out of local schools.
Wollar, Gulgong, and work
The family's path shows how hard it was for Aboriginal people to stay put and make a living on their own terms. After years of station work along the Paterson and a spell on the St Clair reserve north of Singleton, Tommy Governor moved the family west again to the Gulgong district and a camp on the Aboriginal reserve in the police paddock across the creek from Wollar. Jimmy worked around Wollar, then – from 15 July 1896 to 18 December 1897 – as a police tracker at Cassilis with the New South Wales Mounted Police. The ADB says he left and went back to Wollar, then cut wood at Gulgong and worked wool-rolling at Digilbar.
At his trial he would say something that still cuts through: he had always worked and paid for what he got, and he reckoned he was "as good as a white man". That pride, and the racism he met every day, are part of why Breelong exploded later. They do not excuse what he did.
Marriage to Ethel Page, Gulgong, 1898
On 10 December 1898, at the Church of England rectory in Gulgong, Jimmy married Ethel Mary Jane Page, a sixteen-year-old New South Wales-born woman of English heritage. The ADB gives that date and place. Moore and Williams describe how they had met while Jimmy was cutting wood and Ethel was working at a bakery in Gulgong; Ethel was already pregnant, and her mother pressed for the marriage. Interracial marriage of this kind was rare and heavily judged. Ethel later told a reporter she was "very fond of Jimmy".
Their son Sidney (Sidney Golding Louis in later records) was born in early April 1899. Ethel's father disapproved, and the young couple faced cold looks in Gulgong. By the end of 1899 Jimmy was looking for work further out. The marriage that seemed, to him, proof he could live as an equal in colonial society became, to many white neighbours, a scandal to be sneered at – and that sneering followed them to Breelong.
Gilgandra, horse-breaking, and John Mawbey
Jimmy later said he had met John Thomas Mawbey of Breelong while breaking horses in the Gilgandra district. Mawbey offered him a fencing contract. The ADB dates the contract from April 1900; Moore and Williams say the work was to start in January and that Jimmy and Ethel arrived that month. Either way, early 1900 found them on Mawbey's place at Breelong, near Gilgandra, splitting and erecting posts (the ADB gives 10s. and 12s. a hundred for splitting and erecting).
How far is Breelong from Gilgandra? Sources give different bearings. Moore and Williams, followed by Wikipedia's Jimmy Governor article, place Mawbey's "Breelong West" (or "Old Breelong") on Wallumburrawang Creek near its junction with the Castlereagh River, about ten miles (16 km) south-east of Gilgandra. The modern Wikipedia page for the rural locality of Breelong lists it about 43 km (27 miles) north-east of the town. Both figures can be true of different reference points – the old coaching-inn / homestead site versus the wider parish boundary – so I am leaving both on the record rather than picking one.
By 1900 Mawbey's selection had grown (Moore and Williams say to about 1,500 acres). The family had moved into a newer house; the old Breelong Inn nearby still stood, and on the night of the murders the Mawbey men were sleeping there. John and Sarah Mawbey had a large family. Sarah's younger sister, Elsie Clarke (about eighteen), lived with them. A young schoolteacher – Helen Josephine Kerz in the ADB; Ellen, Helen or Helena in the newspapers and on later plaques – boarded at the house and taught at the provisional school known as West Breelong.
Jimmy camped up the creek with Ethel. The ADB says he got on well at first with Mawbey, drew rations from him, and played cricket with the small Mawbey boys. Brother Joe arrived, and so did Jacky Underwood (also known as Charlie Brown), later Jacky Porter and Jimmy's nephew Peter Governor. They all drew on Jimmy's rations. Tension built: Ethel did housework for the Mawbeys and was unhappy; there were disputes over rejected fence posts and overcharging for stores; and Jimmy heard that Mrs Mawbey and Miss Kerz had been taunting Ethel for marrying an Aboriginal man. As the winter deepened, the talk around the campfire turned – in Jimmy's later words – to bushranging.
The Breelong murders, 20 July 1900
On the night of Friday 20 July 1900, Jimmy and Underwood went to the Mawbey house. The women and children were there; the men were at the inn. What follows is drawn from the ADB and from Jimmy's own later account as reported at trial and in the press.
Moore and Williams record that the party first called at the inn and spoke with John Mawbey about rations; that exchange ended without violence. Jimmy then said he was going to see Mrs Mawbey about the words she had been saying. At the new house, he alleged, the women laughed at him, and Helen Kerz said words to the effect of: "Pooh, you black rubbish, you want shooting for marrying a white woman" (reported in the Singleton Argus and quoted by the ADB). He said he struck out, lost control, and with nulla-nullas (boondi) and a tomahawk he and Underwood attacked.
