On a late January afternoon in 1840, farmer and author John Wrathall Bull rode into the fledgling town of Crafers, eager to rest his tired horse and refresh himself at the local hotel.
But the scene that awaited him was unlike any he had ever witnessed among the unruly patrons of the crude bush inn.
A large man wielding a horse pistol presided over the door to the inn’s private room, threatening to fire at any patron who was unsympathetic to his lawless cause.
His associate, George Hughes, already partway drunk, cracked open a brandy case.
The publican’s terrified wife and servants cowered behind the bar at the mercy of the gun-slinging bushrangers, who were treating themselves and many of the inn’s regular patrons to the best the house had to offer.
As he approached the hotel and sent his horse into the stable, Bull was completely naive to the fact that it was about to become the stage for one of the most infamous events in the Adelaide Hills’ early history … or that he was about to play a key role.
It might now be one of the Adelaide Hills most sought after addresses, but in the early days of the new South Australian colony, Crafers and its surrounds were a haunt for the ‘Tiersmen’ – ex-convicts and runaway sailors, who were employed as labourers in the native timber industry.
“We were a free State, but people were coming across – the baddies from the eastern states – and they were pretty rough sorts of diamonds,” Chris Chardon of the Mt Lofty District Historical Society says.
It was against this backdrop that the first Crafers inn sprang up.
Far from the award-winning hotel that presides over the town today, the first Crafers hotel – known as the Sawyers Arms – had a thatched roof and mud floor.
It was established by David Crafer to cater to the Tiersmen who, by all accounts, played at least as hard as they worked.
“They’d get paid and then Crafer was ripping them off of all their pay,” Chris says.
Word of bushrangers had already reached Bull on the fateful day that he rode into the heart of the Tiers – first from an old soldier who’d been held up by the outlaws at a cattle station at Mt Crawford the night before, and later from a camp of troopers, sent on a mission to apprehend two horse thieves.
Crafer had travelled to Adelaide and while he was away, Henry Curran, Hughes and James Fox – already on the run from the police – couldn’t resist the lure of free flowing liquor.
And they found among the inn’s usual patrons a number of sympathetic accomplices. Attempting to appear unrattled by the danger he’d just stumbled into, Bull cheerfully called on Mrs Crafer to send him some bread, cheese and brandy and an ostler for his horse.
But on witnessing Curran firing after another escaped patron, Bull seized his moment and fled the unfolding coup.
“On reaching the stable door I fortunately found my cob coming out ready for me, as he had found no provender,” Bull wrote in his Early Experiences of Life in South Australia.
“I sprang on his back, and had not time to recover my stirrups, but struck my spurs into his sides, when Curran, returning from the chase, met me and grabbed, intending to unhorse me.
“I struck him on the head with the heavy loaded handle of my stockwhip and felled him to the ground.
“His horse pistol having been discharged, I think he must have cast it away when he missed his man, or he would have struck me with it if he had kept it, and our positions would probably have been reversed.
“… I think I pushed my horse as fast up the hill as he could carry me towards town, feeling as I mounted the rise that a shot might follow me at any moment.”
It was during this panicked journey that Bull met the unsuspecting Crafer, returning to his inn on a fast horse.
On hearing that it had fallen into the hands of bushrangers, he rushed back to town to gather a party of mounted police.
When the troop arrived at the inn, the arrests were made without much trouble – the bushrangers were too drunk to protest and the handcuffs were easily applied.
“It’s a bit strange, because the police were (already) after them,” Chris says.
“To get into a hotel and get drunk and do what they did there, when the police turn up, you’re going to get caught, aren’t you?”
The three men were charged with theft and with “putting the people in bodily fear” and, despite pleading not guilty, were convicted by a jury.
Fox had shown remorse and escaped with a life sentence, but his accomplices were condemned to hang.
I think I pushed my horse as fast up the hill as he could carry me towards town, feeling as I mounted the rise that a shot might follow me at any moment.
But while that marked the demise of some of SA’s most infamous – if not incompetent – bushrangers, the district of Crafers continued to evolve.
In the 1850s, the Government subdivided a large portion of nearby Stirling in an attempt to bring order to the rough and wild Tiers.
“When they developed Stirling the whole section of land was subdivided straight away and they tried to sell it straight away,” Chris says.
“… And that probably put a bit of order into what went on around here.
“Crafers had developed a bit, but not to the same extent as what Stirling had then.”
For some time Crafers struggled to shake its shady reputation – Chris says wealthy landowners renamed the local Crafers Park subdivision Mt Lofty to avoid the region’s poor reputation – but eventually the construction of the railway line and the establishment of several public amenities brought a greater sense of civilisation.
Today Crafers is home to about 2000 people and some of SA’s most notable historic homes, such as Mt Lofty House and Eurilla.
“If you go through the history of Crafers you find there’s schools developing, there’s churches developing, there’s the institute, but this is all probably about 1880s, whereas the lawlessness was back in more like the 1850s and that sort of era,” Chris says.
“… So it evolved from the lawlessness into what it is today.”
