The Argus at KellyGang 22/11/1879 (3)
Captain Moonlite
He kicked most of the prisoners about in a most unmerciful way, from the owner of the station downwards. One of the men he captured it the public house, an old cripple labourer named Lee, being unable to walk fast enough to please the desperado. Moonlite, drawing a bowie knife, stabbed the poor man on the hip, a deep wound about an inch in length was inflicted and it bled profusely. The ruffian then directed one of his men to re- turn to the hotel for a needle and thread and made him sew up the wound. When the police attacked the gang at M'Glede's house the prisoners they had with them decamped in every direction. Some of them took refuge in a creek behind the house, and one gentleman ran into a neighbouring dam, and stayed there up to the neck in water until the action was over. M'Glede's family all escaped from the house except his wife and she was compelled to remain by Nesbitt. She tried several times to run out, but Nesbitt always intercepted her, brought her back, saying that so long as the "peelers" saw that a woman was in the house they would not fire into the building. As she stood in the kitchen several bullets entered the window and passed close by burying themselves on the opposite wall. She eventually took refuge in the chimney. Nesbitt kept firing out at the kitchen window, and as he was looking to see the effect of one shot, a bullet entering the window pierced his temple and he fell. Moonlite always ran outside to fire, and the others loaded guns for him.
The appearance of M'Glede's house shows how desperate the fight must have been. It is a wooden building of two front rooms and several bedrooms facing the Clarendon road. It stands about 50 yards from the road, a garden with a bushwood fence intervening. The front fence appears to encroach on the road, and these three are consequently angles or corners formed in the road by the side fences of the garden and the road fencing. It was in one of the corners-the one on the north side-that the bushrangers slung up their horses when preparing to receive the police. Just at this corner there is a slip panel leading into a paddock. The country facing the house is elevated, and the police coming over the brow of the hill deployed in twos in front of the house.
The encounter commenced and was carried on gallantly. The bushrangers horses having been frightened away the police advanced from tree to tree. The boy Wernecke held the slip panel corner in a plucky manner for a considerable time. He shot Constable Barry's horse dead, and sent several bullets unpleasantly close to Barry himself. So eager was the youth for the fray that he was continually endeavouring to find a new vantage point, but in changing his position he was eventually shot through the side by Barry. In falling he cried out "Oh God I am shot and I am only 15." His age is entered in the police records as 19, but his appearance was that of a mere boy. Constables Barry and Bowen then entered by the slip panel, and made for the kitchen, a detached building at the rear of the house, to which the remainder of the gang had retreated. Bowen was shot through the neck, and fell down alongside the boy Wernecke. Sergeant Carroll then moved cautiously round the gable of the house, and rushed the kitchen, and the encounter then terminated as has been already described.
There are bullet marks on several trees behind which the police stood, and six in the face of the front wall of the house. The windows of the kitchen and its front wall are riddled, whilst many bullets are sticking in the inside wall. The member of the gang Rogan, who, managed to evade the police when Moonlite surrendered, was discovered by Mrs M'Glede next morning under her parents' bed. He had at first concealed himself between the mattresses, and during the night he went underneath, altogether. Finding a hen's nest with six eggs underneath he feasted upon them, sucking every egg dry. On his discovery information was given to the police, and he was duly arrested.
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