Bail Up! A Bushranger Story

Chapter 2

When at last the two young bushrangers stopped they had found a cave and had built a fire to cook some wallaby stew. Christine tore a long strip of material from Charlie's spare shirt, much to his objection,

"Oh come on!" he moaned as his half-sister threw the remains of his favourite shirt in the fire, "That was my favourite one!" Christine was not impressed by his moaning and grumbling and so she held his jacket over the fire, Charlie knew he was beaten so he threw his good hand over his head in a sign of mock surrender. When she had returned the jacket to her partner, who was still grumbling under his breath, she got to work on his wound, humming a drinking song and thinking about her life before she turned bushranger with her half-brother.

Their mother had been a strange woman, she would drink a lot and bring strange men home from the pub, she never thought about her children. Because of her strange ways her children didn't like her, the girls didn't want to be like her and neither did the boys. Eventually all of the children ran away and Christine only knew about what had happened to Charlie and herself. Charlie and Christine had eleven other half-siblings because of their mother.

All thirteen children had the same mother but different fathers. Charlie's father was Arthur Brown and Christine's father was George Hayes. Her mother had told them that both men were police officers. They were both now after their bushranger children, but since they were drunk when Alexandria Mathewson (Charlie and Christine's mother) brought them into her home they didn't know about their children.