This narrative painting presents a re-enactment of the story of Captain Thunderbolt (Frederick Ward) holding up the Inverell–Glen Innes mail coach. Recognised as one of the most powerful painted evocations of the heat and light of a high summer’s day in the Australian bush, the enclosed landscape and pervasive stillness both belie and yet emphasise the suspenseful narrative scene.

Roberts set out to portray a distinctive Australian subject: bushrangers holding up a stagecoach in a cracklingly dry landscape. Coach driver ‘Silent’ Bob Bates modelled as the driver in the painting, and had reputedly been held up by the bushranger known as Captain Thunderbolt in the 1860s. He told Roberts during his sittings that it was a ‘quiet affair’.