“A Dirty Wee Rascal”

His small size made him ideal for the job of a child chimney sweep, or “Climbing Boy” as they were often called back in the “olden days.” He was always looking very dirty from the soot in the chimneys.

He didn’t like working in chimneys so he took a ship to Africa where he learned to ride ostriches, for racing. Like horse racing.

His parents didn’t like him racing ostriches, because they didn’t like the gambling side of it. So he returned to England, but this was when he started stealing jewelry from the houses when he was sweeping the chimneys.

Of course he got caught. He was put in jail for five years. When he got out, he decided to emmigrate to Australia, and worked on his uncle’s farm in New South Wales.

He soon was back to his old tricks and was caught wearing his aunt’s jewelry. He was told to leave the farm, and he then headed south to Adelaide.

In Adelaide John started a “gang” of boys to help him climb down chimneys and rob the houses. In 1898 he left Adelaide and moved to the Coorong.

There were ostrich farms in the Coorong. The ladies back then used to wear ostrich feathers in their hats. John managed to catch one of the ostriches that had escaped from the farm, which of course he knew how to ride.

He started living like a bushranger. He would hold people up on the Coorong Road. Steal their jewelry, which he liked to wear, and ride off on his ostrich.

Ostriches can run fast even on sand, so it was hard for the police to catch John, because the sand slowed their horses down.

One day in 1899 he tried to rob the wrong guy.  A fisherman called Henry Carmichael. Henry tried to shoot John, but John took off accross the sand on his ostrich. Henry chased after him, and shot the ostrich and wounded John.

John was never seen again, only his ostrich was found. Ledgend has it that there is a fortune in jewelry lying buried somewhere in the Coorong with the body of John Francis Peggotty.

The Birdman of the Coorong.