A = The number of words on the third line of the headstone.
B = Add together the two numbers of Thunderbolt's age.
C = The number of letters in the city where the headstone was made.
D = The month Thunderbolt died.
E = The first number of the day Thunderbolt died _5.
F = The number of letters in Thunderbolt's surname.
The cache can be found at S30 38.ABC E151 29.DEF
Sum checker for co-ordinates: South 21 East 11
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The Thunderbolt legend lives on strongly in the New England district of Northern NSW and especially around Uralla. Of all the bushrangers in Australia during the first 100 years of white settlement, Thunderbolt was at large for probably the longest period.
As a youth Fred Ward became well known for breaking and training horses. At about 20 he was sentenced to 10 years hard labour and taken to Cockatoo Island Prison, Sydney Harbour, for driving stolen horses to Windsor. He escaped with fellow prisoner Fred Britten by swimming through shark infested water to the mainland. And so began the bushranging legend of Captain Thunderbolt with robberies of mail coaches, hotels, hawkers and horse theft.
He acquired famous racehorses and either used them as common mounts to outpace mediocre police horses or traded them for profit. Among his acquisitions were Beeswing, Combo, The Barb, Eucalyptus, Come-By-Chance, Toy Boy, Talleyrand and Kerosene.
Bushrangers were regarded as heros by the battling small landholders who also recognised their common enemy as the Government and the Law. They considered Thunderbolt to be a victim of circumstance and identified with him. The police force was over governed by Parliament and grossly underpaid, undertrained, overworked and supplied with horses of dubious breeding. Thunderbolt relied on his ability to outwit and outdistance the mounted police and would only resort to gunfire to hasten proceedings or when being fired upon.
Thunderbolt's downfall happened on the day he 'bailed up' John and Liza Blanch near their Inn, as well as an Italian hawker, Giavani Capusotti. Resenting this, Capusotti alerted Uralla police officers Mulhall and Walker. Shots were exchanged and Constable Walker gave chase. Thunderbolt was finally cornered in a waterhole in Kentucky Creek. Later a police report about his death was left incomplete, stirring up great controversy that continues today. Was it Fred Ward, his brother or perhaps someone else who was shot by Constable Walker at Kentucky Creek and laid to rest in the old Uralla Cemetery? Some claimed to have seen Ward in Glen Innes only days after the shooting. Nevertheless a headstone for Fred Ward remains, as does the mystery of his death.
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