Manning Valley Historical Society

Gunwoman of the Manning

 From: Smiths Weekly, February 18, 1928 .

 When Lambert Thring (No. 11652, Elizabeth , seven years, forgery) arrived in Sydney Cove during the latter days of 1838, the partiality shown him by certain high-placed officials of the system caused much bitter comment among those who accompanied him on the voyage.

 At Sydney , instead of being marched publicly through the streets in his chains, he was met by a corporal, who conducted him to a dog-cart waiting in a side-street.  In this pretentious conveyance he was taken, not to the convict barracks, but to the office of Mr E Deas Thompson, the Colonial Secretary.

 The man was provided with employment in one of the Government offices, and given a comfortable hut in which to live.

 A newspaper comment at the time hinted that Thring’s crime in England had been the forging of banknotes, and that certain rich men had contrived his transportation without the formality of a trial, more to be rid of him than as a punishment for his crime.

 Whatever the truth of the matter may have been, Thring was better off than many free men in Sydney at the time, and did much as he liked.  And during the course of his unimpeded wanderings about town, it was noted that he prosecuted vigorous inquiries about a certain Miss Isabella Mary Kelly, who was reported to own several big stations in the Manning River district.

 Terror of the District

 Little attention was paid to his investigations along these lines, for, at the period, all men were more or less curious about this strange woman, who, single-handed, was said to have terrified tribes of wild blacks, subdued savage convict servants to cowering obedience, cattle thieves who attempted to ravish her herds.

 But Thring had some potent reason for his inquiries.  Later events indicate that he had some cause to hate her with a bitter hatred.

 When he settled definitely that Miss Kelly was firmly established at Mount George and Brimbin stations, and satisfied himself that there was solid basis for truth in the rumours of her enormous wealth, he adopted a remarkable course of action.

 One morning, on approaching Mr MacLeay, the Superintendent of Convicts, as that worthy gentleman sat in his office, Thring asked that he be assigned to the service of the A A Company at Port Stephens.

 It was not a difficult matter to complete the formalities attending the assignment of a convict to the big agricultural establishment at Port Stephens.  So it was that Thring went to Carrington a week later, on the company schooner, “Lambton”, recorded on the manifest as a shepherd.

 The man’s ability was soon discovered at the company’s headquarters.  Capt Phillip Parker King, the commissioner, on learning that Thring was an accomplished penman, sent him to Stroud to act as keeper of the company’s stores, a position he filled with credit during the six months he occupied the post.

 At the end of that time, he asked to be sent to the out-station at Gloucester , where according to his account many serious peculations [theft of public property] would be discovered by a skilful investigator.  Thring was sent thither, vested with powers far greater than those usually given to a mere convict servant.

 The ex-forger rode to Gloucester with a light heart.  The establishment was situated in the shadow of those frowning summits called “The Bucketts” and about a mile up the river from where the town of that historic name stands today.  And it was within a day’s easy ride of Miss Kelly’s homestead at Mount George .

 Thring spent several weeks in close attention to his duties at Gloucester .  He found that the overseer was making too free with the blacks, a fact which he used to have that individual removed from his position and sent back to Stroud.

 Once given full power on the place, he began a series of activities that astonished the shepherds and stockmen he directed.  Professing to believe that Miss Kelly was stealing the company’s cattle, he ordered three men – James, Taylor and Gayne – to visit Mount George and recover what stock they found bearing the A A Company’s brand.  They returned the next day – Gayne with a bullet in his shoulder, and James with a nasty wound to the head.  Miss Kelly had driven them off at pistol point.

 One night, when the men discussing the matter in their hut, Thring announced that he had a day of reckoning to make with Miss Kelly, and would attend to it himself.

 At Gloucester there was a man named George Fenning, a misshapen creature of the system, sullen, savage and saturnine.  A year before, he had been attached to the Mount George establishment as stockman, and there he had incurred the full and merciless measure of Miss Kelly’s wrath.

 After Thring had uttered his threat against the termagant [nagging scolding woman] of the Manning, Fenning sought him out.  Bluntly he proposed that the two should begin reprisals at once against their enemy.

 “Let us take to the roads,” said Fenning.  “I am sick of workin’ with the fear o’ th’ lash over me all th’ time.  A flash covey like you can make a fortune as a bushranger.”

 Thus it was that one morning the company’s establishment at Gloucester awoke to find itself without an overseer, and minus the services of a stockman of doubtful character.  A week later the countryside knew that two armed bushrangers were very busily engaged at their trade in the vicinity of Stroud.

