After being detained aboard HMS Surprise, a convict hulk moored in Cork, in September 1824, he was transferred to the ship Ann and Amelia and transported with 200 other prisoners to Australia, arriving in Sydney in January 1825.
[1] Donahue escaped to the bush from the Quakers Hill farm with two men named George Kilroy and William Smith.
I had dismounted from my horse to remove some shifting rails, being a short cut through the bush to Prospect Hill, the residence of a friend, Mr. Lawson.
I remounted my horse double quick, and most unceremoniously left the rails on the ground, and lost no time to be out of sight.
He was attired in a velveteen coat and vest, cabbage tree hat, moleskin trousers, and a blue nankeen shirt, with a heart worked on the breast in white cotton".
The gang would operate in groups of three or four in order to bail up settlers and plunder property from Bathurst to Yass and from the Hunter region to the Illawarra.
[5] In 1829, notices were distributed with a reward of £20 for Donohue's capture, describing him as '22 years of age, 5 feet 4 inches [163 cm] in height, brown freckled complexion, flaxen hair, blue eyes, and has a scar under the left nostril'.
In groups of three or four, they laid in wait for travellers on the highway or, knowing settlers to be away from home, they would attack and plunder their houses.
They gave the police false information about him and, when they were dogging him rather too hard, the settlers stowed him away in their back rooms or under the beds.
An act was passed authorising the justices to issue warrants for searching the houses of the settlers suspected.
In the late afternoon of 1 September 1830, Donohue was shot dead by John Muckleston, following a shootout between bushrangers and soldiers at Bringelly, New South Wales.
[8] In 1833, Donohue's life was recounted in the theatre play The Tragedy of Donohoe, by Charles Harpur, later published in 1853 as The Bushrangers.
The ethos line that struck a chord was "'I'll fight but not surrender 'til I die', cried the Wild Colonial Boy."