Page 75 - All About History - Issue 53-17

Ned Kelly

round 240 kilometres northeast of The early part of Ned’s history is less divisive.
the city of Melbourne, Victoria, is the His father, John ‘Red’ Kelly, was an Irishman who,
township of Greta. It’s tree-lined, pastoral in 1841 and at the age of 22, was convicted of
and, without closely inspecting a photo stealing two pigs and transported to Tasmania.
of the country surrounding Eleven Mile Creek, He made the crossing to Victoria in 1848 and Escaped convicts who turned to
you could convince someone that it was the ultimately settled with his new wife, Ellen, crime in the outback became known
ancestral Irish homelands of some of its 250-odd in the small town of Avenel. Red was a cattle as ‘bushrangers’
population. Beyond the road leading through rustler of note who had brushes with the law
Greta there’s a faded “Keep Out!” sign above until his undoing in 1866. Unable to account
a sturdy barbed-wire fence and, beyond that, for a suspicious pile of meat and hide in his
nothing to speak of save more rolling pasture on possession, Red was given six months of hard
a wooded backdrop, what looks like the rusted labour because he couldn’t afford the fine. This
hubs of an ancient cart wheel and a solitary red brutal sentence would break the 55 year old.
brick chimney. Red didn’t separate his home life from his
This is Kelly country. Despite looking like a criminal career and young Ned was witness to
fresh breeze would topple it into the dirt, this his father’s lawless acquaintances through his
vestige of a homestead is actually a palace, its formative years. At just ten years old he would
original owner — Edward ‘Ned’ Kelly — a prince have seen the police take Red away from the
of thieves Down Under, and the mythology family, only for his father to die shortly after he
surrounding his exploits every bit a jewel in was released in December 1866. It’s not hard to
Australia’s cultural crown. Keen to preserve this imagine how, unchecked, this could instil in a
monument, Ned’s descendants have erected wily young man an anti-authoritarian sentiment
fences to keep tourists with busy hands from and the willingness to live outside society. The
finishing the job the elements and gravity apple wasn’t to fall far from the tree and Ned
started nearly 150 years ago. And who can blame Kelly was cast in the mould of a future outlaw.
them when there are few such tangible truths to Whether or not he was born bad is moot at this
their ancestor’s story left today? Where England point — the draconian penalties of the colonies
takes its romanticised, 1,000-year-old Robin had set Red Kelly’s oldest son on a bitter collision
Hood story with a pinch of salt and no small course with the law.
amount of Kevin Costner, for many Australians
Ned Kelly was a bone fide revolutionary who
exploded from his humble Selector community
in 1878 to defy the corruption of the colonial
authorities. For others, he was a dyed-in-the-wool
thief, a thug, a killer, an egotist manipulative
enough to have spun his own legend to ensure
its survival for many generations.

The Kelly Gang hold up the
Police Station at Jerilderie,
New South Wales, in 1879

The Jerilderie letter was
a 56-page document
Kelly authored to try to
justify his actions