In Discussion

  This post is Part 3 of a review by Stuart Dawson of Bill Denheld’s  book “Ned Kelly – Australian Iron Icon: A Certain Truth (2024)”. Part 1 made some initial observations on Bill’s claim that a kind of proto-republican sentiment existed in Victoria and in the north-east in particular in the years leading up […]

  This post is Part 2 of a multi-part review of Bill Denheld’s ‘Ned Kelly – Australian Iron Icon: A Certain Truth’ (2024), by Stuart Dawson. As with Part 1, bracketed numbers, e.g., (xx), refers to pages in Bill’s book. When my series of review posts is completed, they will be put up for download […]

This post is Part 1 of a review of Bill Denheld’s Ned Kelly – Australian Iron Icon: A Certain Truth (2024), by Stuart Dawson. Bill has written a complex book that tackles a wide range of topics of interest, as can be seen in his introductory overview. This review will only look at the chapters […]

    According to Bill “Ned was dudded big time by Thomas McIntyre and the court, and by that trick Ned Kelly was not able to claim self-defence, and he was sentenced to death by hanging with the express purpose to show the lower classes of society that they should not meddle with the conservative […]

Chapter 3 of Bills  Denhelds just published book “A Certain Truth”  is titled “Who was Ned Kelly?” and it includes a photo of an article from the Herald Sun of 24th August 2008, which quotes Bill saying this: “Some researchers believe Kelly was adopted as a young child”. By “some researchers” I believe he is […]

Today is the Tenth anniversary of Ned Kelly The True Story Blog. An entire decade ago, on May 19th 2014 this Blog came into existence when I nervously uploaded the first post to my new Google Blogspot web page, then called“Ned Kelly: Death of the Legend” – its title? “Good Man or Bad Man?” The […]

Dr. Stuart Dawson, May 1st 2024    This is a simplified blog version of Stuart Dawson’s research paper ‘Ned Kelly’s Avenel School Days’ that can be downloaded at the bottom of the page. It shows that a lot of what has been written about the Kelly children attending school at Avenel is incorrect. Assuming that the […]

Image shows Boxing Ned, Fredricksen, Wild Wright   The “Boxing Ned” photo from 1874 is probably the best and most compelling of the four known photos we have of Ned Kelly, and the story behind the portrait is possibly the most well-known anecdote from Ned Kellys life before he was on the run. It is […]

Its been a fascinating journey, tracing the origins of the story about Ned Kelly being rewarded by the Shelton family in 1865 or thereabouts with a green and gold sash for saving Richard when he was six. What one would expect over time is that details became clearer the closer one got to the source […]

In Part One I pointed out that there is no record anywhere of Ned Kelly nor his mother Ellen, nor his brother Jim nor his cousins Tom Lloyd and James Ryan ever talking about the now well-known story of Ned Kelly being rewarded with a green and gold silk sash for saving Richard Shelton from […]