Katherine Biber was in conversation with Kate Fullagar on her new book, The Last Outlaws, a gripping work of historical true crime and a richly revealing examination of our nation at its birth. Brilliantly reconstructed from contemporary narratives, it's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith meets Killing for Country.

In the winter of 1900, Wiradjuri man Jimmy Governor and his brother Joe murdered nine people across New South Wales, in a rampage that caused panic in the colony on the cusp of nationhood. Triggered, it seems, by a racist incident, they killed men, women and children, evading a vast manhunt until they were eventually captured. Joe was shot in the open; Jimmy survived to be put on trial. Thus the last man to be outlawed in the colony was hanged in the new nation, meeting his end in Darlinghurst Gaol as the Federation decorations were taken down. The brothers’ names still resonate, partly due to Thomas Keneally’s novel The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and Fred Schepisi’s subsequent film, but their story has remained distorted and obscure.

Undertaken with the co-operation of the Governors’ descendants, Katherine Biber’s compelling reconstruction of events – from the murders themselves to Jimmy’s eventual execution – brings this extraordinary story back to life. In doing so it sheds fresh, vivid light on the country that inspired and reacted to the murders. Not only did many of the lawyers and politicians involved also play key roles in Federation, but the case revealed in microcosm the psychology of the nascent nation: its attitudes to land and race; its anxiety about a wider First Nations insurrection; its obsession with paperwork and the emerging ‘sciences’ of neuroanatomy and criminology; its nepotism, religiosity, sweeping police powers and sensationalist media. More powerfully than the story of Ned Kelly or the Anzacs, the fate of Jimmy Governor illuminates the origin story of the Australian nation.

Populated by a cast of extraordinary characters and compelling detail, The Last Outlaws brings the energy of true crime into the telling of history, offering an electric new understanding of both our past and our present

Katherine Biber, Distinguished Professor of Law at UTS, is a legal scholar, criminologist and historian. Her podcast The Last Outlaws won the NSW Premier’s History Award (2022, Digital History); Australian Podcast Awards (2022, Podcast of the Year, overall winner; 2022 History Podcast of the Year); Australian Legal Research Award (2022, non-traditional research award); and was a finalist in the Webby Awards (2023, Best Limited Series). Katherine is co-Editor in Chief of the international journal Crime, Media, Culture and serves on the Australian Research Council College of Experts.

Professor Kate Fullagar is an historian and award-winning author at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and Vice President of the Australian Historical Association. She is the author of Phillip and Bennelong: A History Unravelled  ; The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire and The Savage Visit. New World People and Imperial Popular Culture.

The vote of thanks was given by Dr Ben Silverstein, Lecturer in Indigenous Studies. ANU