Katherine Biber
In stock
- Order before 2pm for Same Day Shipping
- $7 Shipping per item | Free Express Shipping over $100
Couldn't load pickup availability
Book Title: The Last Outlaws
Author: Katherine Biber
Genre: True Crime History (Colonial Australia, Aboriginal brothers, legal and social justice)
Read if you like: The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Killing for Country, Peter FitzSimons, Anna Funder
A Hidden History Brought to Life
The Last Outlaws investigates the chilling story of Wiradjuri brothers Jimmy and Joe Governor who in 1900 were declared outlaws after the killings of nine people in New South Wales. Katherine Biber re‑examines the case through descendants’ oral histories and legal archives to reveal the deeper context of racism, colonial violence, legal systems and nation‑building in early Australia.
Justice, Race and Power Collide
This is more than a crime narrative. Biber explores how Federation era attitudes shaped policy around land race and criminal law. Drawing on her award‑winning podcast series and collaboration with Wiradjuri and Wonnarua families the book uncovers how state‑sanctioned racism and race science influenced every stage from investigation arrest trial and execution.
Award‑Winning Research and Storytelling
Katherine Biber is a distinguished Professor of Law at UTS and creator of the podcast The Last Outlaws which won the 2022 NSW Premier’s History Award and Australian Podcast Awards Podcast of the Year. Her work received praise for breaking new ground in historical true crime merging archival depth with lived experience and descendant voices Shop Local with Peninsula Records and Books
At Peninsula Records and Books we care about bringing powerful Australian stories into your hands. The Last Outlaws is smart immersive and urgently relevant. When you buy from us you support local business we offer same day dispatch when in stock and free shipping over 100.
Blurb
Blurb
n the winter of 1900, Wiradjuri man Jimmy Governor and his brother Joe murdered nine people across New South Wales, in a rampage that caused panic in the colony on the cusp of nationhood. Triggered, it seems, by a racist incident, they killed men, women and children, evading a vast manhunt until they were eventually captured. Joe was shot in the open; Jimmy survived to be put on trial. Thus the last man to be outlawed in the colony was hanged in the new nation, meeting his end in Darlinghurst Gaol as the Federation decorations were taken down. The brothers’ names still resonate, partly due to Thomas Keneally’s novel The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and Fred Schepisi’s subsequent film, but their story has remained distorted and obscure.
Undertaken with the co-operation of the Governors' descendants, Katherine Biber’s compelling reconstruction of events – from the murders themselves to Jimmy’s eventual execution – brings this extraordinary story back to life. In doing so it sheds fresh, vivid light on the country that inspired and reacted to the murders. Not only did many of the lawyers and politicians involved also play key roles in Federation, but the case revealed in microcosm the psychology of the nascent nation: its attitudes to land and race; its anxiety about a wider First Nations insurrection; its obsession with paperwork and the emerging ‘sciences’ of neuroanatomy and criminology; its nepotism, religiosity, sweeping police powers and sensationalist media. More powerfully than the story of Ned Kelly or the Anzacs, the fate of Jimmy Governor illuminates the origin story of the Australian nation.
Populated by a cast of extraordinary characters and compelling detail, The Last Outlaws brings the energy of true crime into the telling of history, offering an electric new understanding of both our past and our present.
Share
