"A memorial to Senior Sergeant Thomas Smyth, aged 29. A member of the NSW Police Force shot by bushranger Dan Morgan in the surrounding hills on 4 September 1864. Senior Sergeant Smyth received a gunshot wound to his left shoulder and convalesced at the Imperial Hotel, Albury until 29 September 1864 where he haemorrhaged as a result of the gunshot wound and died. He is buried in an unmarked grave in the Albury cemetery. Dan Morgan was a murderer with a £1000 price on his head. Senior Sergeant Smyth gave his life while in the pursuit of Morgan who although a tourist attraction these days put fear in the people of the district in the 1860s."
John Fuller was born in Appin, New South Wales, Australia on 30 April 1830 to George Fuller and Mary Owen.
As a child, John Fuller was adopted by a man known as "Jack the Welshman". In 1847 the youth left his foster parent at Campbelltown, and found employment on a station on the Murrumbidgee as a stock-rider. Proving efficient, he worked at the station for seven years. Although suspected of stock theft from the late 1840s, Fuller's known Criminal record began on 10 June 1854 when, under the name "John Smith" (occupation: jockey), he was sentenced to twelve years' hard labour for highway robbery at Castlemaine, Victoria.
He was not heard of again until 1863, when he came forth as a bushranger, using aliases such as "John Smith", "Sydney Native", "Dan the Breaker", "Down the River Jack", "Jack Morgan" and, most famously, "Dan Morgan". He rarely operated in company, but on 22 August 1863, he had a companion, known as "German Bill", when the pair were surprised by a party of police. A desperate shootout ensued. Mr Baylis, a police magistrate, was assisting the attacking party, when Morgan shot him, but he recovered from his wound. Finding the police persisting in their attack, Morgan turned on his mate and shot him so that the police would devote their attention to the German, and thus he escaped.
Morgan shot Sergeant Thomas Smyth in September 1864; the site has been marked by a memorial stone. It is two kilometres west of the Henty on Pleasant Hills Rd (the Lockhart road).
Banjo Paterson wrote the words of "Waltzing Matilda", Australia's most famous folk song, to a tune played on the zither by the grown Christina Macpherson (who was the infant in the 1865 incident above).
The films Dan Morgan (1911) and Mad Dog Morgan (1976) are based on his life and death. Morgan also appears as a character in the play Humping the Bluey, or Ransom (1911). His life is fictionalised in Will Dyson's historical novel Red Morgan Rides (1940), and it is likely he was the inspiration for the villainous bushranger "Dan Moran" in Rolf Boldrewood's novel Robbery Under Arms, first published in serial form in 1882. Two biographies have been written about Morgan: Margaret Carnegie's Morgan: The Bold Bushranger (1974), and Edgar F. Penzig's Morgan the Murderer (1989).
His exploits inspired the 1976 Ozploitation film Mad Dog Morgan, starring Dennis Hopper in the title role.
Morgan is referenced in the song "Billabong Valley" by Australian psychedelic rock group King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, released on their 2017 album, Flying Microtonal Banana.
