Senior Constable John WardPrint Page

The Garden commemorates Senior Constable John Ward was shot and killed while hunting the Chinese bushranger Sam Poo. Poo shot Ward in the pelvic area with a shotgun, and Ward was taken to Birrawa Station, then known as "Billaroy" where he died and was buried.

Sam Poo, who committed the murder, achieved fleeting infamy as Australia's only Chinese bushranger. The gold prospector, apparently weary of thin pickings on the Talbragar claims, decided to switch jobs and take up bushranging. Fellow diggers were alarmed by news a man reported to look like a Chinaman had stuck up a woman and her little girl on the Mudgee Road. There were more reports of a Chinaman ''bailing up'' travellers. Two weeks later three constables aided by a ''smart half-caste Aboriginal stockman and tracker Harry Hughes'' found Poo hiding in scrub. The fugitive was shot in the neck. He recovered at Mudgee Hospital and was later convicted of murder. He was hanged at Bathurst Jail in 1866.

 

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