Harry Power was an Australian Bushranger

Bushranger

Bushrangers, or bush rangers, originally referred to runaway convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia who had the survival skills necessary to use the Australian bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities...

. It is believed, by some, that Ned Kelly

Ned Kelly

Edward "Ned" Kelly was an Irish Australian bushranger. He is considered by some to be merely a cold-blooded cop killer — others, however, consider him to be a folk hero and symbol of Irish Australian resistance against the Anglo-Australian ruling class.Kelly was born in Victoria to an Irish...

 served as his accomplice while a teenager.

Early life

Henry Johnson, also known as Harry Power, was born in Waterford

Waterford

Waterford is a city in the South-East Region of Ireland. It is the oldest city in the country and fifth largest by population. Waterford City Council is the local government authority for the city and its immediate hinterland...

, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 on 18 May 1819 and grew up in Ashton-under-Lyne

Ashton-under-Lyne

Ashton-under-Lyne is a market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Tameside, Greater Manchester, England. Historically a part of Lancashire, it lies on the north bank of the River Tame, on undulating land at the foothills of the Pennines...

, Lancashire

Lancashire

Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, where he worked in the cotton mills. On the 31 August 1840 at the Salford

County Borough of Salford

Salford was, from 1844 to 1974, a local government district in the northwest of England, coterminate with Salford. It was granted city status in 1926.-Free Borough and Police Commissioners:...

 Assizes he was sentenced to transportation for 7 years in Australia for stealing a pair of shoes. They also suspected him of wounding a trooper. He left England on 15 January 1842 and arrived at Hobart

Hobart

Hobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Founded in 1804 as a penal colony,Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney. In 2009, the city had a greater area population of approximately 212,019. A resident of Hobart is known as...

 aboard the Isabella on 21 May 1842.

He was freed in 1848 and moved to Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

. By now he was calling himself Harry Power. In 1855 he was arrested for injuring a police officer. It seems that the officer suspected that Power's horse had been stolen and demanded proof of ownership. Since he did not have any proof, Power wounded the officer and escaped. He was caught and sentenced to 14 years. He was released after serving six years, but was again jailed in 1864 for horse stealing.

Escaping from Pentridge Prison in 1869, the 50-year-old Power turned to highway robbery and became known as a Bushranger. He was highly successful and a reward of £5000 was offered for his capture (a large sum of money at that time). There were claims that during these robberies Power had a youthful assistant who took care of the horses. Suspicion fell on the then 16-year-old Ned Kelly

Ned Kelly

Edward "Ned" Kelly was an Irish Australian bushranger. He is considered by some to be merely a cold-blooded cop killer — others, however, consider him to be a folk hero and symbol of Irish Australian resistance against the Anglo-Australian ruling class.Kelly was born in Victoria to an Irish...

. Power himself was captured on the 5 July 1870. There is some suggestion that Kelly's relatives may have betrayed him to the police. He was arrested while on their land.

Later life

Power was not released from prison until February 1885, aged 66. For a while he worked as a tour guide for the old Prison Hulk

Hulk (ship)

A hulk is a ship that is afloat, but incapable of going to sea. Although sometimes used to describe a ship that has been launched but not completed, the term most often refers to an old ship that has had its rigging or internal equipment removed, retaining only its flotational qualities...

 Success

Success (prison ship)

Success was a former Australian prison ship, built in 1840. Between the 1890s and the 1930s, she was converted into a floating museum displaying relics of the convict era and purporting to represent the horrors of penal transportation in Great Britain and the United States of America...

, on which he had once served a sentence, and was by then a museum. In 1892 Harry Power fell in and drowned in the Murray River at Swan Hill, Victoria

Swan Hill, Victoria

Swan Hill is a city in the northwest of Victoria, Australia. It is located on the Murray Valley Highway, on the south bank of the Murray River, downstream from the junction of the Loddon River. At the 2006 census, Swan Hill had a population of 9,684.-History:...

.

.

Legacy

Power's Lookout Reserve near Whitfield, Victoria

Whitfield, Victoria

Whitfield is an agricultural township in the King Valley in north-eastern Victoria.- Overview :The township is immediately west of the flood-prone King River and has State Forest to its west and east. Agriculture extends along several stream valleys which are tributaries of the King River...

 is named after Harry Power.

External links

• Photos of Harry Power from the State Library of Victoria
  State Library of Victoria
  The State Library of Victoria is the central library of the state of Victoria, Australia, located in Melbourne. It is on the block bounded by Swanston, La Trobe, Russell, and Little Lonsdale streets, in the northern centre of the central business district...