John Caesar is considered to be the first Australian bushranger.
26 Facts About John Caesar
1.
2.
John Caesar's sentence was transportation to the Colony of New South Wales for seven years.
3.
John Caesar escaped into the bush but was caught two months later.
4.
John Caesar made another escape in 1789, but subsequently returned to the colony after being attacked by Aboriginals.
5.
John Caesar was sent to work on Norfolk Island, where he fathered a daughter with English-born convict Anne Power.
6.
Governor John Caesar Hunter offered a lavish reward for his capture.
7.
The name John Caesar was common amongst slaves, and it is likely he was given the name during his enslavement in Virginia or South Carolina in the late 1770s.
8.
John Caesar's sentence was transportation to the penal colony of New South Wales for seven years, and he was sent to the hulk Ceres.
9.
John Caesar was sent to work at Garden Island, one of the harshest penal colonies in New South Wales.
10.
John Caesar became known as "Black Caesar" and gained a reputation as a conscientious and hard worker.
11.
John Caesar, being six feet tall and muscular, was constantly hungry and took to stealing food.
12.
John Caesar took to the bush a fortnight later, reportedly with rations, an iron pot, and a musket stolen from marine Abraham Hand.
13.
John Caesar was described by Collins after his first recapture as:.
14.
John Caesar was sent back to Garden Island to work in chains.
15.
John Caesar showed good behaviour and was eventually allowed to work with his chains removed.
16.
John Caesar sustained himself by stealing food from local Aboriginal people and robbing colonists' gardens.
17.
John Caesar returned to camp the following day and surrendered to the authorities.
18.
John Caesar attempted to clear his name by explaining that he had been wounded whilst trying to retake cattle that the Aboriginals had stolen from the colonists.
19.
The authorities were certain that John Caesar had fabricated the story to avoid a lashing.
20.
Anne was similarly tried at Maidstone a year after John Caesar, and had arrived in 1790 on the Lady Juliana.
21.
John Caesar left them both on Norfolk Island when he returned to Port Jackson on the Kitty in 1793.
22.
In late 1795, John Caesar was part of a convict work party at Botany Bay that was attacked by Pemulwuy's warriors.
23.
Notwithstanding the reward that had been offered for apprehending black John Caesar, he remained at large, and scarcely a morning arrived without a complaint being made to the magistrates of a loss of property supposed to have been occasioned by this man.
24.
John Caesar left Norfolk Island for Van Diemen's Land in 1814.
25.
John Caesar's death was illustrated by Percy Lindsay for Truth in 1934.
26.
John Caesar appears as a character in Thomas Keneally's 1987 novel The Playmaker, as well as in Timberlake Wertenbaker's 1988 stage adaptation Our Country's Good.