The earliest bushrangers were convicts who had escaped from assigned service on government farms and resorted to robbery for sustenance.
John Caesar, a First Fleet convict, was Australia's first bushranger. Known as "Black Caesar", he was sentenced at Maidstone, Kent in 1785 to transportation for seven years.
In June 1789, a few months after his arrival in New South Wales, he took to the bush with some food, an iron pot, and a soldier's musket. He was caught and punished.
Escaping from custody again in July, he took to the bush again was retaken but again escaped, and a reward was offered for his capture. In 1796 he was shot at Liberty Plains (near Strathfield).
In 1796 escaped convicts were living as bandits in the Hawkesbury district and three were shot in the act of robbing large parties of Aborigines.
By 1800 several convict robbers and sheep-stealers were at large in the colony.
On 15 June 1800 a proclamation was read in church preparatory to outlawing these bushrangers, and as a result of the proclamation three men were arrested and sentenced to death.
Bushranging continued but it did not become a serious problem until about 1820.