Case File 06: The Missing Colt
Captain Moonlite and the siege of Wantabadgery, 1879.
Case File 06, Volume 2: the real file
This page is for readers of Outback Case Files, Volume 2: Bushrangers and Gold. It describes real crimes of the bushranging years, factually and without gore. If you have come here from a puzzle, finish your accusation first: this page gives the game away.
Campfire Quests acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the lands on which these stories took place. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page may contain the names, images and stories of people who have died.
Captain Moonlite and the siege of Wantabadgery, New South Wales, 1879 (Andrew George Scott)
In the book this case appears as “The Missing Colt”. The names of people and most places were changed to make the puzzle work. Below is what really happened.
Andrew George Scott, "Captain Moonlite", led five companions to Wantabadgery station near Gundagai on 15 November 1879 after being refused food and work, held about thirty people for two days, and on 17 November fought police at Edmund McGlede's farmhouse. Constable Edward Webb-Bowen was shot in the neck and died on 23 November; James Nesbitt was killed and Augustus Wernicke, 15, mortally wounded. Scott was disarmed by McGlede; Thomas Rogan was found under a bed.
Scott and Rogan were convicted of Webb-Bowen's murder and hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on 20 January 1880; Thomas Williams and Graham Bennett had their death sentences commuted. The fatal bullet came from a Colt revolver that was never found, and Scott maintained he had carried only a rifle. Webb-Bowen is on the New South Wales police honour roll. Scott was reburied beside Nesbitt at Gundagai in 1995.
How it was really cracked
The real leader was Andrew George Scott, "Captain Moonlite", a former lay preacher convicted of the Mount Egerton bank robbery in 1872. With James Nesbitt, Thomas Rogan, Thomas Williams, Graham Bennett and fifteen-year-old Augustus Wernicke he held Wantabadgery station from Saturday 15 November 1879. In the fight at McGlede's farmhouse on Monday 17 November, Constable Edward Webb-Bowen was shot in the neck and died on 23 November; Nesbitt was killed and Wernicke mortally wounded; the farmer, Edmund McGlede, disarmed Scott; Rogan was found under a bed next morning.
Scott denied firing the fatal shot; witnesses had him with a rifle, and the Colt revolver that fired the bullet was never recovered. Scott and Rogan were hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on 20 January 1880; Williams and Bennett were reprieved on the jury's recommendation. Scott's letters from the condemned cell asked to be buried beside Nesbitt; his remains were moved from Rookwood to Gundagai, beside Nesbitt's grave, in 1995.
Read more
These are public sources we used. They open in a new tab and carry more detail than this page, including the places where the old records disagree with each other.
A word about respect
These were real people, and in most of these districts their descendants are still here: police families, bush families, and the Aboriginal communities whose trackers did so much of the finding. We have kept to the public record and left out the gore on purpose. If you share this page, please share it the way you would want your own family talked about.
Banner photo: Country near Wantabadgery, by Bidgee (CC BY-SA 3.0 au), via Wikimedia Commons.