Author: David

The prominent Ned Kelly Forum member and Kelly sympathiser who decided in June to attack the Death of the Legend Blog Post and Comments about the killing of Constable Lonigan must be cursing himself for rushing away and shooting his mouth off on his Facebook Page. I bet he wishes he had never committed to […]

  The Baxter Skull and Tooth Its been more than a month since the annual Ned Kelly Weekend at Beechworth. On the Kelly websites and Facebook pages only a scattering of comments can be found, all declaring it a great success, but I had hoped by now to have read someone’s report of the  events that […]

Ned Kelly, according to the Mythology, was devoted to his family and particularly his mother. He is reported to have said of his father “Red” Kelly that, “a finer man never put his feet in two shoes” – a commendably loyal, but wildly inaccurate sentiment from a son who lost his father to alcoholism at […]

The moon landings are more recent than the Symposium that gave rise to the book “Ned Kelly Man and Myth” ! That’s how very long ago Ian Jones “New View of Ned Kelly” was first expounded – close to half a century ago – so it would be fair to say those views are not […]

“Ned Kelly : Man and Myth” is a fascinating book that was published in 1968. It contains the results of a symposium that was held over  the Easter weekend of 1967 at Wangaratta. Presenters at the symposium included Professor Manning Clark, and a youthful Ian Jones. The  lectures are presented along with interesting discussions that […]

The book that received the least votes in the IO Poll was another one claiming to tell a “ true story” called “The True Story of Ned Kelly’s Last Stand” by Paul Terry.  I have just read it again, while I have been thinking and writing about Glenrowan. The excuse given for writing yet another “True Story” […]

The NKF Key Master and the producers of this bit of Kelly Exploitation are running a competition! It amuses me how on every news article, blog and Facebook page where devotees of Ned Kelly are able to make comments, whenever something happens that is what they would call “anti Kelly”, someone will always get a […]

Its been announced that someone is planning to make a movie adaptation of “The True Story of the Kelly Gang” an award winning novel by Australian Peter Carey. I’ve yet to read the book, and might not ever because its an acknowledged work of fiction and I am sick of reading fiction about Ned Kelly. Predictably, […]

“Without a doubt, Thomas Curnow was the most pivotal figure in the story of what transpired as the Glenrowan Siege” I read this statement on the website of Culture Victoria in a beautifully illustrated section about the Glenrowan School. It’s a thought that at first surprises, because commentary on Glenrowan is universally dominated by the […]

In Part One I argued that the abject and humiliating failure of Ned Kellys grand plan for Glenrowan proved that he would  never have made a great General in an Army, as Kelly mythmakers like to claim.  In fact Glenrowan was Ned Kellys Little Big Horn, a place where, like General Custers Last Stand at […]