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The first official government announcement of the Great Mudgee Mail Train Robbery, which occurred in the Blue Mountains on April 8 , 1930, appeared in the State Government Gazette, nine days later on April 17. It read as follows:
Whereas shortly after 11pm on April 8, 1930, two armed men entered the guard’s van on the Mudgee Mail train which had just left the Emu Plains Railway Station.
They bailed up the escorting porter and the guard, deprived the former of his revolver and forced open a steel chest.
From the steel chest they stole two boxes and an attaché case containing the sum of 4,702 pounds in cash, and cheques to the value of 13,500 pounds, together with pay sheets and envelope.
The robbery was conceived by Roy Wilkinson, a 23 year old railway porter, who had been serving as an escort on the Mudgee Mail.
He was aware of the regular fortnightly rail employees pay carried on the train.
Wilkinson informed Joseph Ryan, a known gangster, that the train could easily be robbed.
Ryan then contacted two fellow criminals. Arthur Collins and George Morris.
“Robbery from the Mudgee Mail ‘Reward of five hundred pounds, with ten per cent on value of money recovered not including cheques’”
The robbery was planned for the night of Tuesday, April 8, 1930, but Wilkinson was not rostered for escort work on that night. In his place were two innocent railway guards, Kenneth Allen and Albert Squires.
With Allen and Squires, disarmed, bound and gagged the robbers immediately slid the bullion box with its contents across the floor of the van to the open door .
They then hurled it out of the van into the night just as the train was approaching the Glenbrook tunnel.
Collins sprung out following the box whilst Ryan after covering the railwaymen also leapt.
The guard pulled the emergency alarm that stopped the train. Its crew was informed of the robbery.
As there was no sign of the robbers, the train continued to Glenbrook station.
Here the police were informed and a wide search for the bandits was made without success.
At the time that the criminal George Morris, , was waiting a little down the line, in a “get-away-car”.
He was shortly joined by the robbers Ryan and Collins with the bullion box containing the proceeds of the robbery.
The money was secreted on Morris’s property at Mulgoa.
Despite the State Government’s reward for the recovery of the stolen money not one penny was handed in. Ryan and Collins were charged with robbery.
The Sydney Morning Herald, of August 5, 1931, reported that Ryan having made an initial appearance in Court failed to appear.
Four years later in 1935, suitably equipped with an alibi, he took his trial. Ryan was found not guilty as a vital crown witness against his case did not front.
The charge against Collins did not proceed, for he was assumed complicated in a jewellery theft and was ordered to leave the State.
Thus the Crown refrained from proceeding with the charge for the robbery on the Mudgee Mail. Morris was acquitted for assisting in the robbery.
Thus no stolen money was recovered, no stolen cheques were cashed and the robbers Ryan, Collins and Morris escaped prison sentences.
Whilst the police were endeavouring to solve the Mudgee case, Colllins was engaged in a jewellery heist in Sydney. Ryan and Morris kept themselves busy with another railway robbery in Canberra.
In 1944, Morris died in a volley of bullets while sitting in his car in Argyle Street, Millers Point. The police suspected his old pal Ryan who was charged. However, Ryan provided a watertight alibi for the night of the murder.