On the trail of the ‘Wild Colonial Boy’

In Castlemaine, Co Kerry, there’s a pub called Jack Duggan’s, commemorating the “Wild Colonial Boy” of the same name, whose praises have been sung in many bars down the decades, but nowhere (I imagine) with more pride than in this one.

He was, as the ballad says, born in Castlemaine “of poor but honest parents”. But considering he became such a famous figure in Australia, a mere pub seems a rather modest memorial.

There was talk some years ago, I gather, of expanding the tributes into something more substantial. A heritage centre or even – God forbid – a Jack Duggan summer school.

Castlemaine could probably have done with such added value. It’s an overlooked place, interstitially located between the big toe of the Ring of Kerry and the long toe of the Dingle Peninsula – both heavily touristed digits.

But the wild colonialist expansion plans went nowhere, it seems. The town’s “most famous son”, as he has been called, is still commemorated with just the pub.

The problem is, of course, that for all his celebrity, the Jack Duggan of the song never existed. Or if he did exist, he was a composite of various colonial boys, with differing degrees of wildness, all of whom were transported to 19th-century Australia as convicts and then, one way or another, struck off their chains.

The original of the species was John or “Jack” Donohoe, who was fully historical, but born in Dublin in 1804. He appears to have nothing to do with any Castlemaine – either the one in Kerry, or the larger version in Victoria.

He was transported to New South Wales in 1823. Five years later, after further troubles with the local law, he was sentenced to hang at Sydney Gaol, as two accomplices did. Adding a verse to the subsequent ballads, however, he himself escaped, fleeing Sydney into the adjoining Australian interior.

There he led a short but glorious career as bushranger, his regular hold-ups gleefully reported by the Sydney press, which made a vocation of embarrassing the unpopular state governor at every opportunity. He was also cheered on by fellow convicts and, among the free, by those who had nothing he could steal.

Eventually, of course, he was cornered. And when that happened, he probably didn’t manage anything as eloquent as “I’ll fight but not surrender, said the wild colonial boy”. More likely he uttered a string of unpoetic expletives, before dying in the shoot-out.

In The Fatal Shore, his magisterial book about the founding of Australia, the late Robert Hughes tried to explain why Donohoe became such a mythical figure.

One reason, apparently, is that he was “flash” – he dressed neatly and had a sense of style that added to his romantic appeal. In general, he was a figure of fantasy to those bowed down by conformity. He also caught a changing mood in the penal colonies.

Before that, convict ballads tended to stress the misfortune of the transported, without questioning the justice of their fate. They often contained a moral, warning others against missteps. Then the songs took on a more rebellious tone. As The Fatal Shore puts it: "The earlier ones accept the system in the name of English values, while later ballads oppose it in the name of Irish values that become Australian."

Donohoe’s fame would be eclipsed half a century later by another Hiberno-Australian desperado. In that sense, he was just a bush-ranging John the Baptist preparing the way for Ned Kelly. Via the song, however, he did himself achieve a certain, shifting immortality.

The ballad of Jack Donohoe was soon enormously popular in New South Wales and beyond. But almost as quickly, the name of the hero started changing – to Jack Dowling, Jim Doolin, and most famously Jack Duggan. Only the initials were constant. It was an Australian version of the Spartacus story, with the surrogate rebel always a JD. Dates and circumstances were adjustable too, so long as the Wild Colonial Boy remained Irish and against the system.

Hughes recalled that "there used to be as many ways of singing The Wild Colonial Boy as there were pianos in Australian parlors". But the most memorable version he had ever heard was by a "fat, seamed old Sydney prostitute".

It was unforgettable, he said, because she sang it not in the jaunty way men usually did, but as the “off-key dirge of a mother grieving for her dead son”. The hero was named “Jim Doolin” in that version, Hughes remembered. But if it’s any consolation to the local tourism industry, he too was born in Castlemaine.