This is my first Blog post for 2019, and will be brief because I am on holiday and so, apart from a couple of books on my Kindle, I don’t have access to my Kelly library, the resource I often turn to when writing something more serious. Instead I’ve been thinking about what 2019 might hold for Kelly enthusiasts of all persuasions, and what my focus will be.
Last year four new books on the Kelly story were published – the second in Morrisseys planned trilogy, Leo Kennedys “Black Snake’ , a Kelly country travelogue and the most important one of all, Dawson’s free downloadable book about the Myth of the Kelly republic. This year already there has been one announcement about a book launch in Kelly country, but almost no detail was provided about this book and the planned launch date has been cancelled with, as yet, no new date announced. I am not aware of any other planned book launches for 2019.
Instead of books, 2019 might be a big year for movies. Already we know two starkly contrasting movies will be released, one being the big budget movie adaptation of an imaginary Kelly story, Peter Careys “True Story of the Kelly Gang”, and in a completely different league altogether, the successfully crowd-funded small-budget local production about StringyBark Creek which is intended to be as close to the reality of what happened as its Melbourne student filmmakers can make it. For some unexplained reason Matthew Holmes of The Legend of Ben Hall fame is planning to do exactly the same thing, if he can raise the money, but he might be feeling a little nervous as two previous attempts at raising money for big budget movie projects failed. Details of the crowd-sourcing venture needed to fund his latest project are still to be released, but it will be interesting to see what kind of appetite remains for a Kelly film with an identical subject and aim as one already in production.
Iron Outlaw webpage is sponsoring a couple of Kelly related activities in the Northeast in the next few months. The first, on February 23rd, in association with the Greta Heritage Group is a day-long seminar focussed on the Kelly Gang armour. The second event, on April 6thand 7that Chiltern will be a series of presentations that cover many of the old largely resolved disputes within the Kelly story. Given the pedigree of the line-up of male speakers on Day 1, I can’t imagine those talks will be anything more than predictable restatements of Kelly dogma, recited to an audience of mostly true believers. The two women speakers, who will probably have something interesting and original to say have been relegated to the Sunday morning, when I predict many delegates will have already gone. Such is life Noeleen!
This Blog will of course continue to comment on events and incidents in the Kelly world as they occur. I am particularly interested to find out if anything at all meaningful is going to emerge from the Ned Kelly Alive project, an expensive report to the local councils of the North-East last year that promised much but to date almost nothing concrete appears to have happened. The closed group of Kelly sympathisers will continue to thrive I suspect, but there will no doubt be fights and disputes that threaten it from time to time. Whatever happens on that site, being behind closed doors it wont impact anything. The remaining two or three barely active pro-Kelly Facebook pages will also continue to impact nothing as they carry on posting nonsense about the Kelly outbreak and on one of them more lies and slander about me, something I am certain will never stop, such is the intensity of one mans delusional failure to recognise the futility of his mad hateful crusade. The Ned Kelly Centre’s website will remain perpetually ‘under construction’ as it appears its administrator isn’t going to receive any of the funds she had hoped for from the NK Alive project. What she will now do with the Boxing Ned postcard she bought last year for a staggering $70,000 is anyones guess.
In short, I am expecting that in 2019 the decline I’ve been documenting over the last few years in Kelly myth-related activity on the internet and on the ground is going to continue, and Kelly myths are going to continue to be replaced with true history. The die-hards planning to be at Chiltern are not even fighting a losing battle : the battle is lost and they are burying their heads in the sand. For the fourth consecutive year there wont be a Ned Kelly Weekend.
This Blog will continue to be the only open place on the entire world wide web where innovative and insightful commentary on the Kelly outbreak will continue and where anyone with an opinion thats something other than abuse can always contribute, it will continue to be the only searchable place for the discussions which have already taken place, it will continue to be the place where Kelly topics can be discussed by anyone, and in 2019 this Blog, Dawson Dee and MacFarlane will remain central topics in almost every conversation about Ned Kelly.
The Boxing Ned photo is a furphy. “Ned Kelly fought Wild Wright and won in 20” minutes, not rounds. The “rounds” were Ian Jones’ fantasy with nothing to support it except that Wright said Ned beat him. No rounds, no nothing. Remember that Ned got thrashed by a policeman during a single-handed arrest once – it’s in the Royal Commission minutes.
20 minutes! Interesting thought! If I was at home I would look it up but maybe someone else can and let us know – did Max Brown or Molony mention the fight and twenty rounds? Or further back, Kenneally or any of the several writers of the Kelly story before Jones?
