Page 77 - 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 Ned Kelly
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Do you think Ned Kelly’s name has been maligned over
the years?
Ned made a number of enemies during his short 25 years.
Land barons, police, and judiciary were keen to hold Ned and
his type at bay. Even after he was convicted of murder, the
presiding judge, Sir Redmond Barry, refused Ned’s barrister’s
plea for an appeal to the Full Court, an outrageous travesty
of natural justice. It is the Royal Commission which is possibly
Ned Kelly’s greatest legacy — Ned was an outspoken critic
in the way the police conducted themselves not only in the
pursuit of the Kelly Gang, but in the way they manhandled
the entirety of northeast Victoria. The findings from the
Royal Commission created a tradition of public accountability
and self-examination, which still exists within the Victorian
police force today, and it helped lay the foundation of what is
arguably one of the world’s best police forces.
Did he always have the support of the Greta community?
Greta, like many small towns located throughout northeast
Victoria, primarily consisted of poor selectors. The Kelly clan
was no exception. Like other families in the district, they
relied on each other for support and friendship. Selectors
faced resistance and outright hostility from squatters who
used their superior economic position to manipulate the
system, ensuring they retained control of the best land
along rivers and creeks — known as ‘peacocking.’ It took the
government many years to realise the system was ineffective
and for conditions to improve. Meanwhile, a generation of
selectors grew up with a precarious toehold in the colony’s
productive life and a history of antagonism. It was against this
fled the authorities, “my character could not be
backdrop that the Kelly outbreak evolved.
painted blacker than it as present, thank God my
conscience is as clear as the snow in Peru.” At
Why has Ned Kelly become such a powerful icon for
least of the sullied Kelly name and Ned’s absence many Australians?
of guilt, we can be fairly sure. After Ned’s execution, the dominant, anti-Kelly literature
In the famous Cameron letter, Ned portrayed a ruthless criminal, while the image of a popular
painstakingly outlines his grievances with a hero was kept alive in oral tradition and folk songs. Then,
police force hell-bent on bringing him down, that some 50 years after Ned’s death, ‘the tide of the published
they “use to be blowing that they would shoot word turned’ and Ned Kelly was seen in a more sympathetic
me first and then cry surrender”, and that while light. First of the major pro-Kelly works was JJ Kenneally’s
The Complete Inner History of The Kelly Gang and Their
he was on the run “they used to repeatedly rush
Pursuers, published in 1929 and rarely out of print for the
into the house, revolver in hand, and upset milk
next 50 years. Each week, on average, there is a newspaper
dishes, empty the flour out onto the ground,
story published somewhere in the world with Ned Kelly as
break tins of eggs, throw the mat out of the the topic. Ned has nearly 11 million pieces of information
cask onto the floor, and dirty and destroy all the available online through a single Google search. He has been
provisions, which can be proved; and shove the commemorated through music, words, paintings and film.
girls in front of them into the rooms like dogs The State Library More books, songs, and websites have been written about
of Victoria made
and abuse and insult them”. painstaking efforts the Kelly Gang than any other group of Australian historical
In the same letter, Ned explains his version to collect and figures. And when you add the wide variety of Kellyana to the
of a pivotal event, remembered as the infamous assemble pieces of amalgam — such as clothing, toys, alcohol, tattoos and so on
Stringybark Creek murders of three policemen Kelly’s armour — then Ned Kelly truly is Australia’s greatest folk hero.
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