John Peggotty legend, as the ostrich-riding Coorong bushranger, pushed by Meningie on South Australian lake
The legend of John Francis Peggotty, the Birdman of the Coorong in South Australia, had him wearing women's jewellery, if not their clothing, while staging holdups and riding an ostrich. Top right: The Peggotty story was exploited by the town of Meningie with a statue in the main street. Bottom right: An ostrich far near Port Augusta in the 1880s.
Caricature image by Jessica Crombie (Australian Broadcasting Corporation sceine department). Ostritch farm image courtesy State Library of South Australia
The town of Meningie, on Lake Albert near the River Murray mouth, saddled up on the legend of John Francis Peggotty, the Birdman of the Coorong, and supposedly South Australia’s only 19th Century bushranger.
Meningie exploited the Birdman of the Coorong likely myth during the 2000s drought when its lake was drying up and local dairy farm shutting. The town worked together to create a climbable life-size ostrich statue and a sign, with the Peggotty story, in its main street. The statue was actually an emu (three toes) painted to look like an ostrich (two toes).
John Francis Peggotty was born three months premature in Limerick, Ireland, in 1864, and never grew beyond the size of a seven-year-old. He became a chimney sweep in rich people's houses – and addicted to taking little samples of their belongings. When he was caught parading around in bejewelled finery by one of his landladies, Peggotty escaped to South Africa where he was employed as an ostrich jockey.
His family didn't approve of the gambling associated the big-bird racing so it shipped Peggotty off to a sheep farm near Orange, New South Wales, where an uncle took him in until he was caught wearing the uncle’s wife’s jewellery. Peggotty travelled to Adelaide to join a friend but soon slipped into the old trade of thieving with a gang until most of them were caught by the police.
Peggotty laid low for a few years before eventually turned up again in the Coorong. He became labelled Australia’s most eccentric bushranger by holding up Cobb & Co, coaches and other travellers along the Coorong while stripped to the waist, wearing stolen gold jewellery, brandishing two ornamental pistols and riding an ostrich. Peggotty was credited with more than a dozen holdups and murder of several travellers before his career ended in 1899.
Fisherman Henry Carmichael reacted to being held up by chasing Peggotty on his horse and wounding himwith a rifle shot. Carmichael killed the ostrich by the bleeding Peggotty scamped off into the sand and thick scrubland of the Coorong, never to be seen again –along with his haul of gold and jewellery.
The only plausible part of the Peggotty story was that ostriches were part of the South Australian scene around the 1880s. They started off as farmed creatures in places such as Port Augusta. South African ostriches were imported and farmed for their feathers to make plumed hats and fashion pieces. That industry collapsed around 1915 leading to wild populations roaming the outback and the Coorong.
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Information from What the Duck? programme, Radio National, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