Those killed at Breelong, named carefully from contemporary reporting summarised by Wikipedia and from the ADB, were:
- Sarah Mawbey (often called Mrs Mawbey; the ADB names her "Grace", which may confuse her with her daughter – period portraits and later memorials call the mother Sarah), who was mortally wounded that night and died on 24 July;
- Helen / Ellen / Helena Josephine Kerz, the schoolteacher, killed that night;
- Grace Mawbey, about 16, who died of her wounds on 22 July;
- Percival ("Percy") Mawbey, about 14, killed that night;
- Hilda Mawbey, about 11, killed that night.
Elsie Clarke was seriously injured and survived, though later accounts say she was left permanently deaf. Young Bert Mawbey and cousin George Mawbey survived – George hid under a bed, and Bert got away to warn his father at the inn. John Mawbey and the other men arrived within minutes, but the attackers were gone.
Five people dead (counting those who died of their wounds in the following days), one young woman terribly hurt, and a farmhouse full of children – that is Breelong. Nothing in Jimmy's grievances, real as the racism was, makes that night anything but a massacre of a family.
Flight, Underwood, and Gilgandra Police Court
Jimmy, Joe, Underwood and others fled. Ethel, with the baby, was told to make for Dubbo; she was picked up by armed men on the road and held. An inquest at the Mawbey homestead on 23–24 July returned a verdict of wilful murder against Jimmy, Joe, Underwood, Porter and Ethel. Ethel and Porter were locked up at Gilgandra police station. Underwood was captured near Leadville a few days later (the ADB says he was "quickly caught") and, after a spell in Mudgee gaol, was brought to Gilgandra because that was where the principal witnesses lived.
On 22 August 1900, Jacky Underwood appeared before the Gilgandra Police Court charged with the Breelong murders. The courtroom was crowded; the Heritage NSW notes for the Breelong Historical Site record that a large crowd watched his arrival. He was committed for trial. Tried at Dubbo on 2 October 1900 for Percy's murder, he was found guilty – the jury saying they could not decide who struck the fatal blows – and sentenced to death. He was hanged at Dubbo Gaol on 14 January 1901, four days before Jimmy (ADB).
Charges against Ethel were dropped so she could give evidence at Underwood's trial. She had been held at Gilgandra; that local lock-up is part of how Gilgandra sits in the middle of this story, not just as the nearest town to Breelong but as the place where the law first took formal hold of Underwood and of Ethel.
The manhunt – Breelong to Wollar to Singleton
Jimmy and Joe called themselves bushrangers and went on what the ADB calls a fourteen-week, roughly 2,000-mile (about 3,200 km) rampage across north-central New South Wales. Seeking people they believed had wronged them, they killed:
- Alexander McKay, near Ulan, 23 July 1900;
- Elizabeth O'Brien and her baby son, at Poggie (Poggy) near Merriwa, 24 July;
- Keiran (Kieran) Fitzpatrick, near Wollar, 26 July.
They robbed as far north as Narrabri and through the Quirindi country, then into the headwaters of the Manning and Hastings. Queensland Aboriginal trackers, bloodhounds, police and civilians hunted them. The brothers left derisive notes and advertised their whereabouts. The government reward rose to £1,000 each – the ADB dates that offer to 8 October; Wikipedia, citing the Gazette, puts the increase at 25 September. They were proclaimed outlaws on 23 October 1900, among the last people so declared in New South Wales.
One more thing about the manhunt that is easy to miss from Sydney: it emptied the bush. Contemporary papers described farms deserted, women and children crowded into Merriwa, Cassilis, Coolah and Wollar, stores sold out of rifles, and Aboriginal people at Wollar locked in a hall at night under police watch. Meg Foster's later historical work has shown how fear of a wider Aboriginal rising sat alongside the Federation moment. That atmosphere – panic as much as pursuit – is part of why Gilgandra and Breelong still talk about July 1900.
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On 13 October Jimmy was shot in the mouth by Herbert Byers, a hunter, on the Forbes River country. Weakened – he later said he lived for days on honey and water – he was captured by settlers at Bobin, near Wingham, on 27 October 1900. Four days later, on 31 October, Joe was shot dead by John Wilkinson north of Singleton – not hanged, not taken alive. That matters for anyone writing about Darlinghurst: Jimmy went to the gallows there; Joe never did.
