The tranquility is no doubt welcome respite for Andrew George Scott (1842-1880), aka Captain Moonlite, whose remains lay buried in this well-tended grave, and whose tumultuous 38 years of life and 136 years in death have been anything but peaceful.

Scott, who according to legend was bestowed his nickname due his exemplary night-riding skills was an enigma. He was a man of many professions including a poet, a preacher, a soldier, a sailor, a civil engineer, and most famously a bushranger who was captured in March 1879 following a two-day hold-up at Wantabadgery Station, near Gundagai.

Witnesses to the hold-up, which ended in the death of a policeman and two gang members, stated that Scott's capture was enabled by the fact he was affectionately weeping over the corpse of one of his accomplices, his close friend Jim Nesbitt whom he had befriended in Pentridge Gaol a number of years earlier.

Promptly found guilty of murder, while awaiting his execution in Sydney's Darlinghurst Gaol, Scott penned an emotional letter to Nesbitt's mother, referring to Nesbitt as 'my Jim' and expressing his hope that "his grave will be my final resting place, and I trust I may be worth to be with him when we shall all meet to part no more."

The letter containing Scott's final wish was never sent, and after being hanged in Sydney's Darlinghurst Gaol on January, 30, 1880, Scott was promptly buried in Rookwood Cemetery – kilometres from his close companion Nesbitt who was buried in a mass pauper's grave at the top of the North Gundagai Cemetery.

This letter went unnoticed for many years until it was uncovered by folklorist John Meredith and subsequently published in Stephen Williams' The Death Cell Letters of A.G. Scott (1989). The contents of these letters added to speculation that Scott and Nesbitt were lovers.

When Samantha Asimus read the letters she felt compelled to grant Scott his final wish and after several years of extensive fact checking and red tape, Scott's body was disinterred from Rookwood on January 10, 1995. That's 21 years ago this weekend.

Just three days later, on January 13, 1995, and following a funeral procession from the Gundagai Gaol and a grave-side ceremony presided over by a local reverend, Scott's body was reinterred just metres from Nesbitt's.

"Scott's grave is marked by the type of gravestone he requested and even features the epitaph he wrote," explains Asimus.

The remarkable tale of Captain Moonlite is just one of many 19-century convicts, criminals and bushrangers highlighted in Sideshow Alley: infamy, the macabre and the portrait, the National Portrait Gallery's summer exhibition.

Drawing extensively from the underbelly of the gallery's own collection, this extraordinary expose shines the spotlight on rarely seen objects from major public collections in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, as well as from those of the Old Melbourne Gaol, the University of Melbourne, the Victoria Police Museum, and the Justice and Police Museum, Sydney.

Sideshow Alley's curator Joanna Gilmour says: "In addition to the visual spectacle, you can delve into the dark, mysterious and often strange circumstances behind each portrait."

And she's right, set-out across six themed rooms including the dissection room, where you can't miss the full wall-sized photo depicting an 1864 autopsy pored over by a dozen or so morose-looking medical students, are a treasure trove of stories behind many of Australian's most notorious convicts, criminals and charlatans.

Apart from the many portraits (this is the Portrait Gallery after all), the most eye-catching objects in Sideshow Alley are the dozens of death masks including those of Ned Kelly and Moonlite. These facial moulds, sculpted soon after death were studied by phrenologists (subsequently a discredited science) who believed there was a link between the shape of the skull and certain human characteristics, including a predisposition to criminal behaviour. Walter McGill, the phrenologist who sculpted and studied Moonlite's death mask said that Moonlite's head "was so peculiarly formed that it was impossible he could speak the truth, or be honest".

I especially like the dramatic effect created by the headstones of two young children and a mother which welcome you to the Parlour Room. These headstones were part of the first burial ground at the Quarantine Station near Manly, where from the 1830s to 1984 migrant ships arriving in Sydney with suspected contagious disease anchored inside North Head and off-loaded passengers and crew into quarantine.

According to curator Gilmour, "they signify the high rates of infant and maternal mortality in the 19th century, the perils faced by people immigrating to Australia in this period, and the familiarity and closeness of death for Victorian-era people".

