Free Our Sunshine: Popular Penguins by Robert Drewe Page A

Creek), such unpleasant premonitions came to him that he’d ordered his men straight back to barracks.
    So when a sighting is reported at the Sherritts’ hut at Sebastopol, Chief Commissioner Standish decides to stop this rot and – as soon as he’s fulfilled his social obligations at the Melbourne Cup – lead the troops himself. Maybe it was the association with a famous British victory.
His own Charge of Sebastopol!
To bolster his twenty police he even deputises thirty civilians, mostly wealthy squatters. But not all.
    And so reports travel the other way as well, to the man in the hammock. Of the police and vigilantes riding through the night to the shack at Sebastopol. Of Chief Commissioner Standish watching from the brow of the hill, like the noblest general, while Nicolson leads the midnight charge recklessly down the slope, rampaging through the Sherritts’ rocky home paddock and through their marshy creek and up to their hut. Of Nicolson throwing himself off his horse and bursting through the door, bumping Constable Bracken, whose gun went off. Of all the other troopers and steamed-up amateurs, excited by the gunshot, crowding inside too, fifty armed panickers cramming into this twenty-by-twenty-foot hut, cursing and waving their rifles and trying to strike matches in the dark and overturning the Sherritts’ furniture and pulling blankets off their beds looking for outlaws.
    And of there being no one there, not a dog to bark, not even a Sherritt. (The gang, of course, hadn’t been there for six or seven days.)
    Of the police, frustrated but still fired up, then unsuccessfully raiding the Byrnes’ house and being sent packing by Joe’s indignant mother.
    Of the Sherritts next morning marching up to the by now exhausted police party, the old man in high indignation, complaining of the attack on the home of such a loyal Queen’s man.
    And of Aaron, in quite a different mood (appearing, according to observers, urbane and confident and affecting the rounded tones of the rural aristocracy), approaching the Chief Commissioner for a chat.

I can’t hear myself think! Someone rouse Orlando and tell him the lion wants feeding. And stop his monkey doing that – there’s ladies and children present!
    –
Did you hear what Dan here said? Monkey reminds him of Sir Redmond Barry when he goes at it hammer and tongs like that.
    Hello, hello, listen up just a minute while I read out this cutting from the
Police Gazette
. This is a list of the field equipment issued to each trooper engaged in what the government likes to call the Hunt (exclusive of uniform and weaponry of course):
    Two rugs, a rolled blanket, a spare undershirt and drawers, two pairs of socks, a valise, two shirt collars, a comforter, one cloth and one waterproof topcoat, leggings, a hammock, a sheet of waterproof, a tent 6 feet by 8 feet, books, a lantern, a bush knife, cutlery, cup and dishes, spare trousers, spurs and an air pillow.
    Grog and food also not included. Or the strychnine, arsenic and bribe money. Or what I hear’s the newest anti-Kelly thrill: the cannons.
    But, see, they’re all as snug as bugs in rugs. Just the ticket for comfy riding in the country on double pay, for seducing country girls, for moving up and down the railway line at a gentlemanly distance from the enemy. That way you don’t get to be another Kennedy.
    Reckon they could all do with a bullet in their air pillows.
    – Just top it up, thanks, Mrs Jones. Same again for everyone! No, I won’t join in the chorus – a little hoarse – you go ahead though
.
    No more sherry for Judge Barry, he’s inflamed enough already.
    S EEMS LIKE peanuts now, the first reward for Dan and me. Eight hundred pounds. The Government recalling Parliament especially to pass something called the Outlawry Act. Placing the Gang beyond the normal protection of the law. (Any member of the Gang could be shot by anyone at any time; anyone assisting us faced gaol and they’d throw away the key.) The