Farmer and horse breeder Kate Gadsby became obsessed with local history when she tried to gain heritage status for an old inn near her farm.
The Nubrygyn Inn is more than 180 years old and stands not far from Ms Gadsby's farm near Euchareena in the central-west of New South Wales.
After 20 years of poring over old records to achieve the heritage status for the inn, Ms Gadsby uncovered so much material that she decided to write a book.
"Once the Nubrygyn Inn was heritage listed I felt 'What should I do with all the material?'"
Her book Convicts, Capitalists and Corruption covers the central west from 1808 until the 1870s.
"It's all unpublished material and people who have never been written about, and it gave me great pleasure to uncover their stories," she said.
"I've tried to portray the stories of the early convicts because, while so many people have done the hierarchies, no-one ever included the workers that were underneath them doing all the hard yards."
The name of the book comes from the rife corruption of the time, when the police force in the region was made up of ex-convicts.
"It led to unbelievable corruption, sly grog selling, public houses that were not licensed, and this is all through the book," she said.
The youngest convict
The book follows several characters that carved a life out of the harsh world that was the central west in the early 19th century.
One such character is Constance Couronne, one of the youngest convicts ever sent to Australia.
The eight-year-old Constance and her cousin Elizabeth were Mauritian slaves committed to transportation for the attempted murder of their mistress.
However the attempted murder did not quite go to plan.
"They tried to administer arsenic in her tea, but it was a laxative instead — which had a different effect," Ms Gadsby said.
"They got the white substance wrong, luckily for them, otherwise I'm not sure where they may have ended up."
The sisters ended up as chamber maids for one of the first police magistrates of Sydney before moving to the central west to look after the police magistrate's daughter when she married a landowner in the region.
The forgotten bushranger
Ms Gadsby's time in the police records of the early settlement led her to an early bushranger largely forgotten by historians.
Blue Cap, as he was called, wore a straw hat, a black dress coat and vest, and terrorised the district between 1839 and 1840.
"He rampaged in the Wellington district for two years," Ms Gadsby said.
The rogue had up to 15 convicts in his gang at any one time and was said to carry a double-barrelled shotgun and pistol.
"He stole very well-bred thoroughbreds," Ms Gadsby said.
Blue Cap even held up one local farmer on five separate occasions.
"Fortunately he was not murdered like many others who came in the path of Blue Cap," she said.
Ms Gadsby said the local shepherds were in the pocket of Blue Cap and his crew, who would run mobs of sheep over their tracks to make sure they could not be followed.
"They were bribed and told they would be shot," Ms Gadsby said.
Blue Cap was never captured, and after two years of terrorising the district he disappeared near Goulburn and was never seen again.
Ms Gadsby said this Blue Cap was not to be confused with a separate Blue Cap who operated along the Murrumbidgee River much later in the 1860s.
The book Convicts, Capitalists and Corruption is due to be published in December.