As for Ned being thrashed, Ive not seen that in the RC minutes but Leo Kennedy mentioned it in his book. He says a stockman called Edwin Graves gave Ned an’ absolute hiding’ in 1874 when Kelly was caught trying to steal a horse from the stockmans boss.
Funny how oral history is ignored by Kelly fanciers if it doesnt support the Kelly hero mythology!
Any idea who Edwin Graves worked for?!
You may be subject to lies but not slander (the spoken word) on other sites, David.
Written defamation is libel, which you have suffered from endlessly. Of the two, libel is longer lasting!
Judge Judy
Ian MacFarlane should be invited to give a talk at Chiltern next April too. His recent research is about the 11 mutilated stolen horses found beside or in the Murray River near Barnawartha, north of Chiltern. Two had their heads cut off. Others has their throats cut, brands cut out and set on fire.
These were the animals stolen from Whitty and others at Moyhu and Greta in 1877.
Ian MacFarlane can’t prove Ned was there with a knife and box of matches yet.
But Ned and his gang were direct beneficiaries of this destruction of evidence, as were the Baumgartens who had purchased the stolen horses from Ned.
After the Stringybark Creek police murders, the Kelly gang repaired to this remote and isolated spot. They had to hide in a lagoon because the Murray was flooded. A police party alerted by Mrs William Baumgarten just missed them.
R S P C A
He would need to go in one of the suits of armour – the intense hostility to Ian MacFarlane by the Kelly fanatics running that Chiltern seminar is such that he would be lucky to get out alive.
But in any case they wont want to be hearing anything other then worshipfull myths about their hero the failed mass murderer Ned Kelly.
Theres a few you tube videos of Flat Earth society conferences – the Chiltern one will be in the same league.
OMG, I see what you mean. Crichton, Webb, O’Keefe and Jager. What a bunch of duds. Nobodies with no research skills. Don’t go there.
Jake
The only two with any research skills are the two women speaking on Sunday morning when all the boys will be nursing their hangovers. I wonder if either of them will be talking about Dan Kelly and the Lloyd brothers John and Thomas Jnr, in court on 19 September 1877, charged with wilfully damaging property to the value of £10, sentenced to three months hard labour in the Beechworth Gaol and ordered to pay £2/10/- damages each. Thomas Lloyd Jnr was also charged with assaulting Mrs Goodman with intention to commit a rape and a second count of common assault. Heard in court on 28 February 1878, found guilty of common assault. and sentenced to four months with hard labour in the Beechworth Gaol. Or in Wangaratta police court on 10th November 1870, after Mrs McCormick had accused Ned Kelly of stealing their horse, Kelly had returned with his uncle, John Lloyd and threatened them saying ‘I will ride my horse over you and kill the b – lot of you, you b – wretches’. He then jumped the horse at McCormick and knocked him down, then made threats to his wife. Kelly received three months for the assault, and three months for the charge involving a gross indecency towards Mrs McCormick. Or Dan Kelly marching Mrs Devine to the church at Jerilderie, repeatedly poking her in the neck with his revolver while threatening her husband’s life. Poor misunderstood violent thugs. Let’s watch the Kelly fans defend them.
Yes, the delivery of a parcel of calf’s testicles to the childless Mrs McCormick was the act of a perverted misogynist.
There is so much about Ned’s sexuality we’ll probably never know.
Thank God.
Masters and Johnson
ANONYMOUS January 17, 2019 at 11:52 pm
Care to elaborate more on Ian Macfarlane’s recent research into the 11 mutilated stolen horses? Where can I find his research?
Baumgarten by Blood, Smith by name
Smith,
You can’t find his research anywhere. It’s not finished or published yet.
He relies on archival documents and newspaper reports. The coppers were onto those outrages quickly, a lot in Victoria and NSW were on the case, and gave sworn evidence.
You, as a Baumgarten, will have facts and opinions too.
Superintendent Hare said “the gang never behaved badly to, or assaulted a woman but always treated them with consideration and respect … In like manner they seldom, if ever, made a victim of a poor man. and thus they weaved a certain halo of romance and rough chivalry around themselves, which was worth a great deal to them, much in the same way as did the British highwaymen during the last century”. Hare, “Last of the Bushrangers”, p. 5. Maybe he was asleep at the wheel that day.
I will enlighten you with a number unknown facts. When the Kelly gang took refuge at Baumgarten’s Lagoon the gang feasted on Tin food. This was later discovered by my gggf William. William also found a pair of Hobbles. The tins were never tampered with. Could it be possible that the tin cans have survived to this day.
