John Caesar (1764 – 15 February 1796), nicknamed "Black Caesar", was the first Australian bushranger and one of the first people of African descent to arrive in Australia. Biography It is believed that Caesar was born in Madagascar or the West Indies. He moved to England and was a servant living in the parish of St Paul, Deptford, England, in 1786. Transportation to Australia On 17 March 1786, he was tried at Maidstone, Kent for stealing 240 shillings. His sentence was transportation to the penal colony of New South Wales for seven years. He was imprisoned on , a convict transport ship that left England in May 1787 as part of the First Fleet. His occupation was listed as servant or labourer. Alexander arrived in Botany Bay in January 1788. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Caesar gained a reputation in the colony as a conscientious and hard worker. First escape On 29 April 1789 he was tried for theft and sentenced to a second term of transportation, this time to life. Caesar took to the bush a fortnight later, reportedly with some provisions, an iron pot, and a musket stolen from a marine named Abraham Hand. However, unable to sustain himself owing to the shortage of game, he began to steal food on the outskirts of the settlement. On 26 May he helped himself to a brickmaking gang's rations on Brickfield Hill and was nearly caught. On the night of 6 June he tried to steal food from the house of Zachariah Clark, the colony's assistant commissary for stores, and was caught by a convict named William Saltmarsh. In July 1789, David Collins, the colony's Judge-Advocate, wrote: This man was always reputed the hardest living convict in the colony; his frame was muscular and well calculated for hard labour; but in his intellects he did not very widely differ from a brute; his appetite was ravenous, for he would in any one day devour the full rations for two days. To gratify this appetite he was compelled to steal from others, and all his thefts were directed to that purpose. Caesar was described by Collins after his first recapture as a "wretch" who was "so indifferent about meeting death, that he declared while in confinement, that if he should be hanged, he would create a laugh before he was turned off, by playing off some trick upon the