There was still another of the Australian colonies which was affected by the evil influence of the bushranging mania inaugurated by Frank Gardiner. This colony was Queensland. In May, 1864, Harry, the mail-man, was travelling along the road between Bodumba and Leyburn, when he was stopped by an old man and a boy, one of whom asked him, civilly enough, which was the road to Warwick. Harry, very obligingly, pulled up to tell them where to turn off, when the old man drew a pistol and ordered him to dismount. Harry protested against this outrage, and said he was a Government employé, but this only produced a reiteration of the order with a threat to blow out his brains if he did not obey. He then dismounted, and was tied very tightly, the robbers paying no attention whatever to his complaints that the rope was cutting his wrists. The robbers went through the bags, which they left on the ground, and, when they had finished, the old man mounted Harry's horse, while the boy climbed on to the packhorse, and rode away. Harry, who was left lying on the ground, rolled himself over and over to where there were some jagged rocks by the side of the road. Selecting the one with the sharpest edge, he wriggled about until he got the rope across it, and then moved his body backwards and forwards until the strands of the rope which bound his hands together behind his back parted. Having freed his hands, he soon untied the rope round his legs and walked to Goondiwindi, where he reported the robbery to the police. The _Brisbane Courier_ in reporting this robbery said it was the first case of bushranging that had taken place in Queensland, and hoped that that colony was not about to have its peace disturbed as that of the southern colonies had recently been by bushrangers. The _Courier_, of course, did not consider the convicts who escaped into the bush when Moreton Bay was a penal settlement as bushrangers in the modern acceptation of the term. Some of the more notorious of these have already been dealt with in Chapter XV., but if we accept the new meaning of the term "bushranger," the _Courier_ was, no doubt, correct in its assertion that this was the first case that had occurred in the colony. Of course a rumour was raised that the perpetrator was Gilbert and some of his gang, but the description given of the robbers shows that this rumour was absurd. About a month later a bushranger named Wright stuck up and robbed a number of people in the Rockhampton district. He was speedily followed by the police and some black trackers, and was shot, early in July, at Wipend, on the Mackenzie River, a few miles off of the Peak Downs Road. He was riding a racehorse which he had stolen from Mr. Cranston, a squatter of that district.