bushranger

thumb|right|300px|William Strutt (artist)|William Strutt's [[Bushrangers on the St Kilda Road, painted in 1887, depicts what Strutt described as "one of the most daring robberies attempted in Victoria" in 1852.]] Bushrangers were armed robbers and outlaws who resided in the Australian bush between the 1780s and the early 20th century. The original use of the term dates back to the early years of the British colonisation of Australia, and applied to transported convicts who had escaped into the bush to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term had evolved to refer to those who took up "robbery under arms" as a way of life, using the bush as their base.

Bushranging thrived during the mid-19th century gold rushes, with many bushrangers roaming the goldfields and country districts of New South Wales and Victoria, and to a lesser extent Queensland. As the outbreak worsened in the mid-1860s, colonial governments outlawed many of the most notorious bushrangers, including the Gardiner–Hall gang, Dan Morgan, and the Clarke gang. These "Wild Colonial Boys", mostly Australian-born sons of British and Irish convicts, were roughly analogous to highwaymen and outlaws of the American Old West, and their crimes included robbing small-town banks, bailing up coach services and raiding stations (pastoral estates). They also engaged in many shootouts with the police.