John Feehan leans proudly against a wooden post on the veranda of his cottage in Elrington Street, Braidwood. He can't wait to show me around his historic digs, and not only for its close connection to his family roots, but also its extraordinary link to an event firmly entrenched in Braidwood's bushranging folklore.
Bushranging in these parts is synonymous with the notorious Clarke Gang who terrorised the area, committing a long list of crimes in the mid-1860s before ring leaders, brothers Tommy and John, were eventually captured and hanged in 1867. Peter Smith, author of the authoritative The Clarke Gang: Outlawed, Outcast and Forgotten (Rosenberg 2015) labels the dastardly duo as "the worst and most troublesome bushrangers of all time". Yes, worse than even Ben Hall or Ned Kelly.
