While many believe bushranging to have ended with the execution of Ned Kelly in 1880, this assumption could not be further from the truth. A prime example is the tragic story of Henry Maple, the “Boy Bushranger” who was allegedly inspired by stories of the bushrangers to take to the bush in 1922 and live a life of crime himself. His accomplice Rob Banks turned himself in after being on the run a week. Maple was not keen to submit himself to the forces of law and order. An ill-fated trip to the bush on the outskirts of Warragul saw him cornered in the scrub at Glen Nayook by several parties of police and local militia. Shots were fired and Maple was discovered unconscious under a fern with a bullet wound in his head. He was loaded into a car and driven to Warragul hospital where he soon died from his injury. For some time it was speculated that he had committed suicide, though this was eventually ruled out.

Unfortunately, Maple was not the last youth to succumb to the glamour of lawlessness and certainly far from the last bushranger to grace the pages of Australian history.