Editing Bushranger (section)

===Convict era (1780s–1840s)===
{{See also|Convicts in Australia}}
[[File:Joseph Lycett View upon the Napean.jpg|thumb|Convict artist [[Joseph Lycett]]'s 1825 painting of the [[Nepean River]] shows a gang of bushrangers with guns.]]
Bushranging began soon after British settlement with the establishment of [[New South Wales]] as a [[penal colony]] in 1788. The majority of early bushrangers were convicts who had escaped prison, or from the properties of landowners to whom they had been assigned as servants. These bushrangers, also known as "bolters", preferred the hazards of wild, unexplored bushland surrounding [[Sydney]] to the deprivation and brutality of convict life. The first notable bushranger, African convict [[John Caesar]], robbed settlers for food, and had a brief, tempestuous alliance with Aboriginal resistance fighters during [[Pemulwuy#Pemulwuy.27s War|Pemulwuy's War]]. While other bushrangers would go on to fight alongside [[Indigenous Australian]]s in [[Australian frontier wars|frontier conflicts]] with the colonial authorities, the [[Government of New South Wales|Government]] tried to bring an end to any such collaboration by rewarding Aborigines for returning convicts to custody. [[Aboriginal tracker]]s would play a significant role in the hunt for bushrangers.

Colonel [[Godfrey Mundy]] described convict bushrangers as "desperate, hopeless, fearless; rendered so, perhaps, by the tyranny of a gaoler, of an overseer, or of a master to whom he has been assigned." [[Edward Smith Hall]], editor of early Sydney newspaper ''[[The Monitor (Sydney)|The Monitor]]'', agreed that the convict system was a breeding-ground for bushrangers due to its savagery, with starvation and acts of torture being rampant. "Liberty or Death!" was the cry of convict bushrangers, and in large numbers they roamed beyond Sydney, some hoping to reach [[China]], which was commonly believed to be connected by an overland route. Some bolters seized boats and set sail for foreign lands, but most were hunted down and brought back to Australia. Others attempted to inspire an overhaul of the convict system, or simply sought revenge on their captors. This latter desire found expression in the convict ballad "[[Jim Jones at Botany Bay]]", in which Jones, the narrator, plans to join bushranger [[Jack Donahue]] and "gun the floggers down".

Donahue was the most notorious of the early New South Wales bushrangers, terrorising settlements outside Sydney from 1827 until he was fatally shot by a trooper in 1830.<ref name=adob/> That same year, west of the [[Blue Mountains (New South Wales)|Blue Mountains]], convict [[Ralph Entwistle]] sparked a bushranging insurgency known as the [[Bathurst Rebellion]]. He and his gang raided farms, liberating assigned convicts by force in the process, and within a month, his personal army numbered 80 men. Following gun battles with vigilante posses, mounted policemen and soldiers of the [[39th Regiment of Foot|39th]] and [[57th (West Middlesex) Regiment of Foot|57th Regiment of Foot]], he and nine of his men were captured and executed.

[[File:Convicts plundering settlers' homesteads.jpg|thumb|Vandemonian bushrangers plundering and burning a homestead]]
Convict bushrangers were particularly prevalent in the penal colony of [[Van Diemen's Land]] (now the state of [[Tasmania]]), established in 1803.<ref name=adob/> The island's most powerful bushranger, the self-styled "Lieutenant Governor of the Woods", [[Michael Howe (bushranger)|Michael Howe]], led a gang of up to one hundred members "in what amounted to a civil war" with the colonial government.<ref name=boyce/> His control over large swathes of the island prompted elite [[squatting (pastoral)|squatters]] from [[Hobart]] and [[Launceston, Tasmania|Launceston]] to collude with him, and for six months in 1815, [[Governor of Tasmania|Lieutenant-Governor]] [[Thomas Davey (governor)|Thomas Davey]], fearing a convict uprising, declared [[martial law]] in an effort to suppress Howe's influence. Most of the gang had either been captured or killed by 1818, the year Howe was clubbed to death by a soldier.<ref name=boyce>Boyce, James (2010). ''Van Diemen's Land''. Black Inc.. {{ISBN|9781921825392}}. pp. 76–82.</ref> Vandemonian bushranging peaked in the 1820s with hundreds of bolters at large, among the most notorious being [[Matthew Brady (bushranger)|Matthew Brady]]'s gang, cannibal serial killers [[Alexander Pearce]] and [[Thomas Jeffrey]], and tracker-turned-resistance leader [[Musquito]]. [[William Westwood (bushranger)|Jackey Jackey]] (alias of William Westwood) was sent from New South Wales to Van Diemen's Land in 1842 after attempting to escape [[Cockatoo Island (New South Wales)|Cockatoo Island]]. In 1843, he escaped [[Port Arthur, Tasmania|Port Arthur]], and took up bushranging in Tasmania's mountains, but was recaptured and sent to [[Norfolk Island]], where, as leader of the 1846 [[Cooking Pot Uprising]], he murdered three constables, and was hanged along with sixteen of his men.

The era of convict bushrangers gradually faded with the decline in penal transportations to Australia in the 1840s. It had ceased by the 1850s to all colonies except [[Western Australia]], which accepted convicts between 1850 and 1868. The best-known convict bushranger of the colony was the prolific escapee [[Moondyne Joe]].