About Powers Lookout

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.

 

Operating from this base, Harry’s exploits covered a vast area of Victoria and southern New South Wales – from Geelong, north to Tumut; from Kyneton, east to Bairnsdale. Once he claimed to have carried out thirty hold-ups in 24 hours.

Power’s lasting fame was guaranteed when he took on 14-year-old Ned Kelly as his ‘apprentice’. Together they carried out a string of robberies and hold-ups in which young Ned could study his teacher’s magnificent bushcraft and horsemanship as they moved from one crime scene to the next at bewildering speed.

Sacked by Harry for being badly shaken when they came under fire from an irate squatter, Ned took up again with the old rogue the following year until the bushranger’s foul temper led to a final break-up in May 1870.

Soon after returning home, Ned was arrested for Highway Robbery Under Arms and remanded to Kyneton, scene of the latest hold ups, while the police persuaded Ned’s uncle, Jack Lloyd, to betray Harry in return for the 500 pound reward on his head.

At Kyneton the police remanded Ned from one court session to the next for almost a month – a ploy to keep him out of the way while they plotted Harry’s capture.

Eventually, in the drizzling dawn of 4 June 1870, while Ned was still in Kyneton, Jack Lloyd led Superintendent Hare, Superintendent Nicolson, Sergeant Montfort and a blacktracker across the bridge behind the Quinn home. The peacock, with its head sheltered under its wing, failed to give a warning.

In the previous weeks, questioned by the cagey Nicolson, young Ned had described Harry’s ‘watchbox’ – a hollow stump with spyholes disguised by leafy branches plugged into them. It seemed harmless information as long as the site of the hideout was unknown.

But now, when Nicolson stumbled on the stump – betrayed by dead leaves on the disguising branches – the Superintendent knew he was close to the bushranger’s hiding place. Jack Lloyd panicked and fled; but the blacktracker spotted a thread of smoke among the mist rising from the gullies below the clifftop.

The police party dashed up the rain-soaked slope and caught Harry asleep in his well-disguised roost. Nicolson dived under the suspended shotgun and grabbed Harry’s wrists, the other police dragged him out by the ankles. At first furious to have been taken in his sleep, Harry quickly calmed down and offered his captors breakfast.

Ned, who had been released from Kyneton without even standing trial, came home to face suspicion – probably encouraged by Jack Lloyd – that he had betrayed his old mate. Even Harry believed that the blacktracker at his capture could have been Ned in disguise!

Harry was sentenced to fifteen years hard labour (plus 6 months for his 1869 escape!) and was still in Pentridge when his onetime apprentice shot to fame 8 years later in a legendary bushranging career.

Ned Kelly was captured and hanged in 1880 and Harry was released in 1885. He led an honest life for the next six years and drowned in the Murray River in 1891 – apparently accidentally.

His burial place, probably at Swan Hill, is unmarked and unknown; but Power’s Lookout remains as a spectacular monument to commemorate the last of Australia’s great highwayman bushrangers.

Excellent interpretative signage, shelter and toilets are available at the Lookout’s car park.