The official history of Australia may have forgotten colourful rogues like Tom Ley, but Mudgee painter Michael Bourke has painted a biographical suite of scenes that tell his life story in almost cartoonish images. He talks to Caroline Baum about how Tom Ley became known as Lemonade Ley and how he rose from abject poverty to become a Minister in the NSW government, before travelling to London and being accused of murder. It sounds like fiction, but it’s all true.

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