When the notorious bushranger Fred Lowry lay dying from a bullet wound in his throat, inflicted by the New South Wales police during a gun duel in 1863, he regained consciousness long enough to say to the troopers who were standing by, "Tell 'em I died game!" It was important to this young bushman, past recovery, that the people, and especially the populace of his native Lachlan River district, should know that he had met his death with the courage traditionally expected of him. To "die game" was the ambition of most of the bushrangers in the era following the gold rushes of the 1850s. By that time it had become a traditional attitude, handed down from the convict days of "Bold Jack" Donahoe, "Jacky-Jacky" Westwood and Ted Davis. In the unwritten code of these lawless men "gameness" was the highest virtue; and a brave ending was the final gesture of a defiance to the forces of authority. Bill Wannan's new book explores the whole exciting field of Australian outlawry from the earliest protagonist, a West Indian Negro nicknamed "Black Caesar", who met a violent end in 1796, to the self-styled "last of the notorious bushrangers" Jack Bradshaw, who died in a Sydney hospital in the 1930s. There have been innumerable books on individual bushrangers, and several on the general history of Australian outlawry. But Wannan's book is a pioneering work - the first to capture the full essence and atomsphere of bushranging by linking it not only to the social backgrounds which nourished it, but also to the folklore which came in time to surround it. Here, in addition to the fascinating, authentic stories of the more important bushrangers such as Ben Hall, "Captain Thunderbolt" and Ned Kelly, is a wealth of folk ballads, legends and eye-witness reminiscences.