Editing Bushranger (section)

===Decline and the Kelly gang (1870s–1880s)===
[[File:The Last of the Bushrangers.jpg|thumb|upright|An 1870 cartoon shows a personification of New South Wales slaying "the last of the bushrangers"]]
The increasing push of settlement, increased police efficiency, improvements in [[History of rail transport in Australia|rail transport]] and communications technology, such as [[telegraphy]], made it more difficult for bushrangers to evade capture. In 1870, Captain Thunderbolt was fatally shot by a policeman, and with his death, the New South Wales bushranging epidemic that began in the early 1860s came to an end.<ref>Baxter, Carol. ''Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady: the true story of bushrangers Frederick Ward and Mary Ann Bugg''. Crows Nest, New South Wales: [[Allen & Unwin]], 2011. {{ISBN|978-1-74237-287-7}}</ref>

[[File:Moonlite gang gunfight.jpg|thumb|left|Watched by hundreds of onlookers in the surrounding hills, troopers and [[Captain Moonlite]]'s gang engage in a gunfight in 1879.]]
The scholarly, but eccentric [[Captain Moonlite]] (alias of Andrew George Scott) worked as an Anglican [[lay reader]] before turning to bushranging. Imprisoned in [[Ballarat]] for an armed bank robbery on the Victorian goldfields, he escaped, but was soon recaptured and received a ten-year sentence in [[HM Prison Pentridge]]. Within a year of his release in 1879, he and his gang held up the town of [[Wantabadgery]] in the [[Riverina]]. Two of the gang (including Moonlite's "soulmate" and alleged lover, James Nesbitt) and one trooper were killed when the police attacked. Scott was found guilty of murder and hanged along with one of his accomplices on 20 January 1880.<ref>{{Citation |title=Andrew George Scott (1842–1880) |work=Australian Dictionary of Biography |url=https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/scott-andrew-george-4546 |access-date=2024-03-24 |place=Canberra |publisher=National Centre of Biography, Australian National University |language=en}}</ref>

Among the last bushrangers was the Kelly gang in Victoria, led by [[Ned Kelly]], Australia's most famous bushranger. After murdering three policemen in a shootout in 1878, the gang was outlawed, and after raiding towns and robbing banks into 1879, earned the distinction of having the largest reward ever placed on the heads of bushrangers. In 1880, after failing to derail and ambush a police train, the gang, clad in [[armour of the Kelly gang|bulletproof armour]] they had devised, engaged in a shootout with the police. Ned Kelly, the only gang member to survive, was hanged at the [[Old Melbourne Gaol|Melbourne Gaol]] on 11 November 1880.<ref>{{Cite news |date=1880-11-23 |title=The Execution of Ned Kelly  |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2984082 |access-date=2024-03-24 |work=West Australian}}</ref>