Soon afterwards, however, Laurence Foley was brought before the Campbelltown Bench of Magistrates “for harbouring Bushrangers & Robbers”; on 30 October 1828 he was sentenced to three years at the Moreton Bay penal settlement.

[10] On Thursday, 31 July 1862, Ann Webb’s store at Mutton’s Falls on the Fish River was robbed by two men “with blackened faces”.

[13] On Sunday, 14 September 1862, the mail contractor, William Weston, was stuck-up by two armed men at a location called the Black Swamp, two miles from Wilson’s inn between Cassilis and Mudgee.

[14][15][16] On 20 September 1862 Fred Lowry (alias Boyd) and two others stuck up Mr. Lawrence and his men at ‘Wilpingong’ station near Reedy Creek (north of Rylstone) and robbed them of £29 in notes, a cheque and “two silver hunting watches”.

[17] On 2 October 1862 William Todd’s store on the Fish River was held up by armed men and robbed of cash totalling about £50 (the number of offenders was initially reported as two).

[12] On 9 November 1862 three armed men, with their faces blackened, robbed a number of Chinese miners at their camp in the upper Campbell’s River district.

[22][23][24] A race meeting was held on New Year's Day 1863 at a race-course on Daniel McGuirk's land in the Brisbane Valley, south-west of Oberon near the Native Dog Creek diggings.

Towards evening after the races were concluded and the prize-money had been paid out, Lowry (by some accounts in a state of drunkenness) "attempted to bail up the persons present".

A newspaper report of Lowry's capture made the following comments: “There are several charges of robbery against him, and his apprehension will be a source of gratification to the inhabitants of the district, to whom he has long been a terror and a pest”.

[27] Fred Lowry accomplished a sensational escape from Bathurst Gaol in mid-February 1863 and for several months rode with members of the Gardiner-Hall gang, a loosely-formed group of bushrangers notorious for having robbed the Lachlan Gold Escort near Eugowra in mid-1862.

On the early afternoon of 3 July 1863 Cobb and Co.’s coach was bailed up by two armed men within a quarter of an hour of its departure from Goulburn, still within sight of the township and less than a mile from the police barracks.

When the parcel of bank-notes was discovered Kater told them the notes would be useless, as they were old and were being taken to Sydney to be destroyed, to which one of them responded, “Never mind, we can make a bonfire of them”.

[37] Eventually it was determined that two of the offenders were the wanted men, Frederick Lowry and John Foley (both of whom were later found with bank-notes from the robbery in their possession).

[38] On 3 August 1863 seventeen residents of the Fish River district signed a letter sent to their local parliamentary representative, William Cummings, the member for East Macquarie in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly.

The letter also claimed that John Foley and Fred Lowry (described as “a most notorious nest of Highway Robbers”) were “living publicly on this road having recently built stabling, house, etc.

[39] On 8 August 1863 Senior-sergeant Waters was involved in searching a house in Durham-street, Bathurst, occupied by John Foley’s parents.

In the room the constable found two revolvers, both of them capped and loaded, and £60 in notes in a pocket-book (a number of them stolen from the Mudgee mail robbery).

[44] A week later he was brought before the Bathurst Police Court again where Henry Kater produced the original manuscript list of the bank-notes stolen from the Mudgee mail.

[46] On Monday, 7 September 1863, John Foley was placed in the dock of the Bathurst Circuit Court before Justice Wise, charged with robbery of the Mudgee mail.

Two of the three constables who had captured Foley gave evidence, as well as the driver of the Mudgee mail coach, William Tinker, and the passenger, Henry Kater.

In summing up, the Justice Wise observed that “it was really lamentable that a young man in the possession of youth and vigour should have reached that depth of moral degradation”.

He expressed the hope that the fate of the prisoner would serve as a warning to those “whose sympathies were with him – persons who would be ready to harbour and screen him from the just punishment of his guilt”.

The young man had first appeared at the Bathurst Circuit Court in March 1863, indicted on a charge relating to the raid on the Chinese miners’ camp at Campbell’s River by three armed men in November 1862.

The defence were attempting to establish an alibi for Francis, with their witnesses consisting of four members of the prisoner’s family, and an old man named Shee “who had been on terms of intimacy with them for a number of years”.

In regard to their testimonies, the newspaper report commented, “it has seldom been our lot to witness such an exhibition of prevarication and lying as was shown in their conflicting statements”.

[49] John Foley was from a Catholic family and during his incarceration at Bathurst, prior to being transferred to Cockatoo Island, he was visited on several occasions by Father Timothy McCarthy, based at nearby Carcoar.

Before he was transferred, Foley revealed to the Bathurst Police Magistrate and Father McCarthy where bank-notes stolen from the Mudgee mail amounting to £2,700 were concealed.

[54][55] On 28 February 1866 John Foley was transferred to Darlinghurst Gaol where his conduct dramatically changed, which soon afterwards was described as “orderly, industrious and attentive in school”.

[56] When he was released from prison in September 1873, John Foley settled down to a respectable life, becoming a farmer near Black Springs, in the Campbell's River district.

[58][59] A school was opened in 1881 at Swatchfield (about five miles from Black Springs), brought about by an application from local residents Alfred Stevenson, James Hanrahan and John Foley.