Jimmy was taken by steamer to Sydney and lodged in Darlinghurst Gaol. His prison photograph and description book entry are dated early November 1900.
Trial at Darlinghurst, and the hanging
Jimmy stood trial at the Central Criminal Court, Darlinghurst, on 22–23 November 1900, before Justice Owen, for the murder of Helen Kerz. The Sydney Morning Herald reported the opening "at the old court, Darlinghurst", as the neighbouring belfry struck ten. His barrister, Francis Stewart Boyce, argued that because Jimmy had been outlawed he was already attainted and could not be tried – the old pleas of autrefois acquit and autrefois attaint. The judge rejected that, holding that outlawry was meant to bring a man in for trial, not to replace the trial. After evidence from John Mawbey, young George and Albert Mawbey, Ethel and others, and after Jimmy read a statement to the court, the jury took about ten minutes to find him guilty. He was sentenced to death.
An appeal failed. The ADB says he spent his last days reading the Bible, singing, and blaming his wife. He was hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on the morning of 18 January 1901 – days after Federation, and four days after Underwood's hanging at Dubbo. The hangman was Robert "Nosey Bob" Howard. Jimmy was about twenty-five or twenty-six. The ADB says he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Anglican section of Rookwood Cemetery.
I've written more about the gaol and the court in my post on Darlinghurst Gaol & Darlinghurst Court, and about the hangings there in Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol. Jimmy's trial and hanging are part of that story; his brother Joe, again, was shot in the bush north of Singleton and was never hanged at Darlinghurst or anywhere else.
For Sydneysiders, the end of the story is local. The Central Criminal Court at Darlinghurst, the tunnel from the gaol, the morning of 18 January 1901 – those are Forbes Street and Taylor Square places. Jimmy's body went to Rookwood. Joe's body never came to Sydney. If you walk the old gaol walls at the National Art School today, you are walking past the place where one brother died by the rope and where the other brother's outlawry had already been sealed by a bullet in the Singleton hills.
Aftermath – Ethel and the children
Jimmy was survived by Ethel and their son Sidney. Ethel was pregnant at the time of the hanging; a daughter, Thelma Violet, was born in April 1901. The ADB says Ethel married Francis Joseph Brown on 23 November (Wikipedia, following Moore and Williams, places that second marriage in November 1901) and had more children with him – the ADB says nine more; other summaries describe a large Brown family. She died in Sydney in 1945: the ADB gives 31 December 1945; Wikipedia gives October 1945. I am recording both rather than forcing a choice.
The racist press of 1901 had plenty to say about Ethel's second marriage. Reading those columns now is a reminder of the world Jimmy and Ethel were trying, and failing, to live in. For the Mawbey survivors – John Mawbey, the remaining children, Elsie Clarke – there was no tidy ending either. Mawbey closed the Breelong Inn and left the district; the little post office there shut in 1901 when he moved away.
Short timeline
- c.1875 – Born on the Talbragar River (near Denison Town).
- 15 Jul 1896 – 18 Dec 1897 – Police tracker at Cassilis.
- 10 Dec 1898 – Marries Ethel Page at Gulgong.
- Early 1900 – Fencing for John Mawbey at Breelong, near Gilgandra (ADB: from April; Moore & Williams: from January).
- 20 Jul 1900 – Breelong murders.
- 23–26 Jul 1900 – Further killings near Ulan, Merriwa and Wollar.
- 22 Aug 1900 – Underwood committed at Gilgandra Police Court.
- 2 Oct 1900 – Underwood sentenced to death at Dubbo.
- 13 Oct 1900 – Jimmy shot in the mouth.
- 23 Oct 1900 – Brothers proclaimed outlaws.
- 27 Oct 1900 – Jimmy captured near Wingham (Bobin).
- 31 Oct 1900 – Joe shot dead north of Singleton (not hanged).
- 22–23 Nov 1900 – Jimmy tried at Darlinghurst; sentenced to death.
- 14 Jan 1901 – Underwood hanged at Dubbo.
- 18 Jan 1901 – Jimmy hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol.
Cultural memory – novel and film
Thomas Keneally's novel The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972) is fiction based on Jimmy Governor's life, written in the context of Aboriginal dispossession and white racism. Fred Schepisi's 1978 film of the same name is an adaptation of the novel. Both are powerful; neither is a documentary. Names, scenes and motives are reshaped for the story. If you read the book or watch the film after this post, treat them as art that grew out of the case, not as a substitute for the ADB, the court reports, or the local record at Gilgandra and Breelong.
