The wild, heavily timbered and rugged terrain of the Oberon district made it an attractive location for those avoiding the law.
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As well as providing a safe haven for bushrangers form other districts, Oberon added its own sons to the ranks of bushrangers.
Considerable bushranging activity occurred southwest of the shire.
Ben Hall, with Dunn, O’Meally, Vane and Burke, held up Assistant Commissioner Keightly at Dunn’s Plains near Rockley in 1863, keeping him hostage overnight while his wife rode 40 kilometre to Bathurst to raise 500 pounds ransom money.
The Maloney family of Porters Retreat have a story that Maloney patriarch Danny made boots for Ben Hall and his gang.
A mounted corps, called Stewart’s Police, were dispatched from Bathurst in 1825, and things were more quiet until the rampage of the Ribbon Gang in 1830.
The leader of the gang, Ralph Entwistle, was due for a ticket of leave but for the trifling matter of swimming naked in the Macquarie River when Governor Darling happened to be passing with some ladies. Entwistle lost his ticket of leave and was flogged.
Entwistle and nine other were finally arrested after several battles with police, and hanged for murder and robbery in 1930.
Some of the Irish convict families in Oberon shire continued in crime for two or three generations.
Many of the Oberon families have their bushranger stories-some as victims, some as perpetrators.
Generally speaking, the bushrangers were of Irish Catholic descent and usually did not steal from their own kind.
George Beattie, who arrived in Oberon in the 1840s, lived in a pise house near the Duckmaloi River. His children were swimming in the creek in 1860 when bushrangers brough the children to the house and called for George to come downstairs. When he did not, they fired a shot into the balustrade and rode away.
Fawcett’s store on the Sydney road, a few hundred metres east of the Fish River Creek bridge, also had a visit from bushrangers, who stole Dr Eaton’s horse.
Ann Webb’s store at Muttons Falls was a frequent target for bushrangers.
A bush or district constable was appointed at the outstation at O’Connell in 1834. Within weeks he had apprehended two desperate runaway convicts.
A police station briefly existed at Porters Retreat. It was established in 1903 and had a strength of two mounted constables.
Oberon Prison Camp was established at Shooters Hill in 1931 to clear and plant the Gurnang State Pine Forest. The men initially lived in tents and they cleared the country with axes.
The prison camp played an important role in the community, providing transport and delivering stores to the people of Shooters Hill. Film night on Saturday nights was attended by people in the community. The first governor was Jack Hagan.
By the early 1960s, it was one of the state’s largest prison afforestation camps, with up to 70 inmates and nine officers.
The prison camp changed to the Oberon Young Offenders Correctional Centre in 1993. The young offender program, The Gurnang Life Challenge Program, is a four-month course including adventure based education.
The correctional centre currently has 115 minimum security inmates. This figure varies quite frequently. The centre has a capacity for 130.
There are about 50 staff, including custodial, offender services and programs, overseers and administration.
The centre has a memorandum of understanding with Oberon Council for the formation of, and working arrangements for, Oberon community project ventures.
