On January 19 1902, a buyer at the remote NSW mining town of White Cliffs received an order to supply several hundred pounds worth of opal to a jeweller in Melbourne. Being Sunday, the buyer was unable to insure or register the precious parcel. A risky decision was made to send it to Wilcannia privately, where it would be added to the main White Hills consignment of opal and be put aboard the mail coach to Broken Hill. Owing to a mix-up at Wilcannia post office, the private bag was overlooked. It turned out to be a most fortunate error, as the large White Hills bag, containing 11 separate parcels of opal, was stolen from the coach enroute to Broken Hill. It was valued at around £3,000.
The robbery presented a real puzzle for the Broken Hill police. This was no hold-up by armed bushrangers. Bizarrely, everything pointed to it having taken place while the coach was in motion! Nothing untoward had been noticed by the driver, an escorting armed police officer, or the coach’s three passengers.
When coach driver Alexander Wilson and police constable Riley were interviewed they gave a detailed account of the journey from Wilcannia. Unlike the rest of the mail bags, which were stowed with the men in the box seat, the White Cliffs opal had been strapped to a rack on the back of the coach.
The bag was checked when there was a change of horses at Dola Tank, thirty five miles out of Wilcannia. After leaving there at 10pm the coach arrived at Box Camp, twenty five miles further on. It was then 4am and still dark. It was not until the next stop, the Topar Hotel that, in daylight, the loss of the opal was discovered. Straps holding the bag had been cleanly sliced through. How on earth could it have happened?
There was an intriguing, but simple explanation. The track between Dola Tank and Box Camp went through deep sand, restricting the mail coach to just two miles an hour. It was bordered by thick scrub. In the dark, someone had hidden in the bushes waiting for the vehicle to pass. It was a simple matter to step out, slash the straps and remove the bag of gemstones.
THE BLAME GAME
Driver Wilson and Constable Riley were heavily criticized for their inaction immediately after the robbery was discovered. The theory was that if one of them had ridden a horse back to Dola Tank, tracks may have been found. As it was, a dust storm wiped out any prints before the authorities were alerted.
Another question was why such a valuable cargo been placed on the back of the coach….. and how the robber had known it would be there? The inference was that Wilson and/or Riley had colluded with the culprit, though neither man faced any charges. It’s likely that Wilson lost his job, as he filed for bankruptcy a few weeks later.
In February a small bag of opal was found in a paddock not far from Topar, but no progress had been made in solving the crime.
The breakthrough finally came when attempts were made to sell the stolen opal. An elderly man called Duncan McGregor and a financially embarrassed ex-town clerk of Wilcannia, William Stanbury, were arrested. They were accused of having received quantities of the missing White Cliffs gemstones from John Edward (Jack) Burgess.
Jack Burgess was, to fall back on a cliché, larger than life; an ex-mail coach driver, publican, drover, stockman and selector. He was described as being the best known man in Western New South Wales. A major point for the prosecution when the case came to trial was that he owned racehorses;
Accused was an expert horseman, and one who knew the country well. The distance from Broken Hill to Topar was about 50 miles, and from there to Box Camp it was about 15 miles. Taking the distance as 80 miles to the scene of the robbery, accused would have had ample time to do the distance in the time at his disposal between 6 o’clock on the night of January 20 and 3 o’clock on the following afternoon. Accused had not called a single person to prove where he was during that time. There was a gap, and one which should be filled. Ten miles an hour on his racehorse would not be out of the way. (Barrier Miner October 1 1902)
Despite this evidence the jury were unable to reach a verdict. Burgess faced a new trial in April 1903, with Acting Justice Rogers presiding. He was held in Broken Hill Gaol, and was now the only man under threat of a prison sentence. Duncan McGregor had become a Crown witness and William Stanbury had been found not guilty due to a lack of evidence.
JACK WALKS FREE!
Despite Judge Rogers appearing to push for a guilty verdict in his summing up, the jury found otherwise and declared Jack Burgess not guilty. His Honour then commented that the trial should not have been held in Broken Hill, which may have been why the crowd outside the courthouse cheered loudly when Burgess appeared in their midst as a free man.
John E. Burgess has been acquitted in connection with the White Cliffs opal robbery. Accused made a statement, in which he denied categorically the whole of the charges brought against him by the Crown. The judge summed up rather adversely to accused, and expressed the opinion that it would have been better if the case had not been tried in Broken Hill, as it was reported that the trial had been a common topic of conversation in the town for a long time past. Burgess was accorded an ovation outside the court. (Ovens & Murry Advertiser, May 2 1903)
A SUSPECTED SEQUEL TO THE WHITE CLIFFS ROBBERY
In October 1903 a man called Percy Marley arrived in Freemantle with £1,000 worth of opal jewellery; rings, brooches, pins etc. He was initially charged with having avoided paying duty, but there was something else that interested police;
The possibility of the case proving to be a sequel to the sensational robbery from a mail coach on the highway between White Cliffs and Broken Hill on January 21 last gives additional importance to the case. A large quantity of opal was stolen from the coach, and in this connection a man named John Edward Burgess was arrested and committed for trial at Broken Hill…..A significant feature about the present case at Freemantle is the fact that Marley was in Broken Hill at the time of the trial and he was a prominent witness for the defence of Burgess. (The Western Australian, October 26 1903)
Marley admitted that he had lived at White Cliffs, and was there at the time of the opal robbery. However, a charge of unlawful possession was ultimately withdrawn. He was fined £50 for the evasion of duty and the jewellery was forfeited.
NOTE – I should add that White Cliffs has always been famous for its rare ‘pineapple top’ opals, which are found nowhere else in the world. They are formed from cretaceous sediment and have distinctive, radiating points, At the time of the mail coach robbery these extraordinary specimens were mostly broken up, but now there is a huge market for them.
FOR MORE ON THE HISTORY OF WHITE CLIFFS AND ITS OPAL INDUSTRY CLICK HERE.
