Author: David

  There was really only one thing that the Kelly gang did that was truly original: other Australian criminals had already committed more brutal crimes than the Kelly gang ever did, already murdered more police, already held up whole towns and shouted hostages drinks, already robbed more banks and written letters to explain themselves – […]

In 1992 when Ned Kelly was generally considered to have been a hero, a giant statue of him was erected in Glenrowan where it has remained as a big tourist drawcard to the region.   At its base is a plaque with the following inscription:   Ned Kelly – Hanged a murderer in Melbourne, November […]

I begin this review of the latest book written by Grantlee Kieza, ‘The Kelly Hunters’ with the last words he wrote in it, the final thought Kieza wanted to leave with his readers about Ned Kelly :  a quotation from the report of the Royal Commission of enquiry into ‘the circumstances of the Kelly Outbreak’ […]

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 […]

I have to say it’s so refreshing to have in ‘Nabbing Ned’ author David Dufty a new voice, some new ideas and some new challenges for Kelly enthusiasts to think and talk about. In reality, for a while now we have been going over the same ground, and it’s getting a bit boring, so its […]

I started reading my Kindle copy of this book at 0530 today. A full review of this just-released work about the Outbreak is in preparation, but in the meantime, here’s something from the book to start the discussion off.   Last week, well before publication date, an article in the Age newspaper about the book […]

Part Three ended with a discussion of the so-called ‘Fitzpatrick incident’, an incident that followed an attempt to arrest Dan Kelly on a charge of horse stealing. It resulted in Mrs Kelly being sent to Gaol for three years, convicted of ‘wounding with intent to prevent lawful apprehension’, and two of her sons going into […]

I should probably thank the great-great-grandson of SC  Joseph Ladd Mayes for greatly increasing the number of people who read the Blog post I wrote last year entitled “Should SC Mayes have been sacked?” (CLICK HERE to read it) It was a question that most certainly needed to be asked, and I am certain many of […]

In the first two parts of this series about the story I would tell if I was ever to write the definitive work on the Kelly Outbreak, I wrote an outline of what happened up to around 1877 when Ned Kelly was 22. I described how when his father was alive Ned Kelly and his […]

There’s a tiny cohort of Kelly fanatics who are completely obsessed with attacking me personally, because they don’t like my opinions about the Kelly story. They once had access to my Facebook pages and Blog but eventually, because they never posted anything other than direct abusive attacks and lies about me, I banned them.  I […]