Due to melodrama's well-established narrative conventions the analysis of stage enactments of the bushranger legend in the previous two chapters focused on representational and narrative features. The impermanence of theatre production and the scarcity of surviving visual records necessitates such a focus. However, bushrangers appeared in other performance formats that inspired later cinematic characteristics. Wild West shows already had a reputation for visual enactment of national themes from their conception in the United States, and the Australian adaptation of the Wild West show formula continued this tradition. Though Australian Wild West shows only made limited explicit use of bushrangers, their transformation of demonstrations of bush work and skills intersects with the bushranger legend's valorization of these abilities.

This chapter opens with a brief history and outline of Wild West shows, explicating their conventions and national contexts and how these translated to colonial Australia. The experience of American showmen in Australia reveals important differences between the two settler nations with implications for the bushranger legend. The second half of the chapter interrogates the implications of a single arena show: Wild Australia at the Festival of Empire held in London's Crystal Palace to celebrate the coronation of King George V in 1911. This case study is the result of archival research into documents written by the show's organizer, Alfred Ernest Neave, and held in the Alfred Ernest Neave collection at the State Library of Western Australia. The show incorporated bushranging segments, making it a valuable example of the early export of the bushranger legend. The show's role in the exhibition and some of Neave's anecdotes provide evidence of a complex relationship between an independent Australian spirit and imperial loyalties. Differences between descriptions of the show's purpose to the British audience and in Neave's later recollections intended for Australian readers reveal how the show utilized the iconography of bushranging for different purposes domestically and internationally.

The conventions arising from these spectacular live entertainments contributed to certain visual elements in early Australian films depicting scenes of bushranging, much as Wild West shows in the United States influenced early western genre conventions in that country. Where the previous chapter established the roots of narrative conventions underlying textual representations of bushrangers in colonial bush melodramas, this chapter considers the visual representations of bushrangers in Wild West shows that influenced cinematic representations of Australian outlaws.