There has been a long-held belief that during Ben Hall's incarceration at Forbes for the Escort Robbery, where Hall had been remanded for many weeks, that whilst in custody Ben Hall's property, Sandy Creek station was abandoned and that furthermore all livestock supposedly yarded at the time of Ben Hall's arrest by Sir Frederick Pottinger in August 1862, were left to die a painful and horrible death through starvation and thirst, this is completely untrue, and long after Ben Hall's death the tale was continually perpetrated as a form of excuse and sympathy for a man who was still held by many of his friends of that period in high regard and therefore became portrayed as a way of alleviating Ben Hall's complicity in bushranging by deflecting
