The Bushrangers. A Yankee's Adventures During His Second Visit to Australia

Fourth catch up review.

This is another of William Henry Thomes Australian adventure books, this one first published in 1883.

I read The Gold Hunters recently, and I also found this book, which follows the main character from The Gold Hunters in a second visit to Australia to promote a quartz crushing machine destined to revolutionise gold mining. He has a different friend with him this time - the inventor of the crusher, and also an American.

This book is much more obviously fiction than the first one I read, where I was quite unsure (I will be returning to my review to change it to fiction). Too many coincidences, very unlikely escapes and too many clever predictions from our protagonist gave it away in a big way here.

Really this book is just more of the same, with various recurring characters and much, much more hunting of bush rangers (the Australian name for robbers hiding in the bush contemporary to the time). We see a long romance for our protagonist Jack, we see Murden having lost his position in the Police reinstated, many bush rangers brought to justice or done in, and a complex plot related to identity exposed!

This book retains the action packed nature of the first, but is slightly more repetitive, and a bit more far fetched. Still a good read though!

Available on line with a bit of searching - look under openlibrary.org

4 stars