Author: David

In the 1995 Kelly biography by the author who used to be known as Australia’s ‘foremost authority’ on the Kelly Outbreak, the subject of this new biography, James Wallace, is mentioned only three times. He is described as ‘a double agent’, he is  recorded as being a schoolmate of Aaron Sherritt and Joe Byrne and […]

A Critique of the 2003 Kerferd Oration by John Harber Phillips This lecture, delivered 21 years ago by John Phillips, former Chief Justice of Victoria, now deceased, argued that the evidence was strong that in 1880 there was a North Eastern  Victorian Republican Movement, and it was led by Ned Kelly. In 2003 there was […]

To relieve anyone interested in the discussion about Rockets of the necessity to wade through over 200 comments about them in the Facebook thread, here is a summary and the final word.   A single person, Constable Arthur claimed two rockets “one small one large” were fired during the siege at Glenrowan, from somewhere between […]

The blinkered Kelly cult members on BBM are wetting the bed over David Duftys  entirely plausible suggestion that what Const. Arthur reported as rockets in the sky above Glenrowan on the night of the siege was actually an emission of sparks that spontaneously discharged themselves from the train waiting at the ready at the station. […]

In his big new book “A Certain Truth’, Bill Denheld puts to paper his thoughts on a very wide range of topics that relate to the history of the Kelly gang. Bills approach seems to be to rake over the coals of dormant and even resolved controversies, to toss lots of interesting, not necessarily fully […]

This post is the final Part 8 of a review of Bill Denheld’s Ned Kelly – Australian Iron Icon: A Certain Truth (2024), by Stuart Dawson. It asks, why was Kelly’s murder trial moved to Melbourne? And what has that got to do with a republic? As before, bracketed numbers, e.g., (xx), refers to pages […]

This post is Part 7 of a review of Bill Denheld’s Ned Kelly – Australian Iron Icon: A Certain Truth (2024), by Stuart Dawson. As before, bracketed numbers, e.g., (xx), refers to pages in Bill’s book. Were there any Kelly links to political movements? Bill presents a flow chart showing links between the Gorman family, […]

This post is Part 6 of a review of Bill Denheld’s Ned Kelly – Australian Iron Icon: A Certain Truth (2024), by Stuart Dawson. As before, bracketed numbers, e.g., (xx), refers to pages in Bill’s book. Sympathiser numbers Bill disputes two comments in my Republic Myth book: first, that I said that the Kelly gang […]

This post is Part 5 of a review by Stuart Dawson of Bill Denheld’s Ned Kelly – Australian Iron Icon: A Certain Truth (2024). As before, bracketed numbers, e.g., (xx), refers to pages in Bill’s book.   Were the Kelly brothers hunted for reward monies after the Fitzpatrick incident? Bill wrote that while on the […]

This post is Part 4 of a review of Bill Denheld’s Ned Kelly – Australian Iron Icon: A Certain Truth (2024), by Stuart Dawson. As before, bracketed numbers, e.g., (xx), refers to pages in Bill’s book. Bill disputes my description of Stringybark Creek as an ambush by defining ‘ambush’ as “a surprise attack by people […]