Daley was the younger cousin of John O’Meally, a member of Frank Gardiner’s gang of bushrangers who robbed the gold escort near Eugowra in June 1862.

[4] The children of both families probably received at least a rudimentary education; in September 1853 it was recorded that a schoolmaster named John Smith was living on the property.

[5] In June 1860 John O'Meally's father, Patrick, was granted a publicans’ license for the Weddin Mount Inn, built beside Emu Creek on the 'Arramagong' run.

In June 1861 O’Meally placed the property, including stock and buildings, up for auction and Daley discovered the lease was held in O'Meally’s name only.

[4] In 1862 Daley’s cousin, John O’Meally, came under the influence of the bushranger, Frank Gardiner, who had begun armed robberies in the district and using the Weddin Mountains and the nearby Pinnacle Range as refuges.

[12] O’Meally had been part of the gang led by Gardiner who carried out the robbery, but in the end the three young men were released without charge due to insufficient evidence.

It was reported that Daley was "very nervous and trembled like a leaf"; noticing his unease several of the captives pressed forward at which point Hall intervened and warned them to stay back.

[19] After searching the store the bushrangers departed with £5 in silver, an estimated £10 worth of gold-dust, a revolver, three watches, several pairs of boots and a quantity of clothing.

[21] On Saturday morning, 7 February 1863, Ben Hall and Patsy Daley broke into the unattended Pinnacle Police Station and stole a rifle, a carbine, ammunition, a pair of saddlebags and a bridle, and articles of clothing.

Two of the policemen, including the officer in charge, had been required to go to Forbes and the third, Constable Knox, was absent from the premises (despite being instructed "not to leave his post").

Hollister and the trackers caught up with Hall and Daley as they were departing from Allport’s inn on the Forbes Road, close to the ‘Pinnacle’ station.

[25] Mid-afternoon on Saturday, 21 February 1863, four armed bushrangers dressed "in the style of policemen in private clothes" rode up to Meyer Solomon's store at Little Wombat.

[21] The bushrangers then proceeded to ransack the store in "cool, deliberate manner", loading three pack-horses with goods before departing at about seven o’clock in the evening.

The writer for the Lachlan Observer newspaper (Forbes) considered that the Sub-Inspector owed his release "to his being a 'new chum' in the district, and the fact of his having a wife and family in Sydney".

[29] On Wednesday morning, 11 March 1863, a party of four mounted police, accompanied by Aboriginal tracker Billy Dargin and led by Inspector Pottinger, were in the vicinity of the Weddin Mountains.

The men inside the huts were at first "unwilling to answer" Pottinger’s questions, but after "he threatened them" the Police Inspector was told the rider was down a shaft on the diggings.

Patsy Daley was described as "a mild, youthful, whiskerless looking person, with light blue eyes and fair complexion", with nothing in his outward "physiognomical expression to denote the degraded villain".

The next day George Dickenson, the storekeeper of Spring Creek, was asked to identify the man who had stuck up his store several weeks previously.

[15] Patrick Daley was tried in the Goulburn Assizes on 23 September 1863 before Chief Justice Alfred Stephen, charged with the armed robbery and assault of George Dickenson on 2 February at Spring Creek in company with "other persons unknown".

Daley pleaded not guilty; his defence (undertaken by the barrister William Windeyer) relied on a technical point that during the robbery Dickenson was being held at gunpoint outside the premises and so the circumstances "only amounted to stealing from a dwelling".

[38] They eventually moved to the Cobar district, in the central west of New South Wales, where Daley's wife's family owned the 'Booroomugga' and 'Sussex' pastoral runs.

[39] From April 1895 Patrick Daley was the successful tenderer of a five-year lease of the Booroomugga Tank, a public watering place, east of Cobar on the road to Nyngan.

[45] By about 1906 Daley owned the Royal Hotel at Illewong, about 11 miles south-east of Cobar, with his younger brother William (born in 1861) as the licensee.