The headstones on display are three of many which were removed, when, after 16 years of burials, it was determined that the location of the Quarantine Station's cemetery was, well let's just say, somewhat ill-considered.

A report by the then Clerk of Works, cited in Jean Duncan Foley's book In Quarantine, A history of Sydney's Quarantine Station 1828-1984 (Kangaroo Press. Kenthurst. 1995), eloquently describes the rationale behind the closure of the graveyard. "Just below the Healthy Station and so conspicuous that Parties cannot go out to take the fresh air, without being reminded of the mortality of so many placed in similar circumstances to themselves; besides which the water which supplies the Station trickles through the GraveYard on one side and the association is anything but agreeable." Lovely, just lovely.

It wasn't that long ago that Canberra was a ghost town in summer. However, with many of our cultural institutions dishing-up summer blockbusters, there are increasingly more reasons to resist the annual pilgrimage to the coast and stay at home instead.

Regular readers will be all too familiar with this column's exuberance in getting up close and personal with iconic artworks A break away! and Shearing the rams at the National Gallery of Australia's Tom Roberts exhibition, while the Spiders show at Questacon and Encounters, the National Museum of Australia's revealing stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander objects, continues to attract families from far afield.

So this holiday season, why not shorten your salt water therapy by a few days and rediscover some of your own back yard. I guarantee you won't regret it.

Sideshow alley: On show at the National Portrait Gallery until February, 28, 2016. Tickets $10 each or $8 for concession. Open daily 10am – 5pm (and Friday's until 8pm for the rest of summer). More: portrait.gov.au or Ph: 6102 7000.
Don't miss: Among the selection of special Friday evening tours scheduled is Sex, Murder and Mayhem, which after a sneak peek earlier this week I can confirm that as Sideshow Alley's only adult accompaniment, replete with grim and grisly tales it is definitely not for the young or faint-hearted. The tour runs from 6.30pm–7pm every Friday until February 26. Entry is complimentary following the purchase of an exhibition ticket.
Captain Moonlite's grave: Moonlite's final resting place is at the top end of the North Gundagai Cemetery (William Street), about a 1.5-hour drive from Canberra. You can't miss it. Samantha Anderson Asimus' informative book Captain Moonlite: Victim or Villain (Ginninderra Press, 2012) contains a number of photos which document his reinterment.
Tim's tip: If you are headed up the M31 to Manly for some surf and sand these holidays, you can readily check-out the first burial site at the Quarantine Station. It's creepy enough exploring the cemetery by day, but I dare you to snoop around it at night on one of the precinct's popular ghost tours. More: quarantinestation.com.au.

Contact Tim: Email: timtheyowieman@bigpond.com or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/-The Canberra Times, 9 Pirie St, Fyshwick. You can see a selection of past columns at: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/by/Tim-the-Yowie-Man-hvf8o

Cryptic clue: Has this shark scared all the nuns away?
Degree of difficulty: Medium to hard

Last week: Congratulations to Sue Claughton of Farrer who was first to correctly identify last week's photo, as beautiful Bermagui with Gulaga (Mt Dromedary) in the background. Claughton just beat Jane Young of Curtin and Jane Malcolm of Kambah, who, promoted by the photo, is already planning her next escape to the pretty seaside village which is located on the Sapphire coast between Narooma and Merimbula.

While a number of readers mistook the scene as the Port of Eden backed my Mt Imlay, many readers including Marnix Zwankhuizen of Forde and Carol-Anne Karas of Chisholm used the cryptic clue which related the 2001 comedy, The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly, much of which was filmed in and around Bermagui, to help determine the photo's location.

It is hard to imagine now but more than 60 million years ago Gulaga (Mt Dromedary) was an active volcano and its peak was some 3 kilometres high. Today, it rises almost 800 metres above sea level and can be climbed via an 11-kilometre trek (allow at least about five hours) which starts in Tilba Tilba.

How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to timtheyowieman@bigpond.com. The first email sent after 10am, Saturday, January 9, with the correct answer wins a double pass to Dendy cinemas.