In Discussion

‘Lament’ continues the trend started by Aidan Phelan last year for Kelly devotees to write historical fiction, rather than attempt the more difficult task of separating facts from fiction and writing the true story. Author Nicole Kelly – not a relation – says she’s ‘loved the story of the Kelly gang’ as long as she […]

Part Two of Morrissey’s latest book focusses on the detail of the attack at Stringybark creek, and the immediate aftermath. The accounts of what happened provided by McIntyre and by Kelly himself are well known and are repeated along with interesting commentary about the facts which debunk the Kelly myths and conspiracy theories about the […]

“I would rather have my eyes gouged out than read this book”  Well known Kelly sympathiser and conspiracy theorist demonstrating his unquenchable thirst for knowledge and the truth.His FB page is dedicated to discrediting a Kelly book he admits to having never read!   Writing this review of Doug Morrissey’s third and final book of […]

At the beginning of the year there were two main topics under discussion : the first was a mainstream and social media campaign to promote a claim to have discovered the exact spot where Ned Kelly murdered Sgt Kennedy, and the exact spot where the police search party had made their campsite at Stringybark Creek. […]

The trial of Ned Kelly took place in Melbourne over two days in late October 1880. Kelly was found guilty of the murder of Thomas Lonigan, and the presiding Judge, Redmond Barry sentenced him to death. In this post I am not going to describe the minutiae of the trial or dissect the legal mechanics […]

In Part X of this series I described how the Kelly Outbreak came to an end at Glenrowan on the weekend of June 26th1880: the Kelly gang engineered but  completely botched a hostage crisis that began in the Woolshed valley with their murder of Aaron Sherritt. It ended disastrously at Glenrowan with the death of […]

Next week it will be 142 years since the Kelly gang murdered policemen Lonigan, Scanlan and Kennedy at Stringybark creek, an appalling criminal act that horrified and shocked the colony. Ned Kelly claimed to have killed Lonigan in self-defence but now we know that was a lie: Lonigan was shot while out in the open […]

The final public act of the Kelly gangs outlawry is often called The Siege, a showdown between the Gang and the police made especially famous by the heavy suits of armour that the gang had been making in secret over previous months in readiness for the confrontation. It took place 150 miles north of Melbourne […]

  Barely two months after they robbed the bank at Euroa of over £2000, the Kelly Gang went north over the Murray river into NSW and on Monday February 10th 1879, robbed the Jerilderie branch of the Bank of NSW of a similar amount.   Once again, as at Euroa, instead of riding into town […]

Self-published author Aidan Phelan says of his first work, the historical novel “Glenrowan” that it is ‘the story of how one man’s burning obsession can have far reaching consequences, and how a tiny town between towns became as iconic as Gettysburg or Waterloo’. Actually, most Australians know almost nothing about Glenrowan, and anyone who did, […]