In Australia, everything can kill you. From the animals, to the plants, to the very ground itself, there’s danger aplenty on the entire continent. The earliest settlers had to be 1) fearless, 2) crazy or 3) extremely unlucky in order to end up on the island in the first place; all the same, those who survived helped to make the country known today for its citizens having such a feisty, tough reputation. Joseph Bolitho Johns was one such of these foolhardy folks whose exploits still live in legend today. Let’s look at the legendary escape artist and learn why he’s one of the biggest badasses to ever live.

Joseph Bolitho “Moondyne Joe” Johns

Born: c. 1826, Cornwall, England

Died: August 13th, 1900, Fremantle, Australia

Occupation: Bushranger, miner, career criminal

As many people know, Australia was founded as a set of penal colonies for subjects of the British Empire. Starting in 1770, prisoners would be sent from the British Isles to Australia for all varieties of offences, and held in prisons built all over the country. Prisoner transfer finally came to an end in 1868, but the reputation has persisted for Australians since that time… and they’re quite touchy about it still, actually. Anyhow, this is the story of Moondyne Joe, one of these prisoners, who arrived on the continent a convict… and left this earth as a piece of history.

• Joseph Bolitho Johns was born into a poor Catholic family, moving from Cornwall to Wales as a young man to find work in an iron mine. In 1848, he was arrested for stealing food from a man’s house and subsequently convicted; his punishment was to serve ten years of penal servitude. This was an unusual sentence, but likely was handed due to the fact that Johns chose to represent himself in court… and apparently came off as very belligerent and uncooperative during his trial.
• In 1853, Johns arrived in Western Australia at the port of Fremantle; due to his good behaviour on the voyage, he was granted a ticket of leave, and by 1855, had received a conditional pardon. Johns left Fremantle to settle in the Darling Scarp in southwestern Western Australia, which at the time was a very remote and inhospitable part of the land. He worked as a bushranger this time, trapping escaped livestock and fencing land claims in the area.

• In 1861, Johns caught an escaped, unbranded horse that belonged to the local magistrate, and marked it with his own brand, essentially a horse theft – which was a serious crime in Australia at this time. He was arrested and put in Toodyay jail for it, but escaped that same night… his first of a long, long string of prison breaks. He killed the horse and cut the brand out of the horse’s hide… he was sentenced to three years for the jailbreak, instead of what would have been a ten-year sentence, due to his destruction of the evidence.
• Biding his time once again in prison, Johns waited out a rash of other prisoner escapes and riots, once again receiving a ticket of leave for good behaviour in 1864. In 1865, though, he was arrested for the killing of his neighbour’s ox and sentenced to ten years’ hard labour, which he vehemently protested he was innocent of committing. Sentenced in July 1865, he escaped with another prisoner in November, his second prison break, and was on the run for nearly a month before being captured again. He was sentenced to twelve months in irons for this escape.
• In April 1866, he petitioned the Chief Justice of Western Australia to commute his sentence, and had four years knocked off for his efforts. Still, he felt it wasn’t enough, and attempted his third escape from prison; he was caught trying to remove the lock to his cell door, received an additional six months in irons for his efforts, but finally, in August, he pulled off his third successful prison break. Moondyne Joe, as he was now known (the word comes from the Aboriginal name where he was residing), and three other accomplices attempted to travel overland from Fremantle, now part of Perth, to the colony of South Australia and become free men once more. The journey was extremely difficult due to the vast wasteland in the middle of the continent, not to mention that the escaped prisoners had no money or supplies of their own; after a massive heist orchestrated by Moondyne Joe, the men were on the run for almost two months before being caught again near the end of September. Johns got another five years of hard labour for this escape and the robbery.
• To prevent another escape, Johns was sent back to Fremantle Prison, where he was locked in a custom-made prison cell, complete with stone walls, thick jarrah wood railroad ties, over 1000 nails, and was essentially air- and light-proof. A nasty setup. The Governor of Western Australia was so confident of this setup that he had promised to forgive Johns entirely if he managed to escape this time. He was confined to the cell for 22-23 hours a day, with only scant time outside allowed. As his health failed, the prison warden decided he needed to have more exercise outside, and was put to work chopping stone. However, fearing another escape if they took Johns to the quarry, the warden had the stone brought into the prison yard for him to work on, with constant supervision. With the rock piling up in the corner of the yard, it eventually obscured Moondyne Joe from constant view, and thus while chopping stone, he could also make an occasional swing at the prison wall as well. By March 1867, he had a hole large enough in the wall, which he escaped through – a fourth successful prison break.

• Johns stayed out for two years this time before he was caught again after stealing wine from a winery cellar in Middle Swan. Back in prison once more in 1869, he had to serve another five years – one for the prison break, and four for the break and enter – but after he reminded the new governor of Western Australia of the previous governor’s promise to set him free if he escaped again – he was out on a ticket of leave in May 1871, and conditionally pardoned in 1873.
• The rest of his life was quieter – a few small periods of jail time, coupled with a marriage to a widow, Louisa Hearn, some panning for gold in Southern Cross, work as a labourer in towns throughout Western Australia, and the discovery of Moondyne Cave, a gorgeous cave in southwestern Western Australia near Augusta. He died of senile dementia in 1900 – a quiet end to what was without a doubt an extremely hectic life. Of note, though – he did escape the insane asylum he was placed in three more times before he died, necessitating a final one-month stint in Fremantle Prison.

Surviving in the wild of Australia is not an easy thing to do at all – and when coupled with four separate prison breaks requiring extensive planning, preparation and luck, it’s clear that Moondyne Joe is still, in his own unique way, a true badass of history. Moondyne Joe lives on today in Australian literature and culture… a number of books, including kids’ books, have been published about his life, and the town of Toodyay has a festival in his honour every year. And you can bet, just like in so many small-town festivals, that it’s most likely a hell of a party.