When Jimmy Governor, known as a hard worker who played a good game of cricket, married Ethel Page in 1898 he was challenging a code. For Ethel Page was a white woman and Jimmy Governor's skin was black. Two and a half years later, the cost of that challenge was nine murders and three judicial executions.
Jimmy and Joe Governor were the last proclaimed outlaws in New South Wales. With their friend Jack Underwood they killed five people at Breelong on 20 July 1900. In the following days they killed another three adults and a child and went on an armed rampage. They committed at least one robbery on most days of the rampage, laid false trails for their pursuers, and contrived close encounters from which they retired with guns blazing or simply vanished.
It took three months, a manhunt involving 2000 civilians and police, and a 3000km chase through rugged country on the Queensland border, to stop them.
Laurie Moore, a descendant of one of Jimmy Governor's captors, conducted extensive research, field trips, and spoke to descendants of the Governor family, to write this book. For the first time, and unshakably based on contemporary evidence, it tells the story of the events leading to the death of the nine people, and the chase of the two men. The book contains a comprehensive account of the chase, correcting many previous errors, and is illustrated with maps and diagrams. Also included are a large number of previously unpublished photographs of people and places involved in the story.
