The Ragged Thirteen by Derek Pugh details the NT’s bizarre bushranger history

Northern Territory bushranger history fills the pages of a new book by local author Derek Pugh. Read their story.

The Tennant Creek telegraph station. Tom Nugent, Mick Windley's grandfather and leader of the "Ragged Thirteen" outlaws is buried in the gave at left

In the years when bushrangers Ned Kelly, Captain Moonlite and Ben Hall were terrorising southern Australia, the Northern Territory had its own band of outlaws – although with a distinctively Top End flavour.

Largely forgotten today, the so-called Ragged Thirteen were a disparate mob of horsemen who had headed to the Territory and the Kimberley from South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, New Zealand and as far afield as Scotland

More hoons than hardcore highwaymen, they stalked the Territory’s backblocks for just a few months in 1886 but, according to Darwin-based historian and author Derek Pugh, they became notorious for their exploits.

The Ragged Thirteen cover.

Derek Pugh, author of The Ragged Thirteen.

His latest book, titled The Ragged Thirteen - Territory Bushrangers, charts the journeys of this bunch of baddies who evaded the law as they “ran riot on the overlanders’ trail, duffing cattle at will and holding up wayside pubs and cattle stations with impunity”.

Along the way, Derek Pugh tells the stories of the growing number of pioneer pastoralists, drovers, miners and explorers who led the migration of European settlers into northern and north-western Australia.

He also recounts the turmoil the European migration had on the Aboriginal people who were caught-up in what would be the most significant change in their history.

Ironically, one of the Territory’s earliest cattle figures was Harry Redford who had been one of the inspirations for the Captain Starlight, the bushranger in Rolf Bolderwood’s 1888 Australian novel Robbery Under Arms.

Alexander ‘Sandy’ MacDonald, one of the Ragged Thirteen, in later life.

Pugh writes that what was better-known in the United States as cattle rustling and illegal, the Australian equivalent was known as duffing or poddy-dodging and so common in the 1880s “that most cattlemen were more or less guilty”.

Harry Redford however “took the practice to a new level” with his activities in Queensland in the 1870s before he took his first mob of 120 cattle to Brunette Downs Station on the Territory’s Barkly Tablelands and became its first station manager. He eventually drowned in Corrella Creek when he was managing Corella Downs Station.

Other prominent characters focused on by Derek Pugh include Tom Nugent, Sandy MacDonald and James Woodford.

Pugh writes that after their drive across the Territory some of the Ragged Thirteen became successful businessmen, cattle station owners and family men, stayed in the Territory or chased gold in the WA gold rush.

His book is filled with photographs, anecdotes and historic references that would be new to all but the most informed NT history enthusiast. For instance, who knew that there was a ruby rush in Central Australia during the 1880s, which quickly fizzled out when the red stones turned out to be garnets.