Moondyne

Facsimile from the George Robertson edition of 1880. pp. xxi, 255

Moondyne is an 1879 novel by John Boyle O’Reilly. It is loosely based on the life of the Western Australian convict escapee and bushranger Moondyne Joe. It is believed to be the first ever fictional novel set in Western Australia.

In 1913, Melbourne film director W. J. Lincoln made a silent film of the same name.

O’Reilly was a Fenian revolutionary who was transported as a convict to Western Australia. During his time in Western Australia’s penal system. After thirteen months in Western Australia, O’Reilly escaped the colony on board the American whaling ship Gazelle. He arrived in America in 1869 and settled in Boston, where he established himself as a respected journalist, newspaper editor, novelist and poet, and later helped orchestrate the 1876 Catalpa rescue of six Fenian convicts from Western Australia.

Around the time O’Reilly was stationed in Bunbury in 1868, he had begun to hear about the exploits of convict Joseph Bolitho Jones aka Moondyne Joe, who at that time was still on the run from authorities after escaping from Fremantle Prison in 1867. It has been rumoured that O’Reilly’s subsequent escape in 1869 was partly due to inspiration from Johns’ escape stories. A week after O’Reilly absconded from his convict camp in February, 1869, Johns was captured at the cellars for Houghton Winery in Perth, he was sent back to prison but was given a ticket of leave in 1871.

At the time when O’Reilly published Moondyne, Johns had just married Louisa Hearn in Fremantle and was prospecting for gold near Southern Cross. He most likely never knew for the rest of his life that he was the main inspiration for the novel.