Page 76 - All About History - Issue 53-17

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Ne d K e l l y
N N N N N N N N N N N N N Ned Kelly
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“When you look closely at the history and motives involved,
Ned Kelly damns himself by his actions and the wordsmiths
find no fault. Kelly was a violent, narcissistic career criminal
who bullied those around him and would listen to no
counsel but his own. He committed murder and, if his grisly
Glenrowan plan had succeeded as he had hoped, he would
have been a mass murderer. That he is today regarded as a
hero by so many has much to do with Kelly myth spin and
fantasy. The Kelly myth version of history is not what it used
to be — there are plenty of Australians who crave the truth
and see Ned as a horse thief and killer, no more no less.
However, the myth fascinates the Australian imagination
and Ned is seen as an iconic Aussie hero when, really, he
deserves neither accolade.
“The Kelly myth began in Ned’s own lifetime. He was
Ned Kelly wore a suit of iron
a good publicist for his own cause and he played the
armour at his last stand with
‘gentleman’ bushranger role to the hilt. Despite the public’s the police
enchantment with ‘Ned the bad boy with a gun’, he was still
regarded as a murderer and a criminal by his contemporaries.
Over the next ten years, before he had
It was only after WWII that authors enamoured of the Kelly Tourists are not allowed on
thoroughly burned his bridges with two the grounds of the ruins
legend began writing about him as a political revolutionary
Australian colonies, Ned built up a criminal of the Kelly homestead at
and people’s champion. This was when the idea of a Republic Eleven Mile Creek
of North East Victoria came into its own — something that curriculum vitae that seemed to put him
had no currency during Ned’s lifetime. The evidence for all under a cloud of suspicion for so much as
of this exists only in the fantasy-filled brains of Kelly’s later setting foot outside his homestead. From
admirers, who have misinterpreted his motivations and the age of 14 until his mid-20s, he was
have little understanding of the Greta community or the responsible for numerous counts of robbery
pioneering times in which Kelly lived. Ned’s ‘bravery’ was not
in Victoria and New South Wales. Kelly trail-
as the public and media today choose to see it. He had run
blazed muggings, horse-thievery and acts of
out of bank robbery money and was out of options, badly
violence on either side of the border, finding
wounded and perhaps a little drunk, he took on the police in
a nemesis (and others say at first, a friend) in
a last ditch desperation to end a bushranger’s life he tells us
local policeman Alexander Fitzpatrick. After
he had grown tired of. He had always said the police would
not take him alive; but when he was wounded and lying on apparently shooting the constable in the wrist
the ground, he pleaded for his life to be spared. when he came to arrest his brother Dan, he There was an alternative version of events to
turned outlaw by fleeing into the Bush and the assault on constable Fitzpatrick, too. Kelly
“The comparison to Robin Hood definitely does not Australian mythology. said he wasn’t even present when the policeman
measure up to the historical reality. Ned robbed banks to Ned always seems to have had some excuse came to his homestead drunk and threatened his
obtain money for protection, shelter and food. There was
or justification for his crimes. When he was mother. According to Kelly, a brawl had ensued
never any distribution of funds outside his criminal circle and
caught in possession of a stolen horse he was with Dan Kelly in which Fitzpatrick hurt himself
the destruction of bank records was more for show than an
looking after for Isaiah Wright, he claimed on a protruding door lock. The constable took a
effective release from debt for poor farmers. The books,
he didn’t know it was stolen. The subsequent beating and took off, then said he had been set
television series, movies and so forth all perpetuate the
brawl with the arresting policeman landed upon by the Kelly brothers and that the wound to
myth, and people enjoy a version of history where goodies
and baddies battle one another. The question, as always, him three years in Pentridge Prison, which his wrist was from a bullet. It was an argument
is how do you decide who are the goodies and who are included a three-month stretch in a stinking that would have saved Fitzpatrick face, as well as
the baddies involved? In Ned’s case, the answer is simple: prison hulk. Having taken the fall for someone his career.
he lived a lawless life as a criminal predator and never else’s crime, this was a matter of honour that “Had I robbed, plundered, ravished and
apologised for the murder and mayhem he caused. Is this required settling as far as hot-headed Ned was murdered everything I met,” Ned Kelly wrote
the kind of celebrity folk hero Australians and the world
concerned, and he insisted on a boxing match in a letter to Fitzpatrick’s superior and Victorian
should be celebrating?”
with Wright, which Ned won, of course. parliamentarian Donald Cameron once he had
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