Les Murray also wrote a poem, "The Ballad of Jimmy Governor". Frank Clune's earlier book Jimmy Governor (1959) was one of the first long popular accounts. More recently, the podcast and book The Last Outlaws (Impact Studios / UTS, made with Governor-family descendants) have retold the story with First Nations voices at the centre, and Meg Foster's work has put Wollar's Aboriginal community back into the frame.
Gilgandra and Breelong today
Breelong is still a rural locality in Gilgandra Shire. On the Castlereagh Highway at a roadside rest area known as Happy Valley, the Gilgandra Rotary Club put up the Breelong Historical Monument on the club's 50th anniversary. Monument Australia and the NSW State Heritage Inventory describe a small concrete hexagonal obelisk with a brass direction plaque pointing to sites linked with the Mawbey murders and the hunt, and a memorial plaque placed by a Mawbey family reunion on 24 April 2000 in memory of Sarah, Grace, Hilda and Percy Mawbey and Helena Kerz.
Nearby, the old Breelong Inn site – once a Cobb & Co changing station on the Mendooran–Gilgandra run, licensed for years by John Mawbey – is separately listed on the local heritage inventory. The inn was a slab building with a shingle roof; Mawbey closed it after the tragedy.
Gilgandra itself remembers the story as part of its local history: the Police Court commitment of Underwood, Ethel's detention at the police station, the inquest witnesses who came into town. If you are out that way, the highway rest area and the heritage listings are the verified public markers I could confirm. Stand there with the wheat paddocks around you, and it is not hard to feel how close Breelong still is to Gilgandra – whether you measure it as ten miles south-east to the old homestead country, or as the wider locality on the map.
I have not tried to turn Jimmy into a hero or to soften what happened to the Mawbey household. The racism he faced was real. The murders were real. Holding both truths at once is the only honest way I know to write this for a Sydney local-history blog that also cares about country towns like Gilgandra.
This is a hard story. It has Aboriginal people living under insult and dispossession; it has a young interracial marriage that the colony would not accept; and it has the murder of women and children at Breelong and more deaths on the road. Jimmy Governor was hanged at Darlinghurst. Joe Governor was shot in the bush. The Mawbey family and Miss Kerz never came home. Gilgandra and Breelong still hold all of that in the same landscape.
Sources
- G. P. Walsh, "Governor, Jimmy (1875–1901)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/governor-jimmy-6439
- ADB life summary – https://adb.anu.edu.au/lifesummary/governor-jimmy-6439
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Governor, Jimmy" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/governor_jimmy
- State Library of NSW, "The Governor Brothers" – https://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/discover_collections/people_places/caergwrle/bushrangers/governor/index.html
- State Library of NSW, "Jimmy Governor's trial" – https://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/discover_collections/people_places/caergwrle/bushrangers/governor/capture.html
- Wikipedia, "Jimmy Governor" (cross-check; cites Moore & Williams and contemporary press) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Governor
- Wikipedia, "Breelong, New South Wales" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breelong,_New_South_Wales
- Laurie Moore and Stephan Williams, The True Story of Jimmy Governor (Allen & Unwin, 2001) – cited via ADB bibliography and Wikipedia
- NSW State Heritage Inventory, Breelong Historical Site (ID 1590040) – https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=1590040
- NSW State Heritage Inventory, Breelong Inn Site (ID 1590065) – https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=1590065
- Monument Australia, "Breelong Historical Monument" – https://www.monumentaustralia.org/themes/culture/crime/display/95491-breelong-historical-monument
- Sydney Morning Herald, "The Breelong Tragedy: Trial of the Aboriginal Jimmy Governor", 23 November 1900 (Trove) – cited in ADB and in my Darlinghurst Gaol post
- Singleton Argus, trial report, 24 November 1900 – quoted in ADB
- AIATSIS catalogue entry for Frank Clune, Jimmy Governor (language groups) – https://aiatsis.gov.au/collections/item/r000000112378
- Meg Foster, "The Forgotten War of 1900: Jimmy Governor and the Aboriginal People of Wollar", Australian Historical Studies 50:3 (2019)
- The Last Outlaws (Impact Studios / UTS) – https://thelastoutlaws.com.au/
- Wikimedia Commons, Category:Jimmy Governor – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jimmy_Governor
- My earlier posts: Darlinghurst Gaol & Darlinghurst Court; Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol