On the night of the 3rd of December 1879, Joe and Aaron visited Ye Fang’s store in Sebastopol, where they purchased a bottle of gin, tobacco and opium.
During Jack’s evidence at the Royal Commission in 1881 he stated, “I saw the Chinaman at the Chinese store, Ye Fang, I was in there one day. I was fetching a lot of bark down from Sebastopol. He can talk very good English, I can understand every word he says. He called Joe Byrne Ah Joe, and my brother was known as Ah Jim because they could not say Aaron. He said, ‘Last night me see Ah Joe come along with Ah Jim to the store.’ They got a bottle of gin and some tobacco, and something else, and went away.”
The store owned by Ye Fang was significant in two regards. Not only was this the store Joe visited as an outlaw, but it was also where he had witnessed the torture of Ah Suey in April of 1872.
From The Royal Commission.
An Outlaw’s Journal 