In Discussion

The Four Police killed by the Clarke Gang in 1867 “Towards evening on 8th January 1867 Special Constable Carroll and his men set out on foot from Jinden, in the midst of the Jingeras, south of Braidwood, intending to visit the house of a man named McGuinness, whom they suspected of harbouring the Clarkes. The […]

The undisputed facts seem very clear: Ned Kelly was a notorious criminal, a multiple police killer, and yet there are people who think he was a hero. How is that possible? How can some people believe Ned Kelly was a hero and others that he was a villain? Well, one thing that makes it easier […]

You cant handle the truth Obviously, people give many different and sometimes complex reasons for sticking up for Ned Kelly. For example there is  the almost universal appeal of the “David and Goliath” image, where Ned Kelly is portrayed as the brave little guy who goes up against a corrupt monolithic  establishment. There is also […]

This little publication of barely 140 pages is an absolute gem of a book. As an introduction to the Kelly story I can’t think of a better one to recommend, but I can certainly think of worse ones. This book, released 27 years ago is streets ahead of the rubbish that was produced just last […]

    This is the man identified by his descendants as Ellen Kellys second husband George King. This is part of the prison record of a NSW Horse Stealer named George King.Is it the same man as in the top picture? George King the NSW Horse stealer   George King was Ellen Kelly’s second husband. They were […]

On the Facebook pages where the Kelly story is currently being promoted and discussed, people who post in support of Ned Kelly as an Australian icon and a hero almost always betray their ignorance of the detail of the story by including in their comments statements which are factually wrong. I am not talking about […]

The Kelly myths continue to shrink into the distant past. In no particular order, here are what I think were the main events in the Kelly Calendar for 2017, a year which was a universally rotten one for Kelly sympathisers, as the Kelly lies and legends were rolled back relentlessly, and the only comeback by […]

Its recently been alleged on  various Facebook pages, in support of the Kellys and the Lloyds and the Quinns, that many of the charges police laid against them in the lead up to and after the Kelly outbreak were ‘trumped-up’. “Trumped-up”, according to the dictionary means “deliberately based on false information so that someone will […]

In the Preface to the 2014 CSIRO publication “Ned Kelly Under the Microscope”, the Editor Craig Cormick asks “Do we really need another Ned Kelly book?” Cormick is a Kelly sympathiser and apologist who believes Kelly made a heroic stand against injustice, but he nevertheless managed to assemble a very worthwhile contribution to the bloated […]

This is the front page of the promotional booklet that was released with the 1906 movie That scrappy item in the photo, a ragged, stained and worn original, is not just an old piece of Kellyana, or even just a curious relic from Australia’s past, but an internationally significant and rare item that was issued […]