About Powers Lookout

Power’s Lookout, sited on the rocky rim of an escarpment, commands a superb view of the King Valley a thousand feet below – which was one of the reasons why bushranger Harry Power had his hideout there.

The other reason was that the homestead of Ned Kelly’s grandparents, the Quinns, was directly below this highpoint with an anabranch of the King River looping around it like a moat. The way to Power’s Lookout lay across a small bridge which was just behind Quinns’ and a peacock tethered on their roof was always ready to shriek a warning of interlopers.

Back in 1840, Irish-born Harry had been tried in Manchester, as a 21-year-old, for stealing a pair of shoes. Sentence: seven years transportation. Harry was released from Van Diemen’s Land in 1848 and apparently led an honest life for 13 years, but then slipped back into colonial crime. He was in and out of gaol for the next seven years and eventually escaped from Pentridge in 1869 to become a bushranger in the old highwayman tradition being upheld in NSW by Captain Thunderbolt (who was to be killed twelve days before the end of Harry’s career, leaving Harry as the last of this historic breed).

Now 47, Harry was dumpy, only 143cm tall, with a grey-streaked beard, a serious bowel complaint and huge bunions on both feet that demanded over-sized boots. Only pale blue eyes with tiny pupils lent any threat to his appearance; but, coupled with a commanding voice and a great sense of theatre, this was enough to convince his clients that they were confronting a dangerous man.

Power’s Lookout became his headquarters. On a rocky ledge about two hundred metres below the clifftop, he built what he called his ‘mia-mia’ – an ‘A’ frame of saplings covered with blankets and disguised by leafy branches. Here, he slept with a shotgun slung above him, facing the entrance.

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