General News
2 January, 2025
Rocky outcrops the ideal lookout for villain of many names
By KEN ARNOLD HE WAS a thief by many names when transported to Australia in 1838. The 14-year-old Frank McCallum would become part of the enduring bushranger folklore and leave his part on central Victoria to this day. To Australians, Francis...
By KEN ARNOLD
HE WAS a thief by many names when transported to Australia in 1838.
The 14-year-old Frank McCallum would become part of the enduring bushranger folklore and leave his part on central Victoria to this day.
To Australians, Francis McNeiss McNiel McCallum, born 1822, Inverness, Scotland, became known as Captain Melville.
Young Frank was recorded or was known as Edward Melville / Mulvell, Thomas Smith and Frank McCallum, had little schooling before he turned to thieving, he appearing in the Perth Court of Justiciary on October 3, 1836, and copped seven years’ transportation for housebreaking.
Incarcerated in Scotland until the Minerva sailed to Van Dieman’s Land, now Tasmania, it docking on 29 September 1838 at which time McCallum was taken to Port Arthur and put in the Point Puer institution for juvenile convicts where inmates were expected to learn a trade.
In early 1840 McCallum was assigned to a timber yard in Hobart Town but it was not before he and a boy named Staunton absconded.
They were soon apprehended McCallum being sent back to Port Arthur to serve five years, along with copping 36 lashes.
McCallum continued to appear before the beak, a police magistrate, his sentence continually being extended until it was finally extended to life for burglary but somehow he was given 12 months probation, from which he absconded and lived with the Aboriginals for a year.
Eventually he was recaptured and sentenced to nine months’ hard labour in chains, an experience repeated in January and August 1850 but he soon made good his escape to Port Phillip, now Victoria
McCallum, posing as Captain Francis Melville, a gentleman, managed to reach Victoria around October 1851 but by December he had returned to his ‘trade’ by becoming a bushranger.
It was not long before he had formed a gang which was reported at times to number eight, he operating in the Black Forest - Mount Macedon area.
During 1852 a shepherd on an outstation of the Norwood station at Wareek, near Maryborough had acquainted Melville with this fact that Alfred Joyce, a pastoralist and owner of the homestead was alone. Melville approached Joyce enquiring of stray horses but when close enough to Joyce he produced a double-barrelled gun.
As the police were closing in on Melville he stole Joyce’s best riding hack, goods, his best riding clothes and even his gold watch.
Melville warned Joyce not to go for the police that day. A month or two later Joyce heard that his horse had been left in a paddock at Ballan, by a stranger, thus he got his jaded hack back.
It was also during 1852 that Melville was watching for and holding up travellers in central Victoria.
Folklore has it that Melville used the rocky granite outcrop in the Kooyoora range as a hide out. He used what is now known as Melville Caves as a lookout and shelter. It is thought that he would be able to see the dust from the hooves of the troopers horses when coming across the plains, however this would be very doubtful considering most of the surrounding area had not been cleared of trees as there was basically no settlement in the area however it is indeed a great view across the area.
It is also recorded that Melville had a cave near Mount Arapiles it being known that during shearing season at Wonwondah that he ordered and paid in lordly fashion for having his lost horse found and breakfast prepared.
Around the same time Charles Carter and his sons encountered Melville and two companions on the Fiery Creek Plains, however the bushrangers soon found they were no match for the Carters’ arsenals so Melville moved on holding up teamsters at Rokewood prior to following a digger to the Maryvale station.
Captain Melville, now also using the alias William Smith, teamed up with William Roberts they riding around the Marida Yallock, Woady Yallock and
Bruce’s Creek area causing trouble before bailing up the staff and workers at Aitcheson’s sheep station where they tied them up, demanded food from the women, ransacked the house before taking two of the finest horses.
The bushrangers next robbed two bush workers at Fryansford. The two men checked into Christy’s Inn on Christmas eve 1852 where they dined before visiting a brothel in Corio Street, Geelong. Owing to the festive season somebody was a little too careless with information hence the troopers visited the brothel and arrested Roberts.
Meanwhile Melville smashed out through a window, knocked down a policeman before trying to pull Henry Guy from his fine horse however Guy held tight to the fugitive thus Melville was arrested, the two men being placed in a cell at South Geelong by Captain Foster Fyans.
Judge Redmond Barry heard the three cases of robbery at the Geelong Circuit Court on Febru- ary 3, 1853. Barry sentenced both men to 12, 10 and 10 years on each count.
As a result Melville was imprisoned on the prison hulk President.
Even though Melville, in chains, was working on the roads of Victoria by the time of the Melbourne Private Escort Robbery of 20 July 1853, Captain Melville’s name soon became associated with it as one of the Escort robbers used George Melville as his alias.
Although Melville continued to get into trouble John Price allowed him to work in a quarry at Point Gellibrand.
Around October 1856 Melville was transfered to the prison ship Success in Port Phillip Bay. He was allowed shore leave for three days per week as he was translating the Bible into the Aboriginal language however he was actually planning, with a former ship’s captain, Billy Stevens, to seize a cutter and sail to Gippsland with accomplices. They managed to capture the tow boat, before taking Constable Owen Owens as a hostage, then started to row it down Hobson’s Bay with Melville yelling ‘Goodbye at last to Victoria’.
As they were being chased Stevens smashed Owen’s skull in before leaping into the sea where he drowned. When captured Melville is credited with saying: ‘I would sooner die than suffer what I have been subjected to in these hulks in the past four years’.
Melville was sentenced to death but this was later overturned which resulted in Melville being domiciled in the Melbourne Gaol.
During late July 1857 Melville attacked the governor of the gaol with a sharpened spoon, causing a deep cut behind the ear of Wintle.
It is thought that Melville pretended that he was mad so he could be moved to an asylum but in August 1857 a warder found him strangled, by a red-spotted blue scarf, so had ended the life of what some people described as a cultured gentleman of good address and scholarship turned highwayman, somewhat considerate to those whom he robbed, he being courteous and charming to women, he being similar to Robin Hood, of Nottingham Forest, however he was more than likely of unbalanced character, a pistol packing swaggerer who had been totally destroyed by the penal system.
Arriving at Melville Caves, in the Kooyoora ranges, On your right you will see Barry’s rock, huge impressive boulder which has a hollow cavern, and then the day picnic area. If you are fit you can then walk up the path to the caves. On your way, if you look to the south, you will see Seal rock. One can scramble in between the granite boulders on into the caves. A little further up the hill you find the stables. One returning to the Logan-Kingower road turn right and travel a few hundred meters - you might see some modern local art works.