The recent ‘Last Stand’ commemoration proved it : hardly anyone gives a stuff about Kelly mythology anymore.

  Last month I predicted before the anniversary of Ned Kellys capture that this year any kind of commemoration or celebration of it by Kelly devotees would be a flop, because even in Victoria interest in celebrating debunked Kelly mythology has fallen to barely recordable levels. Kelly sympathisers have already noticed it themselves and have […]

THERE IS NOTHING TO CELEBRATE IN GLENROWAN ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEBACLE OF JUNE 28 1880 :

Until quite recently, on the anniversary of the Siege, Kelly sympathisers gathered annually at Glenrowan to toast their hero Ned Kelly. They all believed his last stand on June 28th 1880 was an attempt to establish the republic of North East Victoria, a heroic final defiant act of a brave but imperfect idealist fighting on […]

Book Review of ‘Nabbing Ned Kelly : the extraordinary story of the men who brought Australia’s most notorious outlaw to justice’ by David Dufty

Its an often-overlooked fact that for at least two thirds of the 140 years since his death Ned Kelly was widely regarded as a violent criminal and not much more. The claim that he was something more was only developed in the last 50 years or so by a variety of ‘pro-Ned’ authors, a narrative […]