Robbery Under Arms

The bushranging and gold-rush country of colonial New South Wales, and the long ride south to Melbourne. Boldrewood (Thomas Alexander Browne) drew the Turon diggings, the cattle runs, and the rugged ranges from a lifetime in the bush. The Marstons' hidden valley, "Terrible Hollow", is invented, but it is set in real country and the Turon, Bathurst, the Weddin Mountains, and Melbourne are all on the map. It brings a whole continent, Australia, into the atlas.

Captain Starlight

Terrible Hollow (the ranges)

Ch. 5 · 8% through the novel

'Welcome to Terrible Hollow, lads,' says he. 'You're the youngest chaps it has ever been shown to, and if I didn't know you were the right stuff, you'd never have seen it, though you're my own flesh and blood.'

Old Ben Marston brings his sons Dick and Jim over the range into the stolen-cattle stronghold where they will meet Captain Starlight. The Hollow is the dark heart of the book, a valley you can only enter through a crack in the cliff, and no such place exists, but the tangled ranges it hides in are entirely real.

inspired by "Terrible Hollow", the gang's hidden valley reached by a secret track through a rock wall, is invented, but Boldrewood set it in the real rugged limestone-and-sandstone ranges of central-western NSW. The pin marks the Abercrombie Caves district near Tuena, the kind of hidden gorge country south of Bathurst that the fictional Hollow is drawn from.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