 The first sticking-up of any note was at Telligherry, an out-station on the Karuah, where a fine homestead had lately been erected for Mr Charles Hall, the cattle superintendent.

 Now launched irretrievably on a career of bushranging, Thring determined to pay his promised visit to Miss Kelly, to extract from her the revenge he apparently sought.  He put the matter to his companion, but Fenning, thoroughly enjoying his new-found freedom and the good things he was able to steal without fear, seemed inclined to postpone the matter.

 “She be a devil,” he said, “an’ belikes she might beat us if we bain’t careful.  Us be doin’ fine now, an’ I don’t want ter spoil it.”

 “Whether she be devil or angel,” said Thring, “I am determined to have a settlement with her before another week has passed.  If you will not come, then I go alone.”

 They set out, with Hatred in their Hearts.

 Two days later the outlaws reined in their horses on a timbered hill overlooking the Mount George homestead.  They were armed to the teeth, and on Thring’s face was a scowl of deadly hatred as he watched the spurred and booted figure of a short stocky woman emerge from the house and walk towards the stables.

 “If that is Miss Kelly she has changed greatly in the last five years,” he said.

“That be the old --- right enough,” Fenning informed him.

“Well,’ stated Thring, “We will gallop down and capture her.”

 Setting spurs to his horse, and bidding Fenning follow, the ex-forger galloped at break-neck pace down the hillside and out across the flat.  The woman hearing the thudding of hoofs on the grass, halted midway between the house and the stables, and waited quietly the approach of the riders.  Within a few paces of her, Thring jerked his horse to its haunches, and leaping from the saddle, thrust a pistol into the grim face of Miss Kelly.

 “Now the tables are turned, my dear lady,” he said.  “It is my turn to laugh.  You remember me, of course, and the reason why I am prompted to call on you.”

 “Yes,” said Miss Kelly, her face set like a mask.  “I do remember you. And you have not changed in any respect.  You were always a contemptible creature, only fit to prey on women, and to revenge yourself on the one whom you could not rob or ruin.”

 “Hold your tongue,” snarled Thring, his face whitening with rage.  “Walk to the house at once, or I will shoot you.”

 As the trio marched slowly into the house, Fenning showed great uneasiness.  Hoarsely he whispered to his companion that they should truss Miss Kelly with rope lest she outwit them in the end, pointing out that she was a woman of marvellous resource and courage.  Thring laughed at the idea, and, instead of heeding the wise advice of the man who had long suffered at her hands, he ordered Miss Kelly to be seated.

 Undaunted by Pistols

 “I want your signature to these documents, as a beginning,” he said, placing before her several sheets of foolscap covered with clerkly writing.  “After that formality has been completed, we intend to rob the house and set fire to it.”

 Miss Kelly picked up the papers and glanced at them casually.  Leaning over the table she drew towards her a huge wrought iron ink pot, and looked about as though for a pen.

 “I don’t see my pen,” she said, “perhaps it is in the drawer.”

 Quite calmly she pushed her chair back and drew out the drawer in the table.  Thring was eyeing her intently, and Fenning had both his pistols pointed at her head.  What happened in the next split fraction of a second was an amazing example of the courage of the woman.  With a lightning-like sweep of her arm she threw up a pistol she had seized from the drawer, and pulled the trigger.

 Thring fell across the table with a yell of agony, and as Fenning’s weapons barked, Miss Kelly had slid to the floor out of harm’s way.  The next instant she was on her feet, another pistol in her hand, dominating the situation.

 Fenning cowered in craven fear before the flashing anger in her eyes.  Back to the wall she drove him, and then, in ringing tones, commanded her servants, who had rushed in from the rear, to seize and bind the miscreant.  After Fenning had been trussed, she bent over Thring, who was lying unconscious on the floor.

 “Take this man to the barracks,” she directed.  “He will not die; he is not even badly wounded.  He is a coward, that’s all, and is insensible from far.”

 A week later, with the two men tied to horses, Miss Kelly set out for Dungog.  She delivered her prisoners to Capt Thomas Cook, at his home up the river, on Auchentorlie Estate, and talked fiercely to the old magistrate who feared her greatly.

 “If you let these men escape, Cook,” she gritted out, “I’ll come down from Mount George and flog you at your own triangles.  Remember that.”

 And without a backward glance the doughty chatelaine of the North rode off over the ranges to her home at Mount George .