William Fogg (c1816-1899) was born in Colchester, England, and at the age of 19 years received a seven year sentence for stealing hats from a factory in which he worked. He arrived in Australia on board the ship “Camden” in September, 1833. He was assigned to Alexander Turner of Goulburn and served his term on Turner’s station at Wheeo. William absconded in 1836 but was captured and returned to his master. 

It was in 1840 that he received his Ticket of Leave. William married Mary Annette Taylor in 1842. William was squatting on the east bank of the Lachlan River opposite Meadow Flat Creek, where he applied to lease 640 acres of land. He later added 1154 acres in the vicinity of Fogg’s Crossing and in 1850 he was to add a further 30 acres. He was to call his holdings “Eurangarra Springs”.

Here William sold home-made rum to the horse-thieves, cattle duffers and bushrangers who infested the nearby mountain ranges, where the law rarely penetrated. Fogg’s Humpy, as it was known, was a warm refuge on a cold night for men who were cut off from the comforts of normal society. Here Ben Hall, Flash John Gilbert, Fred Lowry and Johnny Piesley could enjoy a noggin and a steaming bowl of Mary’s possum stew, bounce her children on their knees, and sleep in a dry bed.

The greatest rogue of them all,  Frank “Darkie” Gardiner, was Fogg’s best mate. He had a hideout on the mountain overlooking the shanty. Mary would hang a red table cloth or blanket on the clothes line to indicate when the coast was clear for him to visit. In the original slab humpy that once stood nearby, he was cornered like a rat by police, fought them to a standstill, and escaped to pull off the biggest heist in the annals of Australian crime – the Eugowra Rocks gold escort robbery. But that day was still in the future when, just after breakfast on a wet winter’s day on July 16, 1861, the Tuena police received information that Gardiner was visiting Fogg.

Sergeant John Middleton abandoned his cup of tea and set out to arrest the outlaw with the entire complement of men at his disposal: a single trooper with a perpetual hangover, named William Hosie. They set out in drizzling rain, waterproof ponchos concealing their scarlet tunics and pistols. They wore cabbage-tree hats instead of regulation caps, and left their rattling sabres behind. Middleton carried a hammer-headed riding-crop that could also be used as a club. To a casual observer, they looked just like a couple of bushwhackers.

Late in the morning they sighted the shanty. A friendly spiral of smoke rose from the chimney as a trickle of icy water dribbled down the back of their necks. They reached the sliprails and passed through unseen.

The Sergeant cantered ahead while Hosie dismounted to replace the sliprails. Middleton had reached the picket fence before he was spotted by Mary Fogg, who assumed that he was just another customer until he swung off the saddle to reveal his knee-high cavalry boots.  

“The stinking traps are here”, she yelled, and rushed inside. Middleton vaulted the fence and barged through the door while Hosie flogged his horse across the paddock. Fogg and an old man were smoking by the fire while Mary gathered the children in a corner. Middleton glimpsed a shadow dart through the curtained doorway into another room, and challenged him to identify himself.

“Poke your head in here and I’ll blow it off,” yelled Darkie, trapped in a room with no exit.

Middleton cocked his pistol and swept aside the curtain. A bullet whizzed by his ear and made him jump back, but in the muzzle-flash he saw his adversary in the gloom.  

“Give yourself up Gardiner, we’ve got you outnumbered.” 

“In a pigs ear! I’ve got a revolver here that’ll fix the bloody lot of you!” [Revolvers were a novelty at the time, and far superior to the single-shot Tower Enfield muzzle-loading “horse pistol” issued to the Mounted Police].