ANONYMOUS, if Macfarlanes research is not finished and not available how is it you know about his research?
H. Smith
I will enlighten you with unknown facts. When the Kelly gang took refuge at Baumgarten’s Lagoon the gang feasted on Tin food. This was later discovered by my gggf William. William also found a pair of Hobbles. The tins were never tampered with. Could it be possible that the tin cans survived to this day?
ANONYMOUS, if Macfarlanes research is not finished and not available how is, it you know about his research?
H. Smith
Smith,
I asked him at a recent lunch. The river has changed course so often, the exact spot for the tins would be hard to find.
William went to jail. Gustave got off
The ‘Unmasking the Kelly Gang’ book is recently criticised elsewhere for “cherry picking of evidence, misconstruing and offering up his own opinions as fact”.
Isn’t that what pro-Kelly histories have been doing for decades?
‘Unmasking the Kelly Gang’ is by far the best Kelly book yet with hundreds of citations to actual documentary evidence. Few opinions offered instead. Newspaper reviews acclaimed the book.
Ashleigh Broad
ANONYMOUS @1209 don’t waste your energy or time worrying about the buffoon who talks about the KGU Book ‘offering opinions as fact’. He openly and proudly admits to never having read the book – so what possible value could his ignorant opinions be? With his head deeply buried and firmly stuck in the slippery mud of Kelly fanaticism, he is an irrelevancy to the ongoing re-evaluation and revision of the true Kelly story. Even Kelly sympathisers shun and have turned their backs in huge numbers on this idiot who is now sidelined and desperate. We also will ignore him.
That’s one way to describe where his head deeply buried and firmly stuck
As I was saying about the mutilated horses, the two Baumgartens, Studders, Kennedy and Cooke were brought to trial with mixed results. By then police had realised the stolen horses had been sold to the Baumgartens by Ned Kelly (acting as Mr Thompson) and falsely impounding horses as ‘Stuckey’. Arrest warrants for Ned and Dan were issued at Chiltern in March which led directly to the Fitzpatrick incident at the Kelly home on 15 April 1878.
Ned, Dan and others were never tried for the theft of the eleven stolen horses later mutilated at the Murray.
They murdered police at Stringybark Creek, robbed banks and hid until Glenrowan.
After Stringbark Creek they made directly for the secret spot where the horses had been mutilated.
Vile.
R S P C A
Enjoyed your blog David on the True Story about how Mum Kelly got dudded by Ned and Dan, and never got the legal assistance they promised after her Fitzpatrick conviction. They got the funds but did not use it on her.
The Kellys were a bunch of schmucks!
Dafna
I have been asked to pronounce dead the “Unmasking “The Kelly Gang Unmasked” book website, and to administer last rites – which I have done. It is now officially Dead.
Bishop Matthew Gibney
ps: I have to say the site contributed little or nothing to the Kelly story and won’t be missed!
What have they done with the head? Pickled it in alcohol to preserve the brain?
Ask Steve Jager the Historical Consultant to the Glenrowan Movie team. He declared very confidently a few year ago that he knew exactly where it was – in a Melbourne University I think it was. He is a Kelly Republic fanatic so I wouldn’t believe anything he says to be honest.
Will the Glenrowan movie be using Dawson’s siege timeline in the back of his book that shows what happened almost minute by minute over the first half hour until Ned escaped , then never got back into Jones’ hotel? Ned never crossed the police lines 3 times like the silly Kelly books keep saying. It is all badly “researched” fantasy (or idiocy). The fantasy that Kelly was in the hotel and saw Joe Byrne die is 50 years old but keeps chugging on despite the facts that Dawson exposed. Will it be in the movie anyway?
The forthcoming Glenrowan movie seems doomed if Jager is involved. He is a guitar strummer and maybe should be doing the music? Jeez I’m dumb. Leave him out altogether.
All the previous Kelly movies have been sub-standard. Is Mick Jagger still around? By far the worst was the Heath Ledger half-effort. It was full of silly disproven legends. Channel Nine flogs it periodically. It is more awful every time.
Pongo
David, I see you are still going on with your absolute crap and lies. You say at the beginning that you always allow comments on your blogs even if you disagree with them. That is a lie because you have deleted quite a number of comments from others who know exactly how you go about things. You do not like it when anyone abuses you, but you love abusing anyone that disagrees with your biased opinion. Also you still talk to yourself by putting anonymous comments and false names just to make it look like others are interested in your topic. You certainly need help.