The Last Outlaws cover art

The Last Outlaws

The crimes of Jimmy & Joe Governor and the birth of modern Australia
Pre-order with offer Pre-order: Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Last Outlaws

By: Katherine Biber
Narrated by: Leroy Parsons
Pre-order with offer Pre-order: Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Pre-order Now for £12.99

Pre-order Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

 Brilliantly reconstructed from contemporary narratives, The Last Outlaws is both a gripping work of historical true crime and a richly revealing examination of our nation at its birth. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith meets Killing for Country.

In the winter of 1900, Wiradjuri man Jimmy Governor and his brother Joe murdered nine people across New South Wales, in a rampage that caused panic in the colony on the cusp of nationhood. Triggered, it seems, by a racist incident, they killed men, women and children, evading a vast manhunt until they were eventually captured. Joe was shot in the open; Jimmy survived to be put on trial. Thus the last man to be outlawed in the colony was hanged in the new nation, meeting his end in Darlinghurst Gaol as the Federation decorations were taken down. The brothers’ names still resonate, partly due to Thomas Keneally’s novel The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and Fred Schepisi’s subsequent film, but their story has remained distorted and obscure.

Undertaken with the co-operation of the Governors' descendants, Katherine Biber’s compelling reconstruction of events – from the murders themselves to Jimmy’s eventual execution – brings this extraordinary story back to life. In doing so it sheds fresh, vivid light on the country that inspired and reacted to the murders. Not only did many of the lawyers and politicians involved also play key roles in Federation, but the case revealed in microcosm the psychology of the nascent nation: its attitudes to land and race; its anxiety about a wider First Nations insurrection; its obsession with paperwork and the emerging ‘sciences’ of neuroanatomy and criminology; its nepotism, religiosity, sweeping police powers and sensationalist media. More powerfully than the story of Ned Kelly or the Anzacs, the fate of Jimmy Governor illuminates the origin story of the Australian nation.

Populated by a cast of extraordinary characters and compelling detail, The Last Outlaws brings the energy of true crime into the telling of history, offering an electric new understanding of both our past and our present. Australia, New Zealand & Oceania Historical Murder True Crime

Critic reviews

‘I was lucky enough to read early Katherine Biber’s The Last Outlaws … It’s a story that encapsulates our complex national origins.’
‘an absorbing account of the crimes of Jimmy Governor’
‘Biber’s ability to slip seamlessly from past to present, from open wound to aching scar, gives The Last Outlaws a rare immediacy few writers of legal history can sustain'
No reviews yet