THE LADY BUSHRANGER

I don't know how I ended up playing pool at the Rylstone Hotel but I did, and very badly. I hadn't played since about 1970 and I was terrible then as well. No one cared because I was graciously filling up the numbers if not the pockets, and I got my reward by noticing the name of the bar I was in - The Lady Bushranger.

That night back at the camp I was on the net and researching the story. The next morning I was in Kandos talking to Peggy Butler, a local historian. How I hadn't heard this story before is beyond me.

Lizzie Hickman, at almost 6 feet tall, had been the Australian women's rough rider champion, a circus performer who dodged thrown knives and a sharp shooter.  Unsurprisingly she was said to fight like a thrashing machine. Her third husband would concur because Lizzie whacked him with the leg of a chair when he was attacking her with murderous intent. He fell and died as his head hit the hard floor.

After the killing, Lizzie took to the Wollemi wilderness, to a cave on Nullo Mountain. Now I've been near there and it is as remote a place as you can find. It's the country where the Wollemi Pine was discovered about a decade ago after having been considered to be extinct for 150,000 million years. Here Lizzie lived on the borders of farms and towns, rustling cattle which she shared with family and friends. Judiciously she shared her spoils with the local Aboriginal tracker Black Jimmy and his ten kids. That's why he always led the police the wrong way in their searches.

It also meant she could come to town and shelter with family. It was like Neighbourhood Watch except everyone was on the lookout for cops. When Lizzie was eventually caught and tried in Mudgee for catttle duffing, she was found 'not guilty' by a jury who had been eating the finest cuts of the rustled meat for years. The people loved her. That she died a pauper after a horse riding accident just cotinues to prove there is no justice in the world. In this age she would make Chappele Corby look like, well, Schapelle Corby.

It all begs the question ... in another time and another place .. would Lizzie and I have had a chance .. this Wild Woman of the Wollemi ... this Nightmare on Nollo Mountain ... this bare back riding, gun toting, cave dwelling Banshee of the Bush? ... Would I have been man enough for her? ...  I like to think so ... MORE than enough. 

It could have been me and Lizzie ... Sure, there would have been problems. Any relationship goes through problems, especially when you are on the run from the Law, eating meat and living in a cave ...  and I'll admit Im not easy to live with. I really need my space and I'm a vegetarian.

But in my heart I believe we could have made it because at the base of every successful relationship is love and, looking over these misty Wollemi Mountains, that is exactly what I am feeling for Lizzie, the Lady Bushranger. 

Or perhaps I've been in the bush way too long already.

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